‘I wouldn’t call that ingratitude, Olivia,’ I said mildly. ‘Trauma can have totally unpredictable effects on the brain and psyche.’

She smiled uncertainly. ‘That’s what Dr. Greenhalgh says, too.

‘Right. We’ll start off with a word association exercise. I’ll say a word and you tell me the first thing that comes into your mind.’

She frowned. ‘A word association exercise? What has that to do with hypnosis?’

‘We want you to remain as calm and relaxed as possible through your descent into hypnosis. That means avoiding any words that elicit a negative or ambivalent response from you. And since you can’t tell me about any phobias or painful memory associations from the past, a word play exercise is the easiest way to excavate undesirable triggers. Bear in mind that some of the words I am going to throw at you have nothing to do with the process, but are in the mix to keep your mind free-wheeling.’

Her eyes shimmered. ‘All right.’

‘Once we have established your parameters I will take you next door and we’ll start your hypnosis.’

She turned her head nervously toward the door I had indicated.

As I did with all my clients I immediately put her at ease. ‘It’s a soundproof room. All our sessions will be recorded to protect you from impropriety and me from any accusations of impropriety. Ready to start?’ I asked, picking up my pen.

She took a deep breath. ‘Yes, I think so.’

I turned a new page in my notebook. ‘Sky,’ I threw at her.

‘Stormy,’ she countered.

‘Run.’

‘Away,’ she responded immediately.

I scribbled her answer. ‘Painting.’

‘Doorway,’ she replied.

Odd answer. ‘Doorway.’ I said, looking up at her.

‘Looking glass,’ she tossed back.

Very interesting. ‘Looking glass,’ I called out.

‘Danger,’ she said without missing a beat.

I resisted the slight sensation of uneasiness. Her associations seemed disjointed and haphazard. I had no experience of such answers. She was not the normal patient I saw on a daily basis. Something was very wrong. And it was quite clear that I should go no further, but my professional curiosity was greater than any sense of prudence.

‘Water,’ I pitched.

‘Clean,’ she lobbed back.

That was her first positive association. I breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Earth.’

‘Sin,’ she heaved back.

Wow! Earth and sin! Where did that come from? ‘Dog,’ I said.

‘Growling.’ Her voice was becoming progressively softer and more confused. As if her own instinctive answers were surprising to her.

‘Staircase,’ I ventured, my pen hovering over the pad.

‘Falling,’ she muttered.

I kept my face neutral, but I knew I’d have to be very careful whom I recommended her to. She needed help.

‘Money,’ I said softly.

‘Death,’ she whispered.

My hand stilled on the notebook. I looked up. Her answer had spooked her too. Her lower lip trembled and I felt a stab of pity for her. You’re not normal, Lady Olivia. And yet I am drawn to you the way I have never been to another. I knew there was no point going any further, but I didn’t want to leave it on such a negative note. I needed to break up the heavy atmosphere that had crept up around us like a dark cloud.

‘Silk,’ I said.

‘Sheets,’ she came back.

‘Good. All done,’ I declared, and grinned encouragingly.

She leaned forward slightly and looked at me with veiled eyes. ‘Is something wrong with me?’

‘No,’ I lied firmly. Her answers had clearly revealed a mental lake bottomless with mystery and a deeply disturbed inner world. I swung my chair to the side and stood up. ‘Come on, I’ll take you next door.’

I walked to the door, opened it, and waited for her to join me. As she reached me I registered two impressions. First: that I towered over her. She was much smaller than I had originally thought. Second: the inappropriateness of her perfume, a girlish, floral scent of almost sickly sweetness.

She went through the door and waited just inside for me, rapidly taking in the dim lighting, the faint scent from the lavender diffuser, the blinking lights of the electrical equipment, the zero gravity chair where she would sit and the armchair next to it that I would occupy. I closed the door and indicated the recliner.

‘Have a seat.’

She moved toward it and gingerly settled herself into the black leather.

‘Comfortable?’ I asked.

‘Very,’ she replied with a tense smile.

‘Let’s see if we can get you even more comfortable,’ I said and taking the remote hanging off it, pressed a button on it. The chair began to recline and she wriggled slightly. It stopped when it reached the ergonomically optimum position of locating her feet fractionally higher than her head. In that virtually weightless stance there was no stress or strain on her back, neck, shoulders, or arms. I activated the therapeutic massage function and her body started to move and shake gently.

‘Oh, this is nice,’ she commented, rotating her shoulders.

I handed the remote to her. ‘Feel free to control the strength of your massage.’

She took it from me. Her fingers were very white and slender, the nails painted pale. The skin looked soft. She had obviously not done a day’s work in her life. Our skin did not touch.

