Hypnotized

‘My first and most vivid memory is of my grandmother. She was smoking a menthol-tipped cigarette in the Tapestry Room and she opened her silver cigarette box and popped one between my lips so I could pretend to smoke. I remembered the thrill of sucking on it, the cold minty air that came out of the filter, and her amused, indulgent expression as she looked down at me. I knew that she loved me dearly and I loved her just as well.’

‘How old do you think you were then?’

She shrugged one shoulder, a lazy, sinuous movement. ‘I don’t know. Maybe seven.’

Her lips had not shut after she had spoken but remained parted and moist. A glimmer of perfect white teeth showed in the gap. And I suddenly and absolutely craved to see her naked and sucking my cock.

I coughed. ‘How soon after your accident did this memory surface?’

‘It happened at the hospital as I was coming out of the anesthetic. After that there were no more clear memories—just vague impressions of familiarity, feeling that I knew a place or a person, and unconnected—I must say, disconcerting—flashes of images.’

‘Disconcerting?’ I questioned.

‘Yes. I’ll get a flash of something and when I try to remember more I’ll end up with a stabbing headache. My doctor says it’s some sort of post-traumatic thing. At other times I get to a point then my mind will go completely blank, as if I have come up to a brick wall.’

I nodded and tried hard to concentrate. ‘I see. What about dreams? Do you dream of the past?’

She frowned. ‘Not really. But I do have a recurring dream where I am going down a dark hallway. I think it could be the east wing of Marlborough Hall, our family home, but I’m not sure. I seem to be very young because my bare feet are very small and my toes are painted shell pink, but untidily, the way a child would paint them.’

Unconsciously she hugs herself.

‘Then I reach a door and I am suddenly filled with a frightfully intense sense of impending doom. I want to turn around and walk away, but I cannot. My whole body is clenched and trembling with fear. I am so terrified I feel sick, but I turn the knob and open the door.’

She lifts a shaking hand and wipes her nape as if she is smoothing down the hairs standing up at the back of her neck.

‘I find myself at the threshold of an unpainted, uncarpeted, desolate room. It is bare but for a rocking chair that is rocking all by itself. As if someone has just vacated it. I know from the silent fear that hangs in the air that something very bad happened in that room. Then I wake up in a cold sweat, frightened, uneasy, and with a strong sense that I am in terrible danger.’

I stared at her, surprised and unsettled. This was not at all going the way I thought it would. ‘Do you see a psychiatrist?’

‘Yes. I see Dr. Greenhalgh once a week.’

I nodded. ‘Good. One last question. How did you feel when you first saw your family?’

She shifted uneasily in her chair. ‘I don’t know. I could hardly believe it when they said they were my family.’

‘Why?’

‘It just seemed extraordinary.’

‘In what way?’

A strange expression flickered across her face. She clasped her hands in her lap. ‘I’m afraid you’ll think me awfully ungrateful.’

‘Try me?’

She licked her lip and, looking me directly in the eye, said, ‘Because I felt no love for them at all… No matter what they said or did for me.’

3

‘I wouldn’t call that ingratitude, Olivia,’ I said mildly. ‘Trauma can have totally unpredictable effects on the brain and psyche.’

She smiled uncertainly. ‘That’s what Dr. Greenhalgh says, too.

‘Right. We’ll start off wi

th a word association exercise. I’ll say a word and you tell me the first thing that comes into your mind.’

She frowned. ‘A word association exercise? What has that to do with hypnosis?’