This last detail irks me, just as it annoys me when I go to the hairdresser and find piles of magazines about hair and nothing else. The symbolism is too crass; it smacks of a desperation to ram home one’s professional message, and always makes me think, ‘Yes, I know what you do for a living. That’s why I’m here.’ Do I really need to immerse myself in exclusively hairy thoughts while I wait for a suet-faced teenager to ram my head into a basin and pour boiling water over it? What if I’d like to read about the stock market, or modern ballet? I wouldn’t, as it happens, but the point is still valid.
Hypnotherapy is, admittedly, marginally more interesting than split ends (though, in fairness, at least my quarterly visits to Salon 32 leave me in no doubt that an actual service has been performed).
‘You’re welcome to have a look at the books and magazines,’ Ginny Saxon says, more enthusiastically than is warranted. Her accent is what I think of as ‘media’ – it doesn’t belong to anywhere, and tells me nothing about where she’s from. Not the Culver Valley would be my guess. ‘Borrow as many as you like, as long as you bring them back.’ Either she’s putting a lot of effort into her act or she’s a nice person. I hope she’s nice – nice enough that she’ll still want to help me even when she realises I’m not.
Pretending to be a better person than I am is exhausting; having to make a constant effort to produce behaviour that doesn’t match my mental state.
Ginny holds out a magazine called Hypnotherapy Monthly. I can’t not take it. It falls open at the centrefold, home to an article called ‘Hypnotherapeutic Olfactory Conditioning Examined’. What was I expecting: a full frontal shot of a swinging stopwatch?
‘Have a seat,’ says Ginny, indicating the swivel recliner and footstool. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting an hour.’
‘You haven’t,’ I tell her. ‘I’m Amber Hewerdine. My appointment’s for now. The other woman said I could have her slot, and she’ll come back later.’
Ginny smiles. ‘And then she said?’
Oh, God, please don’t let her have heard our entire conversation. How thick are these wooden walls? How loud were we?
‘I didn’t hear anything, don’t worry. But from what little I know of her, I’m guessing she said more than what you’ve told me.’
Don’t worry? What the hell is that supposed to mean? Last night I asked Luke if he thought a person would only train to be a hypnotherapist if they enjoyed messing with people’s minds, and he laughed at me. ‘God help anyone who tries to tangle with yours,’ he said. He didn’t know how right he was.
‘She said, “Either I’ll come back at four, or I won’t”,’ I tell Ginny.
‘Made you feel like an idiot for sticking around, did she? Relax. She’s the idiot. I don’t think she’ll come back. She chickened out last week as well – booked an initial consultation, didn’t turn up for it. She hadn’t given me any notice of cancellation, so I billed her for the full amount.’
Should she be saying these things to me? Isn’t it unprofessional? Will she bitch about me to her next client?
‘Why don’t you tell me why you’re here?’ Ginny unzips her ankle boots, kicks them off, curls herself into a ball on the leather sofa. Is that supposed to make me feel less inhibited? It doesn’t; it irritates me. I’ve only just met her. She’s supposed to be a professional. How does she dress for a second appointment – camisole and knickers?
It doesn’t matter; there isn’t going to be a second appointment.
‘I’m an insomniac,’ I tell her. ‘A proper one.’
‘Which forces me to ask: what’s an improper insomniac?’
‘Someone who has difficulty falling asleep, but when they do, they sleep for eight hours solid. Or someone who falls asleep straight away, but wakes up too early – four a.m. instead of seven. All the people who say, “Oh, I never sleep properly” and it turns out they mean they wake up twice or three times a night to go to the loo – that’s not a sleep problem, that’s a bladder problem.’
‘People who use “insomniac” to mean “light sleeper”?’ Ginny suggests. ‘Any little noise wakes them? Or who can only fall asleep if they’ve got earphones piping music into their ears, or with the radio on?’
