The Hypnotist's Love Story by Liane Moriarty Page A

after heartbreak.”
    “I have
not,
” said Ellen. She had.
    “Mmmm,” said Julia.
    She lifted her chin and smiled at Ellen; Ellen grinned sheepishly back at her.
    “So Patrick’s stalker isn’t a therapeutic metaphor?”
    “She is not,” said Ellen.
    They lay in silence for a few seconds.
    “So this Patrick has a crazy ex-girlfriend and a dead ex-wife,” said Julia. “Sounds like a real catch. No complications whatsoever.”
    “It doesn’t feel complicated,” said Ellen.
    “Yet,” said Julia.
    “Thanks for your enthusiastic support,” said Ellen.
    “Just saying.”
    Julia sat up and took her towel off her head and dabbed it against her pink, shiny cheeks.
    “I bet you love the fact that he’s a widower, don’t you?” she said. “It makes him seem like a romantic tragic figure. It’s just like Miles.”
    “Miles?”
    “Miles. That one-legged boy you fell in love with in high school.”
    “
Giles
,” said Ellen. “And we all fell in love with the one-legged boy. He was gorgeous.”
    This was the problem with being friends with someone who knew you when you were a teenager. They never quite take you seriously because they always see you as your stupid teenage self.
    It was true that she wasn’t unhappy about Patrick being a widower. Shequite liked the fact that it made things more complicated. It made her feel like she was part of the rich tapestry of life (and death). Also, it gave her a chance to demonstrate her professional skills. She imagined people saying to her, “Do you worry about his feelings for his wife?” and she’d say serenely, “No, actually, I don’t.” She would understand completely if he still had feelings for his wife. She would know instinctively when to draw back, when to let him grieve for her.
    “
I
never fell in love with the one-legged boy,” said Julia.
    “No, you were too busy breathing down the phone line to your ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend.”
    “Aha! Touché!” Julia expertly flourished an imaginary sword. She’d been the school’s fencing champion. She twisted the towel back around her head and lay down on the bench again.
    “Anyway, I’ve got an excuse for my stalkerish behavior,” she said. “I was seventeen. Teenagers don’t have properly formed brains. It’s a medical fact. How old is your stalker?”
    “She’s Patrick’s stalker, not mine. She’s in her early forties, I think.” It was like pulling teeth getting the basic facts out of Patrick about Saskia. Ellen noticed that he avoided using her name wherever possible. He called her “that woman,” or “bunny-boiler.”
    “There you go. She’s a grown-up woman. A middle-aged woman, in fact. No excuse. She’s loopy. Loony bin material.”
    Ellen sighed and stretched out her arms and legs as hard as she could, before releasing them and letting her body melt into the bench. “We’re all a little crazy, Julia.”

Chapter 5
    “You will lose weight”/“You can become just as slim as you choose to be!”
    Look at the differences between these suggestions. The first could be described as authoritative, paternal and direct. The second could be described as permissive, indirect and maternal. Milton Erickson believed that the unconscious mind would resist authoritarian suggestions. He was the first to use “artful vagueness.” Don’t you just love that phrase?
    —Excerpt from an advanced hypnotherapy
class delivered by Ellen O’Farrell. Three students
nodded, the rest stared at her, artfully vague.
    T he news that she was unexpectedly meeting Patrick’s son that night for the first time caused Ellen to feel a completely out-of-proportion sense of panic.
    “Sure! Of course, of course!” she said to Patrick, nodding her head like a maniacal puppet, when he rang to ask if it was OK to bring Jack along with him to dinner tonight because the kid from school he’d been planning to visit had come down with some virus.
    “He can just eat whatever we’re eating,” said Patrick.