“I’ll take care of all that,” said Patrick. He puffed his chest out and jutted his jaw like a superhero. “Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it.” She put a hand to her forehead and pretended to swoon in his arms. (Actually, it was almost a genuine swoon.)
Ellen looked at the time. She wasn’t expecting any clients. Saskia, she thought, as she walked down the stairs. And now there is no large plumber to protect me. Just in case, she picked up one of her grandmother’s heavy glass candlestick holders from the hall table, laughing at her serious reflection in the hallway mirror. But, still, she didn’t put it down.
She opened the door.
It wasn’t Saskia. It was a thin, short, nervous-looking girl smoking a cigarette and smiling up at her apologetically.
Ellen knew her face perfectly well, but for a moment she couldn’t place her; she’d been so sure it was Saskia, she couldn’t get the name “Saskia” out of her head.
The girl dropped the cigarette and crushed it beneath her foot. Then she picked up the butt and held it in her cupped hand.
“I can’t believe I lit this up while I was waiting for you,” she said. “I’m an idiot. Anyway, as you can see, I’m still at it.”
Ellen stared at the crushed cigarette and said, “Rosie.”
“Yes,” said Rosie. “I’m sorry. I know I don’t have an appointment. I just got back from my honeymoon this morning, and I came by on the off chance you had some free time…”
“I saw your wedding photos in the paper last week,” said Ellen, trying not to sound resentful. You still married him after our breakthrough! Why did you marry him if you knew you didn’t even like him?
“Those photos were awful,” said Rosie. “I looked so ugly, and you saw the color of the bridesmaid dresses?”
“The pictures were black and white.”
“Oh, right, of course. Well, they were awful. Anyway, do you … could you fit me in?”
“Of course I could,” said Ellen warmly, guilty about her resentment. She stood back and ushered her in, discreetly replacing the candlestick holder on the table.
“You’re probably wondering why I still married him,” said Rosie, when she was settled in the green recliner.
“Here,” said Ellen, offering a tissue in the flat of her hand so that Rosie could finally dispose of the cigarette butt she was still holding.
“It was the most stupid of all reasons,” said Rosie. “You’ll be horrified.”
“I’m sure I won’t be.” Although she might very well be.
“When I left here after our last session, I was so ready to call off the wedding. I knew it would be a huge deal. The invitations had gone out. You know the prime minister was on the guest list. She had to be in Japan or something, but, you know … And my mum had lost twenty kilos and bought the most expensive dress she’d ever owned, and my dad had spent days working on this terrible speech, and my friends were all so jealous, which isn’t the reason to marry somebody, but, you know, everyone thought I was marrying out of my league, which I was, which I did, but anyway, that’s not why I did it—it was something that happened after I left here.”
“What happened?” asked Ellen.
“I thought I’d go for a walk on the beach,” said Rosie. She was tapping at her lips with two fingertips in a V-shape: the way of a smoker longing for a cigarette. “To clear my head, to think about how I could possibly explain it to Ian, and I saw this couple sitting on the beach and they were kissing, really kissing, you know the way people kiss when they’re at the beginning of a relationship?”
“I know,” said Ellen. She remembered that kiss with Patrick outside the museum.
“And I thought, oh, that’s sweet, but then as I got closer, I thought, that’s Joe! My ex-boyfriend. We broke up a year ago. I thought I was over him. I thought I didn’t care less, but the way he was kissing this girl, like he’d never experienced such bliss, it just killed me.”
“Ah,” said Ellen.
“And just like that, I thought, I can’t do it, I can’t call off the wedding,” said Rosie. “We were going on our honeymoon to this expensive resort in Malaysia, where my ex-boyfriend and I had always wanted to go, but we couldn’t ever afford it, and I wanted him to hear about it. I wanted him to imagine me there with another man. I wanted to wipe that blissful expression off his face. He’d always had a thing about money and wealthy people being somehow better than him, and I knew that we had mutual friends who would tell him all about the wedding—and I don’t know, it was like I lost my mind. And I just went ahead with the wedding, and decided that I did love Ian, of course I did, how could I not? I convinced myself that I’d just got confused in my session. I sort of blamed you, to be honest. So I got married, and that was all fine, but you know what?”
“What?” said Ellen.
“Two things. The resort in Malaysia wasn’t that great, it was actually pretty awful, and we had to cut the honeymoon short because of some merger or coup or something or other. And then, do you know what I heard this morning? My ex only went out with that girl for a few weeks. He’s single again. But I actually couldn’t care less, either way! I never really wanted to get back together with him, I just couldn’t bear to think of him being so happy with someone else and then hearing that I was single again. Isn’t that the most pathetic thing you ever heard in your life?”
“Of course not,” said Ellen. “We all have the most peculiar motivations for what we do.”
There was a pause. Rosie fidgeted and then said suddenly, “You’re engaged!” She pointed at Ellen’s ring and Ellen realized she’d been drawing attention to it by twisting it around her finger. It had very quickly become a habit. “Congratulations! I bet you love him. I bet you love him properly.”
“Well.” Ellen smiled foolishly. She didn’t want to sound smug.
“Anyway,” said Rosie. “Ian wants to try for a baby straightaway.”
“So you’re ready to give up smoking once and for all,” guessed Ellen.
“No,” said Rosie. “I want you to hypnotize me into falling in love with him. I mean, love is just a state of mind, right? I don’t want to have a baby with someone I don’t love. You can do that, right? Make me believe that I love him? So I haven’t made the worst mistake of my life?”