It was only when we had almost reached Dr. Kane’s offices that I saw the hole—as big as a five pence piece—in my tights. Scowling I stared at the tear running along my leg trying to remember where I could have snagged it when I was suddenly hurled into the middle of a full-blown panic attack.

My throat constricted. As if a ball was stuck in it. I started to choke, my breathing becoming shallow and fast. My skin started to tingle warningly: lack of oxygen. That instantly upped the fright factor: I was going to die in the back seat of this car. My heart began to race, surely fast enough to burst.

Utter terror took over.

The urgency and intense fear that flooded into my being had no basis in reality. Nothing had happened, and yet it was so real it was causing my body to shut down right before my eyes. It would be hard to explain to someone who had never experienced such an attack what it felt like. Perhaps they would understand if they imagined being trapped in a corner of a burning room with no escape and watching the fire licking closer and closer.

The sensation was clear: RUN! NOW!

But of course I was totally frozen. Unable to move a single muscle! Soon I knew I would start sweating like a horse or I might even start hyperventilating and throw up. That would mean canceling my appointment and going home.

NO!

I didn’t want that. More than anything in the world I wanted to go for my appointment. The back of the chauffeur’s head was doing a dolly zoom in my head, but, ignoring it, I started to practice what Dr. Greenhalgh taught me to do. The first thing you had to do was fight off the cascade of irrational emotions that swamped you. The first line of defense was to slow down—thoughts, breathing, feelings.

Deliberately, I started a totally different internal dialog. Slow breaths. This is not a trigger. So what if you have a hole in your tights?

I took another deep breath.

No one is going to see it. It is nothing. It is absolutely nothing. Everything is going well.

I coughed hard and it felt as if that ball in my throat was expelled. Silently I repeated All is well, all is well like a mantra until the terror slunk away and my muscles slowly unlocked.

Breathing deeply I looked out of the window. The world outside me was unchanged. We were less than ten minutes away. I opened my purse and took my compact out and looked at my face. My pupils were still dilated and I looked a bit pale, but otherwise I was normal. See? Everything is fine. I closed the compact and slipped it back into my purse.

These attacks were coming more and more frequently and for less and less important things. The last time was yesterday in the shower as soon as the water hit my face. I couldn’t breathe.

I looked down at the hole in my tights. It was still there. I ran my hand along the snagged material. I shook my head. Silly, silly Olivia. Then I twisted the material around my thigh so it would be at the side of my leg. Far less obvious. Perhaps I would keep my coat on. Not that anyone would notice anyway. Beryl was too star-struck. Anyone would think I had done something important or invented something hugely clever, and Dr. Kane was of course too professional and aloof. His eyes never strayed below my modest necklines.

The thought of the detached Dr. Kane was like a loving caress in my brain. Though I recognized that he was becoming something of an obsession with me, I could not stop thinking about him. He drew me like a moth to a flame. And a flame he was. Beautiful and bright but not to be touched.

Our first meeting was a shock to my system. Perhaps if I had not been so dreading the session, or if the reception area of his offices had not been quite so plain and ordinary, or if Beryl hadn’t been so terribly impressed by my title, it wouldn’t have been as startling when she opened a door and revealed him.

Backlit by the window he stood beside his desk, hands by his sides, the jacket of his navy suit open, a charcoal shirt showing underneath. No tie. His shoulders were broad and powerful and his legs planted shoulder-width apart. I had never seen a man look so rugged and powerfully masculine in a suit.

His hair, straight and so black it was almost blue, touched his collar and his eyebrows were thick and straight. Though it was impossible to make out the color of his eyes, they were harsh and urgent and, teamed with the tenseness of his stance, for a split second I had the impression of a gun-slinger, readying himself for a draw.

My skin had prickled at the threat, but he came forward, his manner cool and put together, and the impression became a fleeting trick of the light.

Wiped of all expression, his eyes were exact and penetrating. Like looking into a one-way glass. You couldn’t see who was on the other side, but you knew someone was watching and assessing. As he came closer I saw his eyes were, in fact, whiskey with gold flecks glittering in them, and his nose, lips and jaw were so perfectly chiseled, they were as if cut from glass. He was an extraordinarily stunning specimen of the male species.

I had felt a thrill run through me. It was insane to be so affected by a man who had not even touched you, but God! I wanted him. I felt myself blush. Since coming out of hospital I could not remember ever feeling such an instantaneous and powerful attraction for anyone. My life was already a complicated mess, though. I most definitely did not need to fall headlong into a crush on my hypnotist.