I nod, trying not to be impressed that she appears to know all the people I hate. ‘They’re the most infuriating of pretend insomniacs. Anyone who says, “I can only get to sleep if” and then names a requirement – that’s not insomnia. They satisfy the “if” and they get to sleep.’
‘Do you resent people who sleep well?’ Ginny asks.
‘Not if they admit it.’ I might be too exhausted to be nice, but I like to think I’m still reasonable. ‘What I object to is people who don’t have a problem pretending that they do.’
‘So people who say, “I sleep like a log, me – nothing wakes me” – they’re okay?’
Is she trying to catch me out? I’m tempted to lie, but what would be the point of that? This woman doesn’t have to like me. She’s obliged to try to help me whether she likes me or not. That’s what I’m paying for. ‘No, they’re smug beyond belief,’ I say.
‘And yet if it’s true – if they do sleep like logs – what should they say?’
If she mentions logs again, I’m leaving. ‘There are ways and ways of telling people you’re a good sleeper,’ I say, perilously close to tears. ‘They could say, “No, I don’t have a problem sleeping”, and then quickly point out that they have plenty of other problems. Everyone has problems, right?’
‘Absolutely,’ says Ginny, looking as if she has never worried about a single thing in her entire life. I stare past her, out of the two large windows behind the leather sofa. Her back garden is a long, skinny strip of green. At the far end, I can see a small brown patch of wooden fence, and fields beyond it that look greener and more promising than the ones I saw on the other side of the road. If I lived here, I would worry about a developer buying up the land and cramming it full of as many houses as he could squash in.
‘Tell me about your sleeping problem,’ Ginny says. ‘After that build-up, I’m expecting a horror story. There’s a wooden lever under the arm of your chair, if you want to lie back.’
I don’t want to, but I do it anyway, putting my feet up on the footstool so that I’m almost horizontal. It’s easier if I can’t see her face; I can pretend I’m talking to a recorded voice.
‘So. Are you the world’s worst-afflicted insomniac?’
Is she mocking me? I can’t help noticing I’m not in any kind of trance yet. When’s she going to get started? We’ve got less than an hour.
‘No,’ I say stiffly. ‘I’m better off than people who never sleep. I sleep for stretches of fifteen, twenty minutes at a time, on and off throughout the night. And always in front of the TV in the evening. That’s the best chunk of sleep I get, usually, between eight thirty and nine thirty – a whole hour, if I’m lucky.’
‘Anyone who never slept would die,’ says Ginny. This throws me, until I realise she must be talking about the insomniacs I mentioned in passing, those less fortunate than me.
‘People do die,’ I tell her. ‘People with FFI.’
I sense she’s waiting for me to continue.
‘Fatal Familial Insomnia. It’s a hereditary condition. As diseases go, it’s not much fun. Total sleeplessness, panic attacks, phobias, hallucinations, dementia, death.’
‘Go on.’
Is this woman a moron? ‘That’s it,’ I say. ‘Death’s the last item on the agenda. Not much tends to happen to them after that. Which would be a relief, if only they weren’t too dead to appreciate it.’ When she doesn’t laugh, I decide to take it darker. ‘Course, for some people, FFI would have the added bonus that all their family die too.’ I listen for her reaction. One small chuckle would make me feel so much more confident about her. Is she secure enough in herself and her abilities to let that one pass, to let my joke be a joke? Only a desperate therapist would pounce on such an obviously frivolous comment at this early stage.
‘Do you want your family to die?’
Predictably disappointing. Disappointingly predictable.
‘No. That’s not what I said.’
‘Have you always had trouble sleeping?’
I’m not comfortable with how quickly and smoothly she’s changed the subject. ‘No.’
‘When did it start?’
‘A year and a half ago.’ I could give her an exact date.
‘Do you know why it started? Why you can’t sleep?’
‘Stress. At work and at home.’ I put it in the broadest possible terms, hoping she won’t ask for more detail.
‘And if a fairy godmother were to wave her wand and remove the sources of that stress – what do you think would happen then, sleep-wise?’
