‘Mm, this looks great. Thanks, Alice.’ He serves us both, then picks up his cutlery and starts eating.
I take another sip of my drink and drizzle some vinaigrette on my salad.
‘So ... your weekend?’ He looks at me across the table and I examine his face for clues. But all I see is the Laurence I’ve always known – tousled blond hair, aquamarine eyes, stubbled jaw and a cheeky smile. Francesca has to be wrong about this.
But what if she’s right?
‘Francesca came over yesterday,’ I say.
Laurence freezes, his fork hovering in front of his mouth for a moment. He sets it down, wipes his mouth and sits back in his seat. ‘Fran camehere? Why? Did she want to speak to me?’
‘No. She wanted to speak tome.’ I push away my plate, giving up any kind of pretence that I’m hungry. The smell of food is actually making my stomach turn.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Laurence says, his eyebrows drawing together. ‘Was she upset? Did she try to make you feel guilty?’ He sighs. ‘I’ll speak to her, get her to see that our break-up was nothing to do with you. I would have ended things anyway. We weren’t right for each other—’
‘It wasn’t about that.’ I cut him off.
‘Oh? So why was she here?’
I pause and then go on to tell him about her accusation. That she thinks Laurence used hypnotherapy to get me to forget Seth’s face.
‘Are you joking?’ He gives a disbelieving laugh. ‘You’re joking, right?’
‘No.’ I don’t laugh back, or smile. I’m watching his face for any sign that what Francesca said could be true. It hits me now with a sick clarity that if I could even consider him capable of this, then our relationship is probably doomed.
‘You’re not telling me you believe this nonsense?’
‘No, but—’
‘Everything that comes before the word “but” is bullshit,’ he says.
‘But,’ I continue, ‘it would explain what happened to me at my wedding.’
He shakes his head slowly. ‘You had an episode. A breakdown of some sort. If you want my opinion, I think you were subconsciously looking for a reason to get out of the marriage. I think you knew Seth wasn’t right for you, but you felt trapped in the situation. This was your mind giving you a way to get out of it without having to make a conscious decision to end things.’
It’s ironic that he’s saying exactly what Francesca said to me a few months ago. Maybe they discussed it between them back then. ‘No,’ I reply. ‘That’s the thing; I was looking forward to marrying him. I was excited. I was in love ... until he turned around at the altar and I saw his face. Please just tell me the truth, Laurence. Did you do something to make me forget him? To turn me off him somehow? I need to know so that I can make sense of it all. In some twisted kind of way, it would almost be a relief to know there’s a reason why all of it happened. It’s been driving me mad, the not knowing.’
‘Driving you mad?’ Laurence repeats, his head cocked. ‘So you still have feelings for Seth?’
‘What?No.’
He stares at me. ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Don’t do that thing where you try to deflect,’ I say. ‘We’re not talking about me and Seth, I’m asking you if there’s any truth to what Francesca said.’
‘Even if I wanted to,’ Laurence replies, ‘I don’t have the power to make you forget someone. It’s impossible to do something like that. You’d have to be highly suggestible – I’m talking top-tier suggestible – and we would have had to have weeks of sessions. Even then ... no way. I still think that on some subconscious level, you wanted a reason to escape the relationship. You told me you can’t even stand to be near the guy!’
‘Maybe I can’t stand the guy because my mind has been manipulated.’
‘No.’ Laurence shakes his head. ‘Look,’ he continues, ‘I’ll admit I was jealous. I thought you didn’t see me as successful enough to go out with. That you wanted to spend time with me, but that I wasn’t “husband material”.’
‘That’s rubbish,’ I scoff. ‘I told you before, I had no clue you even liked me in that way. Anyway, there’s something else Francesca told me ...’
‘Here we go.’ He rolls his eyes. ‘So, what else did she tell you?’
I swallow down my frustration at his attitude. Laurence was never like this with me in the past. He was always so warm and supportive. Such a good friend. Now that we’re in a relationship, everything seems to have changed. And not for the better. He’s bolshy, defensive, controlling. He’s like a different person altogether. I feel like, when it comes to relationships, I’m cursed.
I keep talking, suddenly desperate to unload everything that’s accelerating through my mind like a runaway train. ‘She said that the search history on your laptop before the wedding was all about using hypnotherapy to make someone forget another person.’