I moved over the console and switched on the audio recorder. Then I flicked a switch and a metronome based device began to glide down from the ceiling. I stopped it when it was a few feet away from her face. I spent a few minutes tinkering with all the dials and functions of the different machines. When everything was ready I went back to her chair and switched off the massage function. The room became very silent.

She sighed softly.

I activated the relaxing heat pads under her back and looked down on her with a professional, neutral expression. ‘Ready?’ I asked.

She nodded.

‘Excellent. Let’s begin.’

I sat on the armchair next to her and pressed the button that killed the lights. The room was now lit only by the flickering LEDs in the different electrical equipment. In the small, sterile space, her nearness suddenly seemed more potent, her perfume stronger. I could hear her breathing in the dark. It affected me with a strange cold anxiety. I took a deep breath. Just this one session, I told myself, and switched on the soundless metronome above her head. A narrow band of blue light came on and began to tick like a pendulum.

‘The glowing light you see has an invisible flickering, but its flicker rate is so fast the human eye cannot perceive it as an intermittent flashing, only as a strip of perfectly steady light moving at a perfectly precise and rigid repetition. Its frequency has been set to exactly correspond to the alpha brainwaves present in the human brain when in a relaxed state. Staring at it will entrain your brain in the same way your television does.’

‘The TV doesn’t hypnotize us,’ she said softly.

I glanced at her. Her face rose out of the darkness like a glowing blue mask. ‘As it happens, it does. You fall into a semi-hypnotic state every time you watch TV, especially if you view it in a darkened room. The longer you stare at it, the more hypnotized you become.’

‘Really? Why on earth did they set it at that frequency then?’

‘Probably so you will believe everything you see and buy everything they sell. Shall we begin?’

‘Yes.’ Her hand twitched on her thigh.

‘Please remain as still as possible,’ I instructed. Stress on muscular relaxation assisted in disorientation since one of the ways humans kept orientated was to know where their hands and feet were. With immobility, those ties to reality were weakened and dissociation was more readily accepted.

I waited for a few seconds then began the induction in my ‘hypnotic voice’: monotonous, deep, and somnolent. ‘Olivia, I want you to fix your entire attention on the moving light.’

She took a deep breath and attached her gaze on the steadily swinging band of light.

‘Without taking your focus off the light, you will relax every muscle in your neck. Feel all the tension flow away… feel all those muscles completely relax … as you go deeper and deeper into your trance.’

I repeated the same instructions as I moved down her body: shoulders, arms, wrists, fingers, chest, stomach, groin, hips, thighs, knees, calves, ankles, feet, and then back to the face: forehead, cheeks, nose, chin. She was still staring with a blank, transfixed gaze at the metronome, but her body had slowly spread out and become heavier in the chair.

‘You are now filled with a great calm. Your entire body is so limp and so pleasantly relaxed, even your eyelids are getting too heavy to stay open. It is now impossible for you to keep them open anymore and they are starting to close by themselves,’ I went on.

Her eyelids began to flutter downwards.

I waited until only a crescent of gleaming white showed under her eyelids.

‘You are now in a very, very pleasant state, completely disconnected from your body, and aware of nothing except your mind, which is floating in a dark so intense it has a feel, smell and taste of its own. Nothing can wake you up or stir you away from this safe, womb-like limbo. And nothing else matters but my voice as you gently drift deeper and deeper into your dreamlike rest. Completely let go and go deeper still.’

I stopped and allowed a few seconds to pass.

‘Your right arm is now so light it will start to float up of its own accord.’

I watched her right arm slowly begin to rise. When it was as high as it could go I said, ‘Your arm will start moving back down to your lap at the rate and speed with which your unconscious mind completely submits to my voice.’

Her hand reached her lap and I continued, ‘When I ask you questions, the answers will float effortlessly out of your mouth. Are you completely relaxed?’

Her mouth moved soundlessly first, then closed and opened again. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. Her voice was like the flutter of a butterfly’s wings.

‘Are you aware of your body?’

‘No.’

I touched her hand. ‘Is anything touching you?’

‘No.’

In the glow of the blue light her face appeared pale, slack, and blank—the features flattened, the mouth gaping, the expression reminiscent of someone of very low intelligence. The rise and fall of her chest was slow and steady. Her hands lay limp and still on her thighs. It was the look and stance of a person under deep hypnosis.

Gently I lifted her eyelids. Her eyes had rolled up and showed white. I lay back in my chair, my muscles relaxed, and my breathing deep and even. It was not a well known fact, but during a session like this the hypnotist also falls into a parallel trance. A similar phenomenon to the way a group of women living together will start to bleed at the same time every month. I didn’t consider it a bad thing as it meant the hypnotist could help entrain the subject into a deeper trance.