He came forward as if to shake my hand, but he did not. Instead he waved me toward a seat. As I started walking toward it I became hyper-aware of my own body, the way it moved, instinctively, sensuous as a snake, totally unlike me.

But he was professional, precise and detached, and after a while my body stopped trembling with a strange craving for the feel of his skin, his mouth, his teeth. Just once when I had come out of the hypnosis he had looked at me, and desire had hummed between us. It was as if his body was talking to me. I felt it like a tingling between my legs.

Again it was he who coldly terminated the exchange. And after that there were no more such occurrences. He held his distance and made it plain that there was to be nothing between us except the sterile politeness of a professional relationship. We were to be two people who had nothing in common and didn’t particularly like each other.

And yet I felt as if he was the only person in the world I could truly trust. He was my bridge to the past. The only one who could make the memories come alive again. When other people spoke of things that happened I felt no connection to it. Almost as if they were playing a trick on me. Remember when you and your brother put horse shit in a handbag and left it in the street for people to find?

No. I don’t remember. Not at all.

I went to Dr. Kane and told him to make me remember the dung in the handbag incident. He put me under and the whole episode became alive. I remembered all the details in full color. The hay tickling my leg, the smell of the poo, the irrepressible giggles, the trip to the roadside, hiding in the bushes, shhh…shh…the sense of being so naughty, the way we had laughed, rolling on the ground at their disgusted expressions. And then running like the devil. So fast, my ribs hurt and my breath came out in huge gasps. Finally standing in front of Ivana, and her eyes twinkling as she pretended to chastise us.

He gave me back other memories, too. Scenes with my dog, Freya. I saw her running in the sunshine, her shining, and I felt again the deep love I had for her. When I was brought out of my hypnotic state I was shocked that I could have forgotten such a great love.

On another occasion I relived the time I hid behind a sofa and heard my mother tell my father that she was dying. The matter-of-fact way she said it. And Daddy was so shocked he let out a grunt of pain. I remembered being so stunned I could not move.

And I remembered the first day Ivana came to be interviewed for the job of Mummy’s nurse. I was five years old. She was dressed in very dowdy clothes, but her beauty shone through. I thought she was a movie star. We met in the hallway. She was on her way out. I stared up at her.

‘Oh my, wow! What a pretty girl you are,’ she exclaimed.

I became cripplingly shy and dropped my gaze down to my shoes.

She went down on her haunches and told me she had a little boy a little younger than me. He was two years old. ‘Some day I’ll bring him to meet you,’ she said. And then she brought out a box of gobstoppers from her handbag and offered them to me. Her eyes were kind.

I guess she must have pitied me even then. And when I lay in hospital all those months in a body suit because my ribs were so badly crushed, it was Ivana who visited me every day. Every day without fail she came. Always smiling, always encouraging.

Watson, our driver, stopped the car. We were outside Dr. Kane’s practice.

‘Thank you. I’ll text you when I’m ready,’ I said, and got out.

I stood on the pavement for a second and men and women alike turned to look at me as they passed me by. Wealth. It always drew the eye. I rang the bell and Beryl buzzed me in. I walked up the wooden stairs and entered Beryl’s domain.

She smiled and got immediately to her feet. ‘Good afternoon, Lady Olivia.’

I smiled. The first time we met I swear I thought she was going to drop into a curtsey. ‘Good afternoon, Beryl.’

Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘There’s still someone in there.’ She made a face. ‘She came late so her hour has run into yours. I hope you don’t mind waiting a few minutes.’

I smiled. ‘That’s fine.’

She came around her desk. ‘Let me take your coat.’

‘I’ll keep it for a bit.’

She stopped and hovered uncertainly. ‘It is frosty out there today.’

I smiled politely.

She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. ‘My sister made a fruitcake. Fancy a slice? It’s very good.’

‘Oh yes. Thank you.’

She grinned hugely. ‘And a cup of tea to go with it?’

‘That would be lovely, Beryl.’

She disappeared into the back and I stared at the framed painting on the wall that read:

The first time I saw it I stared at it with a peculiar sense of weightlessness. I felt empty and sad. Like a ghost. The real me died some time ago. I had nothing to define or refine me. There was a curtain separating me from my memory. Sometimes the curtain looked so thin it was almost a veil. All I had to do was push the veil back a little. But then I became frightened of what lay behind the veil.