The Secret Life of Evie Hamilton - Catherine Alliott [43]
‘Yes, go on,’ agreed Anna, flicking her hand at us dismissively. ‘Buzz off. Granny and I have got work to do.’
As we left them alone and went to go upstairs, I shut the door behind me and glanced back. Through the little square of glass in the door I saw my mother, eyes shut, God help me, laying her hands on Anna's head and shutting her eyes. As Anna struggled not to smile, she made a sort of ‘hommmm…’ noise. I shuddered.
Ant put a sympathetic hand on my shoulder. ‘It's —’
‘Don't tell me it's harmless!’ I snapped, shaking him off and pushing past him up the wrought-iron staircase.
Later, of course, after a large glass of wine, I relented and went down. Made myself available to Mum's healing hands.
‘She likes you to go a bit dreamy,’ Felicity whispered to me as we passed on the staircase, she having been the last patient: ‘a bit spacey. Oh, and you're supposed to feel her hands go hot when she gets to the trouble spots, which of course they don't, so just pretend. I'll put the spuds on.’ She nipped on up.
This only served to send my blood pressure rocketing again, so that by the time Mum – a white coat over her Monsoon dress and cardi – got to work on me, having first fannied around changing the CD in a ghetto blaster that I recognized as being an old one of Anna's, and having washed her hands very assiduously and theatrically with surgical soap, I was about to pop.
‘Now, darling, just relax,’ she said, in the manner of a professional soothsayer. I shut my eyes tight, knowing it was the only way forward, but not before I'd seen Mum shut hers too, and look a bit hypnotic, pretending to swoon as she stood over me. Her hands were held aloft and horizontal, hovering over me like a pair of metal detectors. The force was with her.
‘Hommm…’ she started low and portentous, like a Buddhist monk.
‘Is the humming mandatory?’ I couldn't resist, through gritted teeth.
‘Oh, no, darling, most people don't do it. But I think it helps.’ Excellent news.
‘Hommm…’ Oh, get on with it.
After a bit more humming and hovering, the hands eventually arrived, homing in on what she clearly believed to be my trouble spots. They came to rest on my shoulders, then slipped down my arms and over the backs of my hands, lingering on my fingers, stroking, like spiders. The temptation to shake her off was overwhelming.
‘Where is the pain, my child?’ she breathed gustily in her best clairvoyant manner.
‘In… my… head,’ I muttered back with studied irritation and in all truthfulness. I didn't need this. Really didn't need this. Not now. Not with Ant and ooh… Ant. Taken out of my troubles, as I had been for ten minutes by my mother's behaviour, as I remembered it rocked me like a little boat, caught in the slipstream of an ocean liner. I wobbled, a wave of sickness churning through me. Mum's hands came to rest on the top of my head. Hot hands, I thought in surprise as I lay there, slightly taken aback. Really quite hot.
‘Ah, yes,’ she whispered, ‘it is in your head. I can feel it. Feel your pain. Can you feel the heat?’
I opened one eye carefully to look at her. Her head was thrown back, mouth slack, eyes shut, trancelike.
‘Yes,’ I said uncertainly.
She smiled, eyes still shut, head lolling. ‘I can too,’ she breathed. ‘Yes. It's channelling through. Transferring.’
Transferring. Blimey.
‘I feel it flowing right through me now,’ she gasped.
‘Where does it go?’ I muttered, still eyeing her.
‘I store it for you,’ she gulped, wincing as if in pain. ‘Take it from you, and then – out! Out! Into the ether!’
The hands were cooling now, and suddenly, her eyes sprang open. She stepped back and shook her head as if coming round from some sort of out-of-body experience. ‘Phew.’ She blinked. Looked exhausted. ‘Better?’ She peered anxiously at me.
I sat up, swung my legs off the bed and shrugged. ‘So-so.’
‘But you felt the channelling? Felt the transference?’
‘A bit,’ I admitted grudgingly.
She smiled. ‘And in time, you'll feel it more. When you're a little more open-minded. More suggestible.’
‘Right,’ I