I could have babysat Jack tonight, while Patrick and Ellen went wherever they went. That would have been fine. “Bye!” I could have said cheerily, like a teenage babysitter snuggled up on the couch with Jack under a duvet, sharing a bag of chips.

Maybe I should text Patrick and offer. Ha ha.

I could have been babysitting for years. I sometimes think that would have made all the difference—if Patrick hadn’t decided to rip Jack out of my life, my little boy, my darling little boy.

I remember one of the mothers I knew from Jack’s preschool ringing me up when she heard and saying, “He can’t do this to you, Saskia. It’s got to be illegal. You must have rights. You’re Jack’s mother.”

Except I wasn’t his real mother. Just his dad’s girlfriend. What court would care about that? A relationship that lasted three years. I didn’t even officially live with them for the first year. Not all that long.

Long enough to see him get out of nappies, learn to swim and tell knock knock jokes and use a knife and fork. Long enough for his hair to go from curly to straight. Long enough for him to call for me whenever he had a bad dream. Me. Not Daddy. He always called for me.

A sudden shriek slicing through my sleep and I’d be halfway down the hallway before I even woke up properly. I remember once I went to him and he was sitting up in bed rubbing his eyes and sobbing his heart out. “I just wanted to blow out the candles!” he said to me. And I said, “It’s OK, you can blow them out,” and held out an imaginary cake. He puffed out his cheeks and blew, and that was it, problem solved; he smiled at me with his eyes still full of tears and then put his head back on the pillow and fell straight asleep. Patrick didn’t know anything about it until the next day.

I guess Jack’s nightmares aren’t so sweet and simple these days.

This is the thing. When do you cross the line from babysitter to mother? If you look after a child for a night, you obviously don’t suddenly become his mother just because you bathed him and fed him for a few hours. The same goes for a week. Or a month. But what about after a year? Two years? Three years? Is there some point where you cross an invisible line? Or is there no line except the legal one, the one you sign on the adoption papers? Foster children can be claimed back by their real parents at any time, even after years.

I should have adopted Jack. That was my mistake.

But it never even occurred to me.

I saw looking after Jack as a privilege, a gift. It was just another wonderful part of being in a relationship with Patrick.

So when he broke up with me, I knew that I’d have to lose Jack like I’d have to lose everything else that I loved about Patrick, like the veiny tops of his hands, I loved his hands; and his handwriting, he had such beautiful handwriting for a man; and the particular way he smiled at me after sex; and his singing, he sang country music songs quietly to himself when he did stuff around the house. I hate country music, but I loved hearing that quiet singing. It was the sound track to my life.

I never found out if I did have rights to Jack. Maybe I did.

But I went into shock when Patrick said he didn’t love me anymore.

I couldn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t talk. Couldn’t eat. It was like I’d been hit with a terrible illness. It was like a bomb had exploded through my life, shattering everything I thought I knew.

If Patrick had just let me see Jack on weekends. Like a divorced dad. That might have been enough.

Maybe then I wouldn’t be doing this thing, this whatever it is, that I cannot seem to stop doing no matter how hard I try. And I have tried. I have. I never understood alcoholics or gambling addicts before. Just stop it, I always thought when I heard about somebody wrecking their life because of a stupid addiction. But now I get it. It’s like telling someone to stop breathing. Just stop breathing and you’ll get your life back on track. So you hold your breath for as long as you can, but it doesn’t take long before you’re gasping for air. I know it’s humiliating. I know I’m pathetic. I don’t care. It’s just not physically possible to stop.

And so I sat there in my car outside Ellen’s house. She told me her grandmother left it to her when she died, which sort of sums up the differences between us. My grandmother left me a fruit bowl. I had the window down and I could hear the sounds of the waves breaking on the beach. That’s what Ellen must hear when she goes to sleep. That’s what Patrick must hear when he stays over.

I fell asleep, eventually, and when I awoke my back had seized up and the sun was rising and I couldn’t see Patrick’s car. So that meant they’d stayed at his place.

I thought of them asleep in the bed that was once mine, probably lying on sheets that I’d chosen, and I wondered if he was reaching out for her now in the dawn light, running a fingertip so delicately down her arm she wasn’t sure if she was dreaming it. Dreamy, half-asleep lovemaking at dawn was his thing.

I opened the car door and got out all hunched over, like an old lady. The kookaburras laughed like crazy.

Chapter 7

Remember …

All hypnosis is self-hypnosis.

You can’t get stuck in hypnosis.

You are always in control. You can stop at any time.

Hypnosis is a natural state of mind.

Help yourself to the chocolates!

—Laminated card stuck to Ellen O’Farrell’s office wall

Ellen woke to the feel of Patrick’s fingertip running slowly, delicately up the length of her arm.

The fingertip on the arm was always his opening move.