I started speaking again. ‘This darkness that you are floating in is not powered by money, the sun, machines, rotating gears, oil, God, or anything you know. It is powered only by you…. It is eternal…unfixed. There are no clocks here because time is not operating chronologically. Time is fluid. Your memories are all alive. Nothing can be lost here. You can find anything you think you have lost. All the things you saw, heard, did, and felt are waiting here for you. Days, weeks, months, years they have been waiting. You are in charge. Nothing here can hurt you.’

I paused before I carried on. ‘Now, I want you to go back in time and find a place you loved. A place where you have been happy in the past.’

A child-like smile crept into her face.

‘Are you in your happy place now?’

‘Yes,’ she replied in a monotone.

‘Where are you?’

‘I am in the woods…in France…. My father owns this land.’

‘Describe everything you see and do.’

‘It is…late summer…perhaps even autumn. I’m not too sure, but it has not rained for many days…. It is hot and dry and the yellowing grass is full of grasshoppers and crickets. They are calling out to each other. Everything here is alive and growing…. There are dragonflies flying above my head…. They are so beautiful. Everything is so beautiful…. Even the deadly scorpions hiding under the stones. Anton says I should be careful of them, but I’m not afraid of them. They have never harmed me. I lie down on the rotting leaves and look up to the blue, blue sky. And I feel so happy.’

She giggled softly.

‘Who is Anton?’

‘He takes care of the grounds.’

‘What’s happening now?’ I asked.

‘The mistral wind is blowing through the orange leaves making them detach and rain down on me. I put my hand out and an oak leaf has fallen into it. There is a red ant on it. It is running everywhere in a panic, but I’m not going to hurt it. I put it down on the ground and watch it running into a hole in the soil… Anton told me yesterday that under our feet there are mushrooms waiting impatiently for the rains to come…so the earth will become damp…and they can sprout.’

Her expression was contented.

‘I want you to leave that beautiful scene and to remember what happened to you two days before your car accident. Can you do that?’

She nodded.

‘What do you see?’

She remained silent.

‘Tell me what you see,’ I urged.

Her face changed, hardened. A frown marred her forehead. ‘I am at the hairdressers having my hair and nails done. There is a party later tonight.’

‘But you are not happy?’

‘No. There is a knot in my stomach.’

‘Why is there a knot in your stomach, Olivia?’

‘Because it is an Invisible Society party.’

I frowned. ‘What is the Invisible Society?’

‘It is a secret club…for billionaires.’ Her voice was subdued and flat.

‘And you are a member?’

She smiled slowly, an odd, knowing smile. ‘No. You have to be a parasite or a scavenger to join.’

That was the first warning that I was going where I had never dreamed I’d go with Lady Olivia.

‘If you are not a member why are you going to the party, Olivia?’ My voice was calm.

‘I’ve been paid to attend.’

I felt a sense of unease. Yet, it was my duty to walk her up to the dark mirror and see what was hiding there, forgotten by time. ‘Where is the party being held, Olivia?’

‘Underground. It is always held underground… In one of the iceberg houses.’

‘What is an iceberg house?’

‘It is a house that has many floors dug into the ground. They have secret rooms underneath the house. You could never tell by simply looking at the house from the street.’

‘Move forward to the party.’ I waited a few seconds and then I asked, ‘Are you at the party?’

A slow nod.

‘Tell me what is happening.’

‘I am sitting in a pool of light in a dark, cavernous room. And I am naked but for a pair of shiny black stiletto boots. There are people in the shadows. They are arranged in a circle around me.’

Son of a gun! ‘Who are the people in the shadows?’

‘I cannot see their faces. I’m not allowed to.’

She breathed softly.

‘What are you doing in the circle?’

‘I’m waiting.’ Her voice held the first hint of a scratch.

‘For what?’

‘For one of them to tug on my nipple clamps. When that happens I have to go to him quickly or there will be…unnatural consequences.’

I stared at her face, astonished. What the hell? Was she faking it?

Once a woman had pretended to be under hypnosis. It was her way of acquainting me with her sexual fantasy, a scenario where I played a major role. But that was a simple case, so shallow in scope that I had actually dealt with it in the consulting room using light hypnosis.

It was almost impossible to resist the soundless metronome.

I studied her for a few more seconds. She was very still, breathing calmly, down in her diaphragm. No, there was no way she was faking it.

‘Why are you at the party, Olivia?’

Silence hung in the air for a moment. Then: ‘I’m not called Olivia here… I answer only to Velvet.’

I inhaled sharply. I’m going where I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t push or lead, but I could not help it. The words tumbled out of my mouth. ‘What have you been paid to do, Velvet?’

She whispered something.

‘I can’t hear you. Say it again,’ I urged gently.

She opened her mouth and I leaned forward.

Her voice was almost inaudible, but this time I heard it. ‘I have been paid to debase myself,’ she mumbled. ‘Any one of these men can do whatever he pleases with me.’