The Heart Whisperer (15 page)

‘What music career?' Claire lifted her face. There were two high spots of colour on her cheeks. ‘You're a
jingle
writer.'

‘Until I get my shit together.'

‘You keep telling yourself that.' Her voice was flat and icy. ‘Go right ahead, waste your life writing snappy little tunes for gravy and dental floss and drinking your way through the cocktail alphabet and hitting on girls who'll sleep with you because you used to be famous.'

Ray tried to interrupt her but no words came out.

‘That little girl is the most important thing that's ever happened to you!' Claire stood up. Her legs were shaking. ‘But you're too vain and shallow to see it.'

Ray finally found his voice. ‘I don't need to listen to this shit.' He reached for the remote control but she snatched it away.

‘I'm not finished.' She glared down at him. ‘You can forget about the Desperation Clause, Ray. You were right, you're not father material.' She threw the remote down on the sofa. ‘You're not friend material either.'

‘I just think,' Nick tried to keep his voice neutral, ‘that we need to freshen the phone-in format. Why don't I just take one caller each show and work through exercises to solve their problem?' Dom and his producer Tara exchanged a comic eye-roll across the tiny control booth. ‘Guys, this works on TV. The
OO
show has been nominated for an award—'

‘Well, I'm sure it'll look lovely on your mammy's mantelpiece,' Tara said, tartly, ‘but our listeners want “Dear Deirdre” not “Sigmund bloody Freud”.'

‘But in my experience—' Nick began.

‘What experience?' Dom snorted. ‘A couple of months on the telly and suddenly you're a media guru?'

The show that followed was a nightmare. Dom kept trying to wind Nick up. Cutting across him and making smart remarks. By the time the last caller phoned in, Nick was exhausted. Her voice sounded weirdly familiar.

‘I have a problem, Doc. There's a guy I'm seeing
right now
and he has a very big head and I'm finding it very hard to keep him satisfied.' Dom swallowed a chortle. Nick looked up and saw Tara, with a phone to her ear, grinning at him from the production booth.

There was nothing he could do except pretend that their juvenile behaviour didn't push his buttons. He fumed through two private coaching sessions and after his clients were gone he was so busy thinking of all the things he should have said that he completely forgot that he'd arranged to meet Kelly and he was already fifteen minutes late.

‘I release my anger,' he told himself when he'd finally managed
to catch a cab. ‘And fill my mind with calm and harmonious thoughts.' But his mind was filled with thoughts of the look he might see on Dom's face when Nick resigned from the show and told him where he could shove Fish. He closed his eyes and tried some Seven-Eleven breathing.

‘Having sympathetic contractions back there?' The taxi driver grinned as they turned off Mount Street. ‘You wouldn't be the first. Here we are.' He pulled over outside the National Maternity Hospital. A couple of pregnant women in dressing gowns were smoking on the steps in the late September sunshine.

‘I think you've got the wrong address,' Nick said. ‘I'm looking for the Wilton Clinic.'

‘Oh! Sorry! When you said Mount Street I presumed …' The driver gave him a pitying look. ‘The Fertility Clinic's number twelve, two doors up.'

Fertility clinic?
Nick thought the driver had made a mistake. But the words were there, in discreet italics, on the brass plaque outside the door. He rang the bell and went up the stairs to the waiting room just as Kelly's name was being called.

‘Honey!' She stood up. ‘I thought you weren't going to make it!' She grabbed his hand and he had to follow her back out into the corridor.

‘I don't understand,' he said. ‘I thought we were just having everything checked out.'

She was already tapping on the door of a consultation room. ‘That's exactly what we
are
doing.'

Dr Brown Bastiman was glamorous and very brisk. ‘Gillian!' she shook their hands across her cluttered desk. ‘I've just been looking at your sperm count,' she announced to Nick before he had sat down. ‘Your motility is just below average but that wouldn't worry me overmuch. It's your blood work, Kelly, that's the real issue here. Your FSH level has been hovering around fourteen for nearly a year now which is very high for a woman of your age. I can see why you might be concerned about your chances of conception.'

Nick frowned.

