“Where do you feel the fear?”

“Here.” Alfred pressed his hand to his stomach. “I’m going to vomit. Seriously. I’m going to vomit all over the classroom floor.”

Ellen looked at him uneasily and felt her own nausea rise.

“We’re going to use that feeling like a bridge,” she said firmly. “And we’re going to follow that bridge to the very first time you felt that way.”

She was on the hunt for what was called the “Initial Sensitizing Event.”

“As I count backward from five to one, you will travel back in time. Five, you’re becoming younger, smaller … four, you’re following the feeling … three, you’re nearly there … two … one.”

Ellen leaned forward and tapped Alfred lightly on the forehead with her fingernail. “Be there.”

She waited a beat.

“Where are you?” she said.

“Preschool,” said Alfred.

At the sound of his voice Ellen felt a cold shiver. It never ceased to amaze her when this happened. There was a fifty-two-year-old man sitting in front of her, but she was talking to a small child.

“How old are you?”

Alfred held up his palm and tucked back his thumb.

“Four?” said Ellen.

Alfred nodded shyly.

“And what’s happening, Alfred?”

“It’s quiet time, but Pam is crying in the reading corner. She’s really sad. I think I should cheer her up and give her a present.”

“How?”

“I’m giving her a present.”

“Ah, that’s a good idea. What is it?”

“My snail.”

Oh, dear. This was clearly not going to work out well.

“Your snail?”

“Yeah, I found it on the footpath this morning and I put it in my pocket. It’s huge! And guess what?” Alfred’s face filled with boyish enthusiasm. “His shell is hairy! I’ve never seen a hairy-shelled snail before.”

“What are you doing now?”

“I’m saying, “‘Look, Pam, this is for you.’”

“What’s Pam doing?”

By the expression of shocked horror on Alfred’s face, it didn’t look like the snail had been a hit. “She’s screaming and pushing me away!”

Oh, Pam, thought Ellen.

“I’m falling back against the bookshelf and it’s crashed to the floor with everyone’s Easter eggs we painted this morning! And Miss Bourke is yelling like she’s on fire, and I can’t find my snail and everyone is looking at me.”

Alfred’s shoes drummed against the floor. “Miss Bourke is hitting my legs!”

Bitch, thought Ellen.

Four-year-old tears were running down Alfred’s fifty-two-year-old face. “Now I have to stand up in front of everyone and say sorry to Pam and sorry to the whole class for breaking their Easter eggs, and everyone is looking at me like I’m … like I’m a bank robber.”

Ellen wanted to march straight back through time and remove Alfred from the preschool and take him out for an ice cream.

But there was only person who could do that.

She raised her voice. “I want to talk to grown-up Alfred now. Are you there?”

Alfred straightened up. He cleared his throat and lifted his chin. His voice deepened again. “Yes.”

“All right, Alfred, I want you to go back to that preschool now and see your four-year-old self with your grown-up eyes. I’m going to count backward from five. Five, four, three, two, one … be there.”

Alfred stretched his neck.

“Are you there?”

“Yes.”

“Can you see four-year-old Alfred?”

“Yes.”

“What would you like to say to him?”

“It’s all right, mate. Girls don’t like snails. They’re strange like that. You were just trying to help. None of it was your fault.”

Ellen checked her watch. The session was running overtime and she had Mary-Kate McMasters booked for the next one, assuming of course that she turned up. Time to wrap up with a few positive suggestions.

An image of Mary-Kate’s sad, dumpy face appeared in Ellen’s mind.

She looked thoughtfully at Alfred Boyle.

Mary-Kate and Alfred were both single.

“Single,” they’d both said immediately, with exactly the same resigned well-what-would-you-expect intonation in their voices when she’d asked about their relationship status for their intake paperwork.

They were of similar ages. She couldn’t think of anything else they had in common, but still, who could ever really predict the magical combination of personality attributes and backgrounds and chemistry that caused two people to fall in love?

So why not give them just the tiniest nudge? The barest flick of her fingernail could roll them together like two marbles. What would be the harm? Before she could change her mind, she started talking.

“You’ve been carrying around the feelings from that day in preschool for a long while now. Now you can begin to rewrite history. The next time you run into a sad-looking woman you may feel a strong desire to pay her a compliment…”

Ellen paused. Assuming Mary-Kate was the next sad-looking woman he saw, how would she respond? Presumably not like four-year-old Pam, but still this was Mary-Kate. Ellen actually had no idea how she’d react. Was this a crazy idea?

“And no matter how she reacts, you’ll feel good about yourself. In fact, you’ll feel great.”