Patrick went to speak and Ellen interrupted him hurriedly, afraid she might scream if the word “Colleen” came out of his mouth.

“So you remember it’s at eleven o’clock? You’ll meet me there? At the ultrasound place?”

“That’s what I was about to say,” said Patrick. “We can go together. After I drop Jack off at school, I’m going to come back here and finally move those boxes. When I woke up this morning, I thought, What’s the point of working for myself if I can’t take a few hours off when I need it? And you’ve put up with those boxes for long enough.”

Before Ellen had a chance to answer, Jack called from upstairs. “Da-aaad!”

“Better go see what Mr. Armageddon wants,” said Patrick. He paused and frowned. “I wonder if the club was his idea. What would make a kid develop an interest in Armageddon? What do you think? Isn’t it a bit—”

“Da-adddd!” The first time Jack had shrieked like this Ellen had gone skidding down the hallway, her heart pounding, assuming he was lying in a pool of his own blood. Now she knew better. He’d probably lost a sock.

“I’m coming!” roared back Patrick, and he went clumping up the stairs in exactly the same way as his son, except possibly even louder.

Ellen put down her spoon and contemplated her porridge and her conscience.

He was taking the morning off work to move the boxes.

She felt herself smile: a satisfied, creamy, catlike smile. Oh, she was good. She was damned good. Every day, in every way, she was making him better and better.

The smile vanished almost immediately. Oh my goodness, it was a wonder she wasn’t waggling her fingertips together while tossing her head back and cackling fiendishly! She was a witch! A manipulative, unethical—

But actually, that was all bluster. She didn’t really feel any of that. Deep down she felt nothing but cool, crisp satisfaction for a job well done.

The only guilt she felt was over her lack of guilt.

It hadn’t been planned; at least as far as she knew. She’d had no conscious intention of hypnotizing Patrick into moving the boxes. Patrick had been upset again about the client who wasn’t paying his bill. “He doesn’t return my calls or answer my e-mails,” Patrick had ranted as they lay together in bed the previous night. “He ignores me, like I’m the one in the wrong. He treats me like I’m stalking him, like I’m Saskia!”

“Do you want me to do a relaxation?” Ellen had asked. After the night before the proposal she’d stopped offering, and they’d been so distracted by so many things: the pregnancy, meeting her father, Patrick and Jack moving into the house.

Patrick had been so grateful, and he was such a good subject; that was the thing. He was like Julia. He had the ability to focus and visualize. He was more imaginative than he knew.

She got him to imagine himself climbing to the top of a mountain. He was carrying a backpack filled with the worry and the fury and the stress that the horrible client was causing him, and as he climbed the mountain he gradually discarded each one of those negative emotions, until he finally took off the backpack completely, and then he reached the summit, where he took in deep breaths of pure relaxing mountain air, and with each breath he went deeper and deeper into himself.

And as she’d watched his forehead smoothing and seen his chest rise and fall as he breathed in so deeply, it felt as if they were together at the top of that mountain, breathing the same air. She’d talked about how that clean, crisp mountain air was going to help him take clean, crisp decisive action. “You’ll do exactly what you need to do to get your life under control,” she’d said, “whether it’s calling your solicitor, or delegating paperwork, or moving those boxes that you’ve been wanting to move. You will systematically de-clutter your life, so that by the end of the week you’ll feel completely in control, able to breathe, energetic and exhilarated, as though you’re standing on that summit with your arms held high!”

You cannot be hypnotized into doing something that goes against your intrinsic values or, in fact, into doing anything that you don’t want to do.

She’d explained that so many times to her clients.

Patrick wanted to move the boxes. He wanted to get through his paperwork. He wanted to call the solicitor. He freely admitted that he was a procrastinator when it came to unpleasant tasks.

Her own self-interest didn’t change the fact that he would feel great once he’d moved the boxes.

“Bribe him with sexual favors,” Julia had said at dinner the other night.

“Refuse sex until he moves them,” said Madeline.

Surely a gentle suggestion during an enjoyable hypnosis session was better than nagging or yelling or manipulating him with sex. That was so 1950s.

Also, she had not instructed his conscious mind to forget her suggestion about moving the boxes. So he should be fully aware of what she’d said. She would ask him about it. “Did you mind me mentioning the boxes last night?” she’d say, lightly, casually.

Once he’d moved them, of course. No point mentioning it until it actually happened.

“Bye, Ellen!” Jack came running into the kitchen carrying his schoolbag.

“Did you get your lunch?” asked Ellen.

She’d taken over the making of school lunches when she’d seen what Patrick had been giving him every day: a slapped-together Vegemite sandwich on limp white bread (who ate white bread anymore? Wasn’t it sort of against the law?) and a green apple. “He should have protein with every meal,” she told Patrick. He’d protested, saying that he wasn’t so sexist as to expect her to take on making Jack’s lunch just because she was a woman, and he’d been in charge of Jack’s lunches for years, and anyway, Jack wouldn’t eat anything else, and wasn’t Vegemite sort of protein-ish? But she’d insisted, surprised at her forcefulness. As soon as Jack had moved into her home she’d felt like his diet had become her responsibility. It had something to do with the sight of his heartbreakingly skinny little boy body. Every time she managed to get him to eat something healthy she found herself deeply satisfied, her mouth virtually chewing along with his, as if some innate, biological need was being met. At the end of each day she would mentally list everything that Jack had eaten during the day, as though she was presenting a report on his diet to somebody. It certainly wasn’t for Patrick; it must be for his mother. This is what I fed your son today, Colleen: a good mix of complex carbohydrates and protein.