‘Sorry, Nick,' Gillian looked up from her notes, ‘I should explain, a high level of Follicle Stimulating Hormone means your
wife is probably not ovulating.' Nick knew all about FSH. He'd coached a couple once who were having trouble getting pregnant. What he didn't know was that Kelly had been having her hormones tested. He squeezed her hand and tried to catch her eye but her attention was completely focused on the doctor. He might as well not be in the room.

‘So,' the doctor closed the file, ‘I'd usually suggest trying for a year before offering any treatment but given these results, I think we should start a course of an ovulation stimulation drug right away.'

‘Like Clomid?' Kelly asked.

‘Exactly.' She uncapped a fountain pen and began to scribble on a prescription pad. ‘Let's try six cycles and keep our fingers crossed.' Kelly let go of Nick's hand to cross her fingers. ‘Any questions?'

Kelly had a list. They were all numbered and written neatly in one of her Moleskine notebooks.

‘What about side effects?' she began.

‘Hardly any at all, I'm happy to report.'

Nick's head was reeling by the time they left the room. He waited out in the hall while Kelly went to pay the receptionist. She took his arm but he gripped the wooden banister and refused to move.

‘Why didn't you tell me you were having your hormones tested?'

She shrugged. ‘Sweetie, I don't bother you with every little detail of my cycle. It's been a bit irregular so the GP suggested a couple of tests. It wasn't a big deal.'

‘It wasn't a couple of tests. It was a year of tests. And we're supposed to tell one another everything.'

She bent her head and her dark hair fell over her face. ‘You didn't tell me about the Clingfilms job,' she said quietly.

‘I know but that's …'
Different
, he wanted to say. But was it? He felt too dizzy to figure that out. This was all happening too fast. One minute they were having a few general health checks, the next they were trying for a child. What about going back to their old life in New York? Where would a child fit into that? ‘I'm just not sure what we're even doing here,' he said, lamely.

Kelly looked up at him. There was something in her eyes that needled him. Amusement or accusation. ‘You promised that if there were any problems we could go ahead and start trying.'

‘I know but I just wish you'd told me about those tests.' His voice was loud and it echoed around the stairwell. ‘I felt so stupid in there.'

‘Nick!' Kelly said.

‘Please let me finish,' he said sharply. ‘It's disrespectful to interrupt—'

‘Nick!' She nudged him and he saw the couple hesitating in the hall below. A clammy wave of shame broke at the back of his neck. An hour ago he'd been on national radio telling a man from Dun Laoghaire that he should never raise his voice to his girlfriend, now here he was, shouting at his wife in front of complete strangers.

‘I'm so sorry,' he said, when the couple had climbed the stairs and disappeared into the waiting room. ‘That was inexcusable. This is just all happening so fast but I can see how much it matters to you.'

‘Thank you,' she said softly.

‘I just love what we have.' He put his hands on her shoulders. ‘I waited so long to meet you. I don't want anything to change.'

‘Nothing's going to change.' She smiled up at him. ‘I promise. Whatever happens, we'll still be us.'

Claire was trying to show Lorcan how serious she was about getting back into acting. She arrived fifteen minutes early for her audition for the Noel Coward play at the Gate, even though she'd heard that the part she was reading for was already cast. She had learned the lines she was supposed to read. She should have been running over them and trying to come up with smart retorts to the inevitable questions she'd get asked about the YouTube clip but all she could think about was the row she'd had with Ray. They had bickered before, hundreds of times. Once, when he'd been obnoxious to Declan, they hadn't spoken for two weeks. But this was different.
‘You have to drag her into everything, don't you?'
Ray had said.
‘Every single thing has to come back to your mother.'

They were both eighteen when Claire had told him about the accident. They were celebrating the end of the Leaving Cert by the overgrown railway track on an overcast summer's day wearing petrol station sunglasses and passing a bottle of Monte Alban tequila between them. There was a worm in the bottom of the bottle. Ray was planning to eat it because it was supposed to be hallucinogenic but Claire was already feeling spaced out after the first few gulps of alcohol.

She could still remember the scratchy feeling of the parched grass on her bare legs and the oily burn of the tequila and the sticky sweetness of the Jelly Babies they were eating between gulps.

