“My hormones…” began Ellen tentatively.

“Oh, please. Don’t give me hormones!”

“OK,” said Ellen. And then she knew what she needed to say. Her mother had just introduced her to a new man.

“He’s lovely,” she said. “David, that is. Charming. Handsome. I really like him.” It was actually not untrue.

It was like switching on a light globe. Her mother had glowed. “I know!”

And then they’d spent the next half hour talking about David’s positive attributes in comparison to all the men her mother had ever dated.

“Of course, none of those poor unfortunate men ever had a chance,” said her mother. “I see that now. How could they, when I was still in love with your father? I was subconsciously holding back, wasn’t I? I should have let you hypnotize me! We could have worked on my issues.”

“Like that would have ever happened in a million years,” said Ellen.

It had been strangely comforting seeing the snarky glint in her mother’s eyes when she used the word “issues.” It would have been just too much if her mother had started coming over all respectful of hypnotherapy.

Now Ellen pulled up in front of her house and saw all the lights blazing.

There would be no fumbling in the dark for the key. The porch light had been broken for years, but like so many other things around the house, it had been quietly, magically fixed by Patrick within a week of his moving in. She’d complained to the girls about his boxes in the hallway. She hadn’t mentioned all the things he’d done to make life easier for her.

She laughed when she saw the silhouettes of Patrick and Jack suddenly dash by the window, their arms waving in the air. We’re home, she said to the baby. Looks like your dad and your big brother are still up.

She put her hands over her stomach and suddenly, like a message from the future, felt an exquisitely painful, hot, tingling rush envelop her br**sts. It was a revelation that her body could experience such new sensations.

“Hi, in there.” This time she spoke out loud. “That sort of hurts. But that’s OK, I don’t mind. You just rest up. Keep growing.”

There was that blinding feeling of joy again. A baby. For heaven’s sake, she was having a baby with a man who adored her. None of the rest of it mattered.

Chapter 19

Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.

—The classic conscious auto-suggestion created by the

famous French psychologist and pharmacist (the “father

of auto hypnosis”), Émile Coué (1857–1926)

Did you sleep OK last night, Jack?” asked Ellen.

It was a Tuesday morning a couple of weeks after the dinner with Julia and Madeline, and she and Patrick and Jack were eating breakfast. Patrick was reading the paper, and Jack was being uncharacteristically quiet. He was normally bouncing about at breakfast time, as if he’d banked up a whole lot of thoughts through the night and they all had to come spilling out as he ate his cornflakes, but today he was dully banging his spoon against the side of his bowl, and Ellen noticed shadows under his eyes. They looked especially wrong on his smooth little boy face.

“I had a really big long dream,” said Jack. “It went on and on for, like, the whole night. It was like a movie that went on forever.”

“Huh,” said Patrick without looking up from his newspaper. “Eat your breakfast.”

“What was the movie in your dream about?” asked Ellen.

“Armageddon,” said Jack.

Patrick put his paper down and raised an eyebrow at Ellen. “Do you even know what that means?” he asked Jack

“Yeah, of course,” said Jack. He looks pale, thought Ellen. “It means the end of the world. I’ve been looking it up on the Internet.”

“I’m sure you picked up lots of sensible stuff there,” sighed Patrick.

“Yeah,” said Jack obliviously. “It’s coming, you know. Armageddon.”

“Well, it’s not,” said Patrick.

“How do you know?” said Jack. “You said just the other day that you don’t know everything.”

Patrick briskly folded up his newspaper. “I know this.”

“In my dream everyone I know died,” said Jack. “It was pretty scary.” He stood up and took his half-eaten bowl of cereal over to the sink. “I’ll have to tell Ethan about the dream. We’ve got an Armageddon Club.”

Patrick shook his head. “I was in a spy club when I was at school. Can’t you change your club to a spy club?”

Jack looked at his father like he was deranged. “No, Dad, I really could not do that.” He sounded like he was about thirty: a stressed-out business executive who could not possibly take on another project, as much as he’d like to help out.

He left the room, the weight of the world on his narrow little shoulders.

“So, Armageddon, eh? That’s a cheerful topic of conversation for breakfast, isn’t it,” said Patrick, as they listened to Jack clumping up the stairs to his room.

He took his own plate to the sink and smiled at her. “Are you excited?”

They were going for Ellen’s first ultrasound.

“Yes,” said Ellen. “I can’t wait to see it. At the moment this baby just feels like some sort of horrendous stomach bug. I want proof that there’s an actual baby making me feel so sick.”

She thought, Please don’t say anything about Colleen’s lack of nausea or Colleen’s first ultrasound.