I noticed this ache creeping up the side of my leg. It wasn’t excruciating, just annoying, like I’d pulled a muscle, and eventually I had to sit on the edge of a specials display in the middle of the supermarket aisle and rest it, and Jack said, “What are you doing, Sas?”

Then it happened again the next day. I still didn’t give it much thought. It certainly never crossed my mind that five years later I would still be dealing with it.

I was so confident when I went to see that first physiotherapist that she would be able to fix it. I thought it was something that needed to be crossed off my “to do” list, like getting my car serviced or my legs waxed. Quick, fix this pain, please, it’s annoying me.

Patrick was sympathetic at first, but then he seemed to lose patience and interest. We couldn’t do our bushwalks anymore. We couldn’t walk through the city to a restaurant for more than two blocks without me having to find a bus stop to sit down. We couldn’t stand in a group at a party without me saying, I need a chair. I caught a flicker of impatience cross his face once when he came home and found me sitting on the kitchen floor with the chopping board on my lap, slicing up carrots. I guess it was just so boring for him to have a girlfriend who behaved like an elderly person.

Then Mum died, and then he “ended the relationship.” Perhaps he’d been getting bored and my leg was the final straw.

The pain in my leg isn’t as bad as it was, but it got to a certain point and then it never went away. It’s like a permanent physical reminder of that time in my life, when everything changed forever. It’s the marker between the person I am now—strange, obsessive, flabby and unfit—and the person I was before—normal, happy, very fit, could go for years without seeing a doctor. As soon as I start to feel that creeping ache, I feel a corresponding creeping sense of hopelessness and pointlessness and nothingness.

And of all the people I’ve been to see about this pain, Ellen is the first person who seemed even remotely interested in how much it’s affected me.

“It must be incredibly frustrating,” she said, and she seemed so sympathetic, for a horrifying moment I thought I might cry.

Yes, Ellen, it is incredibly frustrating, especially when one of my hobbies is following my ex-boyfriend, who, by the way, happens to be your current boyfriend, often on foot, and it makes it very difficult, although I’m proud to say that I’ve never given up, I just keep going, no matter how bad the pain is, and people stare, because I guess I’m grimacing. There she goes, a twisted old witch, hobbling after her old pain-free life with outstretched clawed hands, trying to snatch it back.

Chapter 11

From the moment we’re born everyone is hypnotizing us. We are all, to some degree, in a trance. Our clients think we’re “putting them to sleep,” but our ultimate goal is the opposite. We’re trying to wake them up.

—Excerpt from an article written by Ellen O’Farrell for

the journal Hypnotherapy Today

Saturday was wonderful. They slept late. Breakfast and the papers in bed. A long walk on the beach and a quick swim (very quick; Patrick started shivering after only a few minutes). Coffee and cake by the river. Lunch by the pool. An afternoon nap.

Ellen’s senses seemed sharper. The sun and the sea breeze caressed her skin. As they walked down Hastings Street, she could smell everything: coffee, the ocean, the perfume and aftershave and sunscreen of passersby. She heard every fragment of conversation, every burst of laughter.

There appeared to be some sort of baby boom happening in Noosa. The place was crowded with babies and toddlers and roundly pregnant women. Every baby was gorgeous: their big melting eyes seemed to fix on Ellen as if they knew her secret. The pregnant women seemed to know too. They gave her gentle, mysterious smiles from behind their sunglasses.

She’d felt so excluded from this club of mothers and children. She kept catching herself thinking: Would it be allowed? For me to push a big complicated-looking stroller like that? For me to pick up a baby without first asking someone else’s permission? For me to grab hold of a toddler’s hand while crossing the street?

Why not you? she asked herself. Why not?

But still she didn’t tell him.

Moment after moment slipped by when she could have told him. They had all the time in the world. She’d never seen him so relaxed. His forehead seemed smoother. He touched her constantly.

There was no sign of Saskia. Ellen’s stomach slowly unclenched and she stopped scanning the crowds for her. She was so relieved for Patrick. The poor man deserved a weekend without having to constantly look over his shoulder.

And how did she feel about the fact that Saskia had been in her home? Did she feel frightened, furious, violated?

She pondered this when she woke up first from their afternoon nap, Patrick’s body still curved around hers, their fingers still interlaced from when they’d fallen asleep together.

All of those feelings felt like possibilities. Yes, when she thought about Saskia sitting in her glass office, deceiving her, secretly observing her, there was most certainly a tremble of genuine fear and a flare of rage. What did she want from her? What was she planning? And how dare she? The audacity.

But she was still intrigued. Even more so than before. Fascinated. Beneath the fear, she still felt … no, surely not. But, yes, as inappropriate as it was, that’s what she felt: a mild sense of pleasure. She liked the fact that someone was that interested in her. It gave everything a definite edge. A spark. Maybe it was a tiny seductive taste of life as a celebrity: the feeling that everything you did was important and worth noting. Or maybe Ellen had some sort of personality flaw that perfectly complemented Saskia’s. She was the yin and Saskia was the yang, and together they formed a psychopathic whole.