Ray was propped up on his elbows, his dark fringe so long that he had to keep pushing it away from his sunglasses, firing out random questions. ‘What's the most disgusting thing you've ever eaten?'

‘Liver.'

‘Who's the most embarrassing person you've ever fancied?'

‘Jamiroquai.'

‘What's the worst thing you've ever done?'

Claire had stared down at the worm in the bottom of the bottle. Did they kill it first, she'd wondered, or put it in alive and let it drown?

She closed her eyes and took a gulp of tequila as Ray bit the head off a green Jelly Baby and passed it to her. But instead of putting it in her mouth, she held it, tightly in her fist. She could feel the icing sugar melting against her damp palm as she battled with herself. Wanting to hold onto her secret, wanting to let it go.

‘Oh no!' Ray groaned. ‘You're going to barf, aren't you?' He sat up and moved his denim jacket out of the way.

She shook her head and looked up at him. The grass and the trees and the sky and her own face, telescoped to a pale dot, were reflected in the lenses of his sunglasses. ‘I just don't know if I can trust you.'

‘Trust me to what?' He lifted his fringe up and wiggled his eyebrows like a cartoon villain.

Claire started to laugh and then she started to cry and before
she could stop herself, she told him the truth. She'd told him the worst thing she'd ever done.

Ray was the only person apart from her dad and her brother who knew what had happened the day of her sixth birthday. And that was what hurt so much now.

Her phone began to vibrate in her bag. Her dad's number was flashing on the screen. Why was he calling her? He never rang. She'd only seen him a week ago.

‘Dad,' she covered the phone with her hand, ‘is everything OK?'

‘Oh, hello, Claire. This is Caroline Cunningham from number twenty-two. I'm afraid there's been a bit of an accident.'

‘An
accident
?' Claire's heart pushed itself into a corner of her ribcage.

‘Brian found your father in the garden. He'd fallen off a very high ladder.' Mrs Cunningham said, importantly, ‘We wouldn't have known he was there at all if that dog hadn't been barking all night.'

Claire stood up. The floor seemed to be tilting. She had to hold onto the back of her chair to stop herself falling. ‘Is he badly injured?'

‘He went to St Vincent's in an ambulance about two hours ago. I just popped in to lock that dog up and I found your number by the phone.'

‘
Please!
' Claire whispered over and over as she ran from the room to the car park and through the rain. ‘
Please!
' Her lungs burned as she ran up eight flights of stairs to the top floor where she'd parked Mossy. ‘
Please!
' she whispered at every traffic light and every pedestrian crossing between Drury Street and the Merrion Road. ‘
Please. Don't let him die.
'

Her dad was on a trolley in the corridor in A & E. His jeans and shirt were soaked through. There was a gash on his head leaking blood and he was lying awkwardly, half on his side covered with his old raincoat. The belt had come undone from the loops and the buckle had a crust of dirt where it must have trailed on the ground. But his face was the worst part. It was clenched and pale,
his teeth gritted, his jaw set, his eyes squeezed closed against the pain.

‘Dad, it's me.' Claire wanted to touch his hand but she knew he would hate that so she lifted the buckle instead and squeezed it. ‘What happened?'

He gripped the sides of the trolley. When he could breathe again he whispered, ‘Just a little fall. I'm fine.'

‘You were out there all night in the rain! You could have …' She pressed her lips between her teeth. ‘What were you doing up on a ladder?'

‘The television reception went. I couldn't get the news. I went up to check the aerial. They'll sort me out here. You go home now. I'll call you if I …' He squeezed his eyes closed to let a spasm of pain pass, ‘… need anything.'

A young doctor with a white coat over a crumpled shirt and jeans came over.

‘Tom, we've just had a look at your X-rays. The good news is the trauma to your head is minimal, though we'll need to keep you under observation.' Claire exhaled. ‘The bad news is you've really done a job on that right hip. I'm going to write you up for some pain relief now and we'll take you down to theatre first thing in the morning.' He turned to Claire. ‘Are you his daughter?' She nodded. ‘You'll need to pack a bag for him. He's going to be staying with us for a while.'