“This honey isn’t just ordinary honey. This honey is the color of morning light. This honey is warmth and sweetness and security. This honey is every happy moment in your life. Every beautiful memory. Every second where you felt truly alive.”

She knew he could see the honey. She could see it too. She was in a light trance herself. When the work was going well, it happened, and it was always a pleasure when it did.

“Keep watching the honey. Keep watching until there is nothing else in your mind.”

She paused, and felt the curve of his skull beneath her hand and the warmth of his body against hers, and thought, He’s the father of my child. He’ll be the daddy and I’ll be the mummy.

It was possible she was overly romantic when it came to the whole concept of fatherhood.

“And now I want you to take your attention to your feet. Imagine that your feet are dissolving into the bed like warm honey. They’re dissolving … liquefying.”

She continued with the honey metaphor as she slowly worked her way up his body, encouraging him to sink deeper and deeper into his trance. This was the deepest she’d ever taken him.

She pinched his arm and he didn’t flinch. Spontaneous anesthesia.

If he was a regular client, now was the point where she would plant a posthypnotic suggestion. If she was treating a smoker, she might say, “Every time you go to open your packet of cigarettes, you will feel an overwhelming sense of revulsion and disgust.” If she was treating an overeater, she might say, “You will eat slowly and mindfully and only what your body needs.”

But Patrick hadn’t asked for help with any particular problem. He just wanted stress relief. He just wanted a good night’s sleep.

As a therapist, she would only know what he told her.

As his girlfriend, she happened to know that this weekend had the potential to be extremely stressful.

She said, “Throughout this weekend you are going to maintain a wonderful sense of relaxation and well-being.”

Nothing wrong with that. He was already in that frame of mind anyway.

She said, “If anything goes wrong, if you hear or see anything that upsets you, or worries you, the touch of my hand on your right shoulder—like this—will instantly bring about a sense of deep relaxation.”

She laid her hand on his shoulder.

“Whatever life throws at you, you’ll be able to handle it. If something unexpected happens, you will have the resources to do what you know, in your heart, is right for you. You will not remember these suggestions. And now, on the count of three, you will come out of your trance, and you will immediately fall asleep, and you will sleep throughout the night without dreaming or waking, and in the morning you will feel refreshed and reinvigorated. One. Two. Three.”

His breathing changed, became shallower, and he made a comical sound that was halfway between a snort and a snore.

“Thank you,” he mumbled, as he turned over on one side and pulled one of the pillows into a vertical position and shoved it under his head. “G’night, darling.”

And then he was asleep.

Ellen turned on her side so that her back was pressed against his.

Had she just crossed the line, ethically speaking?

Flynn would say that she’d crossed it the first time she agreed to perform any form of hypnosis on Patrick.

Danny would laugh and say he didn’t believe there were any lines to cross. That was what being in a relationship was all about: trying to manipulate the other person to do what you wanted. “Everyone tries to hypnotize their partners,” he’d said to her once. “We’re just better at it than the average person.”

What did she think herself? Well. She didn’t believe she’d crossed the line, exactly, but perhaps she’d edged her toe over it.

The tip of her toe. She thought of Saskia. Now she could put a face to her. An intelligent, attractive face. Saskia wasn’t afraid to cross any line to try to get Patrick back.

Lines were there to be crossed.

So maybe Ellen was just doing what she needed to do for her unborn child. She was a lioness protecting her cub; a mother rushing into a burning building to save her child. Or maybe that was rubbish and she was trying to rationalize doing something that she knew was wrong.

Well. Look. She just wouldn’t do it again. She’d teach him to do his own self-hypnosis. That was the solution. There was something ever so slightly … unsavory about this habit of theirs. She enjoyed it too much. That was the last time.

She felt like an altar boy promising not to masturbate anymore.

She fell asleep and dreamed of Deborah-who-was-now-Saskia. She was sitting cross-legged in Ellen’s recliner chair for clients, dipping a spoon into a huge jar of honey. She took a spoonful and held it far above her head, and let a long thin line of honey drizzle into her open mouth.

Then she closed her mouth and looked at Ellen, and slowly, sensuously slid her tongue over her sticky lips.

“You crossed the line,” she said. “You know you did.”

“Don’t get honey on my chair,” said Ellen briskly, to cover her shame.

After we got off the plane, I stood in a far corner of the terminal next to a big pillar where I could see them waiting at the baggage carousel but they couldn’t see me.

Ellen kept looking about her like she was expecting to see someone she knew. Patrick was completely focused on the carousel, eyes narrowed, his whole body poised, ready to leap. He was always like that when we traveled. He seemed to think collecting luggage was some sort of test of strength and agility, as if he had to crash tackle his bag the moment it appeared and wrestle it to the ground. It always made me laugh.

It made Ellen laugh too. I saw her smiling when he suddenly shot forward and pounced on both their bags at once, re-emerging triumphant with his prey.

I gave him that bag as a birthday present the last year we were together.

Ellen is one of those people who ties a ribbon around the handle of her bag so it’s easy to spot. Her ribbon was a big, floaty, shiny blue bow, feminine and whimsical and yet so sensible. That ribbon sums up everything I love and hate about her.

I watched them walk off to the car rental counter. He was carrying both of their bags. I guess he’s being especially caring and chivalrous now that she’s pregnant.

I thought it was my birthright as a woman to have that time, at least once, where a man treats you like a princess, rubbing your feet at night, pressing his hand to your stomach, masterfully ordering you not to pick up anything too heavy.