“I’m not feeling that serene at the moment,” said Ellen. “What a day. First Luisa wanting her money back, and then Ian Roman threatening to ‘bring me down.’ I think this qualifies as the worst day in my professional life.”
“Ian Roman is just throwing his weight around,” said Patrick. “Don’t worry about him. He’ll get distracted buying his next television station or whatever.” He paused. “So are you really hypnotizing his wife to fall in love with him?”
“Of course not,” said Ellen. “I can’t make anyone feel something that isn’t genuine. Rosie asked me to do that and I suggested that we do some work on her self-esteem issues instead. You can’t love someone unless you feel good about yourself. I can’t tell you too much, but I just said I would try and help give her enough self-confidence to either leave him or to try and make it work.”
“Mmmm,” said Patrick. He looked doubtful.
“What?” said Ellen.
“I don’t know. I guess it sounds a bit … airy-fairy?”
Ellen felt quite profoundly irritated. “Oh, so now you think I’m some sort of charlatan as well, do you?”
“Of course not. Look. I’m a simple surveyor. A man of the land. Obviously I have no idea what I’m talking about.”
“Obviously,” said Ellen.
“Quick! Change of subject! How about our beautiful baby? Hey?” He handed her the photo, and Ellen smiled in spite of herself.
After a second, Patrick said, his tone changed, “Did you see her?”
Ellen kept looking at the photo. She knew exactly whom he was talking about.
“Yes,” she said.
“I have to do something about it,” said Patrick. “With the baby coming…” He pressed a fingertip to the photo. “I’ve never thought of her as dangerous, but she looked a bit … I don’t know, unhinged. Crazier than usual.”
Ellen thought of Luisa today, crazy with grief and envy over Ellen’s pregnancy. She thought of Saskia’s face when she walked into the waiting room. Ellen had seen her immediately. She had a feverish, desperate look about her, as if she was hurrying to catch an important flight.
“Did Saskia want to have a baby with you?” she asked.
“Who cares if she did?” said Patrick roughly. “There is no justification for this!”
“I just wondered,” said Ellen. I just want to understand.
“Family-size supreme?” interrupted a waitress.
When they got home, there was a message on Ellen’s voice-mail from a journalist named Lisa Hamilton. She said she was working on a story for the Daily News about hypnotherapy and “its claims” and had been speaking to some of Ellen’s clients. “I wondered if you would care to comment about some of the allegations that are being made,” she said.
Her voice was cold and clipped, full of certainty and authority with a faint edge of disgust.
Ellen put down the phone.
“Everything OK?” said Patrick.
“I think I know how Ian Roman is planning to put me out of business.”
Chapter 21
Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious.
—Freud, 1900
What’s that old cliché? All publicity is good publicity?” said Patrick.
Ellen was already in bed and Patrick had just come in from checking on Jack.
“This isn’t going to be good publicity,” said Ellen. She’d called back the journalist and had agreed to meet her for an interview the following morning at eleven. Ellen had talked to plenty of journalists over the years, and normally she quite enjoyed it. Ever since she’d attended a seminar a few years back called “Marketing Your Hypnotherapy Practice,” she’d actively looked for opportunities and made herself available for comment. Every December she was called up by journalists writing articles to appear in the new year with headlines like “How to Stick to Those Resolutions: We Ask Our Panel of Experts!” She’d been interviewed for health magazines about weight loss, and business magazines about overcoming public speaking nerves. She contributed to a weekly “mental health” column for her local paper, and she was a regular guest on various midmorning radio shows. She’d even been on television a few times.
In every case the journalists she’d dealt with had been, if not respectful, at least perfectly friendly and interested. She was soft news. The human-interest angle. Something a bit different for the women readers. A bit of fun. Nobody was really too fussed about what she had to say. They didn’t really believe in hypnosis, but they didn’t care too much either way.
But as soon as she spoke to Lisa Hamilton, she knew that this was going to be a different sort of interview than anything she’d done before. Her manner didn’t even warm when Ellen, in a blatant plea for sympathy, had mentioned that she was pregnant and suffering terrible morning sickness and would therefore prefer not to meet too early in the morning. Lisa was clearly not the sort of person who could fake the charm in order to get Ellen to reveal more. If she was going to write an article trashing Ellen, she had to hate her.
Ellen had no experience being hated.
It wasn’t helping her nausea.
“I remember Colleen saying that they didn’t mind if they got a bad product review because the only part that stuck in people’s minds was the name of the product.” Patrick pulled back the quilt and climbed in next to her.
Colleen had been a marketing assistant. Ellen wondered if she just imagined that Patrick’s face automatically softened whenever he mentioned Colleen’s name, in the same way that her father’s face had softened when he mentioned his real children.
And so what if it did?
(And just what did she mean by “real children”? How sulky and silly and obvious of her. She was behaving as if her father had deserted her. Was that what she subconsciously thought? She thought her subconscious was more mature than that.)
“I’m not a product,” said Ellen, although the marketing course she’d taken had encouraged her to think of herself as a “brand.”
“You know what I mean,” said Patrick. “I just don’t want you getting yourself worked up about this when it probably means nothing. It might not even be related to Ian I’ve-got-a-big-dick Roman.”
“He owns that paper,” said Ellen. “I looked it up on the Internet. It’s too much of a coincidence.”