Is it a trick question? ‘I’d sleep fine,’ I say. ‘I always used to sleep well.’
‘That’s good. The causes of your insomnia are external rather than internal. It isn’t that you, Amber Hewerdine, can’t sleep because of something in you. You can’t sleep because your current life situation is putting you under unbearable pressure. Anyone in your predicament would be finding it difficult, right?’
‘I think so.’
‘That’s better. That’s the kind of insomnia you want.’ I can hear her beaming at me. How is that possible? ‘There’s nothing wrong with you. Your responses are absolutely normal and understandable. Can you change your life situation to eliminate the sources of stress?’
‘No. Look, I’m not being funny but . . . don’t you think that might have occurred to me? All those nights I’ve lain awake, dwelling on everything that’s wrong . . .’ Don’t get emotional. Think of this as a business meeting – you’re a dissatisfied customer. ‘I can’t eliminate the causes of stress from my life. They are my life. I was hoping that hypnotherapy might be able to . . .’ I can’t say what I was going to say. It would sound too ridiculous if I put it into words.
‘You’re hoping I can deceive your brain,’ Ginny summarises. ‘You know, and it knows, that it has reason to be anxious, but you’re hoping hypnosis might hoodwink it into believing everything’s fine.’ Now she’s mocking me for sure.
‘If you think that’s such a ridiculous proposition, why did you choose this line of work?’ I say curtly.
She says something that sounds like, ‘Let’s try the Tree Shaker.’
‘What?’
I must have sounded alarmed. ‘Trust me,’ Ginny says. ‘It’s just an exercise.’
She’ll have to settle for my acquiescing without further argument. Trust is too precious a commodity to demand from a stranger.
‘You’ll probably want to close your eyes – it might make it easier.’
I wouldn’t bet on it.
‘You might be relieved to hear that you won’t have to speak hardly at all. For most of the time, you’ll just be listening and letting memories come to mind.’
That sounds easy enough. Though ‘hardly at all’ suggests that I’m going to have to say something at some point. What? I’d like to be able to prepare for it.
When Ginny next speaks, I nearly burst out laughing. Her voice is slower, deeper, more trance-like, similar to the joke-hypnotist voice I had in my head: You are falling into a deep, deep sleep. That’s not quite what Ginny’s saying but it’s not too far off. ‘And so I’d like you to focus on your breathing,’ she intones, ‘and the very top of your head. And just . . . let it . . . relax.’
Why is she doing this? She must know that she sounds like a cliché. Wouldn’t she be better off talking normally?
‘And then your forehead . . . let it relax. And moving down to your nose . . . breathing slowly and deeply, calmly and quietly, just let your nose relax. And then your mouth, your lips . . . let them relax.’
What about the bit between my nose and my lips, whatever its name is? What if that part’s rigid with tension? She missed it out.
This is hopeless. I’m rubbish at being hypnotised. I knew I would be.
Ginny has reached my shoulders. ‘Feel them drop and relax, all the pressure melting away. Breathing slowly and deeply, calmly and quietly, letting go of all stress and tension. And then moving down to your chest, your lungs – let them relax. There’s no such thing as a hypnotised feeling, only a feeling of total calm and total relaxation.’
Really? Then why am I paying seventy quid? If all I have to do is relax, I could do that at home on my own.
No, I correct myself. I couldn’t. Can’t.
‘Total calm . . . and total relaxation. And moving down to your stomach . . . let it relax.’
Septum. No, that’s the bit between your nostrils. I used to know the name of that indentation between the nose and top lip. What do people mean when they talk about someone’s elevens being up? No, that’s the groove at the back of the neck. It looks more like the number 11 the closer a person is to death. I’m almost certain the same isn’t true of the . . . philtrum, that’s what it’s called. Now that the name’s come back to me, I have a clear picture of Luke announcing it triumphantly. A pub quiz. The kind of question he always gets right, the kind I’m useless at.
