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been a client before I realise she can’t tell me that.
    "Now," says Dr. Bowen as she gracefully folds herself into her chair. "Why have you come to see me, Nancy?"
    With my nails digging into the palm of my hand, I tell her about what happened to me. She makes no comment as I speak.
    When I mention Dr. Drinkell’s recommendation, she's happy.
    "That was kind of him as I know he’s quite skeptical about hypnotherapy. Many psychiatrists and psychologists share that skepticism. I used to be one of them until I delved deeper into it. What I found was quite remarkable."
    Listening to her speak, is like slipping into a warm bath. She turns her head and gazes out the window. There’s woodland behind her house. When I was a child one of my hobbies was climbing trees. One year, Dad built Shug and me a tree house in the woods near our house. We used to have picnics there. Cartons of orange juice and sandwiches Mum always cut into triangles.
    The doctor follows my gaze.
    "Beautiful, isn’t it?"
    I nod, but I’m no longer admiring the view, I’m listening to a bird singing outside the window. There’s something familiar about it. The thought hovers above my head like a balloon, and then drifts higher and higher until it’s out of reach and I’m left trying to clutch at the strings.
    "Nancy, are you alright?"
    Dr. Bowen’s concerned voice drags me back to the present.
    We talk some more about how I’m feeling and coping with being out of hospital, as well as discussing hypnosis, which she assures me is perfectly safe.
    "So, I won’t end up thinking I’m a chicken and clucking?"
    A stony look makes me realize I've said the wrong thing. Maybe she thinks I’m being a bit cheeky, but I had to ask. A few years back, I’d gone with some workmates to a hypnosis show and one of the group who’d gone on stage went home still thinking they were a clockwork toy.
    When Dr. Bowen’s eyes drift up to the clock, I notice our forty minutes are up.
    "Let's leave it here for today."
    What, she hasn’t even hypnotized me.
    Dr. Bowen picks up a leaflet from the pile on her desk and holds it out for me.
    "Before I put any of my patients under, I ask them to read this. It explains how the process works and answers so many questions."
    I accept the leaflet and thank her. "'Do you think you’ll be able to help me?"
    If anyone needs to believe hypnotherapy can unlock the secrets in my brain it’s me, but I don’t want to waste my time because if this doesn’t work I need to find another way. Too much time has passed since that night and in all that time my parents' killers have been free men. They should have killed me that night too, but they were sloppy: if the knife had gone one inch the other way, I’d be dead by now.
    "Hypnosis doesn’t work for everybody," Dr. Bowen tells me, as she leads me down the hall.
    I bite back the urge to say I don’t care about anybody else as long as it works for me.
     
     

Chapter 7
    The day after my session with Dr. Bowen, I wake up alone, my pillows damp with tears. Sadness hits me in waves and I’m blubbing away.
    I used to have great parents and a good job in a graphic design firm that kept promoting me in spite of my efforts to coast by. My boyfriend was considered “a catch” and we lived in a fashionable area where we were neighbors with artists, writers and gay couples in matching sweaters and corduroy trousers going through the adoption process.
    Now what did I have?
    My Mum's sister who used to stick pins in her when my gran wasn’t looking. She'd visited me in hospital once, wrinkled her nose in disgust, screeching about how she can’t handle this as she flounced out of the room in a haze of smoker’s perfume. Handle what? Not being tortured, murdered or raped? Unbelievable. The one time in my life that I needed her and she was too busy thinking of herself.
    What else did I have?
    A cheating swine of an ex, swanning around town with a girl who thought undying love and future happiness