I force myself to pay attention to Ginny’s droning voice. Has she got to my toes yet? I haven’t been listening. She could save time by grouping all the parts together and instructing the whole body to relax. I try to breathe evenly and keep my impatience at bay.
‘Some people feel incredibly light, as if they might float away,’ she’s saying. ‘And some people feel a heaviness in their limbs, like they couldn’t move even if they wanted to.’
She sounds like a children’s TV presenter, doing ‘light’ and ‘heavy’ voices to match her words. Has she ever experimented with a more deadpan delivery? It’s something I’ve often wondered about actors on Radio 4: why doesn’t anyone tell them the phony voices really don’t help?
‘And some people feel a tingling in their fingers. But everybody feels lovely and calm, nice and relaxed.’
My fingers are tingling quite a lot. They were even before she said it. Does that mean I’m hypnotised? I don’t feel relaxed, though I suppose I’m more aware of the buzzing neuroses in my mind than I was before, more intently focused on them. It’s as if they and I are trapped together in a dark box, one that’s drifted away from the rest of the world. Is that a good thing? Hard to see how it can be.
‘And now, breathing slowly and deeply, calmly and quietly, I’d like you to imagine the most beautiful staircase in the world.’
What? She’s springing this on me with no warning? A dozen desirable staircase images crowd into my mind and start scrapping with each other. Spiral, with wrought-iron fretwork? Or those open, slatty steps that look as if they’re floating on air, with a glass or stainless steel balustrade – nice and modern, clean lines. On the other hand, a bit soulless, too much like an office building.
‘Your perfect staircase has ten steps,’ Ginny goes on. ‘I’m now going to take you down those steps, one by one . . .’
Hang on a second. I’m not ready to move anywhere yet. I still haven’t got my staircase sorted out. Traditional’s the safest bet: dark wood, with a runner. I’m seeing something stripy . . .
‘As you descend, I want you to see yourself drifting down into calm, and into relaxation. So, moving down one step – calm and relaxed. And moving down another step, taking another step towards peace and towards relaxation . . .’
How can she be going too fast while speaking soporifically slowly?
What about stone? That’s also traditional, and grander than wood, but possibly a bit cold. Though with a runner . . .
Ginny’s ahead of me but I don’t care. My plan is to take all the time I need to get my staircase designed – if I cut corners at this crucial stage, I’m bound to regret it later – and then leap down to the bottom all in one go. As long as I get there when she does, what difference does it make?
‘And now you’re taking the last step, and you’ve arrived at a place of total calm, total peace. You are completely relax
ed. And so I’d like you to think back to when you were a very small child, and the world was new. I’d like you to remember a moment when you felt joy, such intense joy that you thought you might explode.’
This throws me. What’s happened to the staircase? Was it just a device, to get me to the calm, relaxed place? I have already missed my chance to produce a joyful memory; Ginny has moved on, and is now ordering me – if a demand made so drowsily can be considered an order – to remember feeling desperately sad, as if my heart was breaking. Sad, sad, I think, worried about having dropped behind. She moves on again, to angry – incandescent, burning with rage – and I can’t think of a single thing. I’m about to miss my third deadline. Might as well give up.
As she progresses from fear (‘your heart pounding as the ground seems to fall away beneath your feet’) to loneliness (‘like a cold vacuum all around you and inside you, separating you from every single other human being’), I wonder how many times Ginny has recited this spiel. Her descriptions are pretty powerful – perhaps a little too powerful. My childhood wasn’t especially dramatic; there’s nothing in it, or in my memory of it, to match the kind of extreme states she’s describing. I was a happy child: loved, secure. I was heartbroken when my parents died within two years of one another, but I was in my early twenties by then. Should I ask Ginny if a memory from adulthood will do as a substitute? She specified early childhood, but surely a more recent memory would be better than nothing.
‘And now I’d like you to imagine that you’re drowning. Everywhere you turn, there’s water, touching every part of you, flooding into your nose and mouth. You can’t breathe. What memory springs to mind in connection with that? Anything?’
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