The Heart Whisperer (19 page)

She opened the back door. ‘Out!' she said to Dog.

Dog climbed out stiffly. His grey fur was flattened on one side
where he'd been lying on it. He looked miserable. He still had his lead on. Claire held it at arm's length, and dragged him across the road. He started shaking at the gate but she herded him into the garden. At the door, she unclipped the lead. There was a little metal disc on his collar with her dad's phone number on it. With shaking hands, she took that off too, then stuffed the collar into her bag.

The tiled waiting room had an empty row of metal chairs and a display stand stacked with bags of pet food. There was a receptionist in a white coat behind a desk.

‘I just found this dog,' Claire said. ‘I think he's a stray.'

‘Name?'

Was this a trick question? ‘I don't know,' she said.

‘
Your
name.'

‘Oh, Claire Dillon.'

‘Number?'

The receptionist wrote it down. ‘Take a seat. We're just closing but I'm sure the vet will see you.'

‘I don't need to stay, do I?'

‘It'll only take a minute.'

The receptionist went through a swing door and Dog sank down on to the floor, dropped his head down on to his huge paws and let out a pitiful, low whine.

‘This is your best chance,' Claire whispered.

‘You'd tell them your whole life story, wouldn't you?' The receptionist was back. ‘You can go on through now.'

The surgery was small and white and windowless with a computer and an examination table.

‘Who do we have here?' a voice behind her said.

She turned and there, in green scrubs and trainers, was Shane.

‘I though you were an animal wrangler,' she stammered.

‘Did you?' His dark brown eyes under his heavy brows looked indifferent. ‘What are you doing here?'

‘I saw this dog, outside, on the road, and he looked as if he was a stray.'

‘I thought you were terrified of dogs?'

‘I am but …' Claire thought, hard. ‘… he seemed even more scared than I was.'

Shane looked down at Dog. ‘Good boy, good dog,' he said softly. At the sound of his own name, one of Dog's ears popped out and revolved like a hairy satellite dish. Shane ran his hands over him. ‘He's pitifully thin. He hasn't eaten properly for a couple of weeks at least. And look at this.' He showed her the mark the collar had left around Dog's neck. ‘Someone just took his collar off and ditched him. He's got to be thirteen or fourteen years old. Who'd do a thing like that?'

Claire swallowed.

‘Well, whoever did it is going to be sorry!' Shane began rummaging in a drawer.

‘What do you mean?'

‘If he's microchipped, I can trace the owner.' He picked up the phone. ‘Sandy, I need the scanner. Can you see if it's in Patricia's office?'

‘Will that do any good?' Claire said, nervously. ‘Wouldn't you be better off finding someone who wanted to keep him?'

The receptionist knocked and handed Shane a small white plastic device.

Claire held her breath while he scanned every inch of Dog.

‘No luck,' he said softly.

Claire swallowed a gasp of relief. ‘What will you do now?'

Shane put the scanner away. ‘I suppose I'll fax his picture around all the other vets and let the Gardaí know, but he'll probably go to the pound in the morning.' He shook his head. ‘Do you know how many dogs were put down in this country last year?'

‘No.'

‘Five and a half thousand. This guy will just be a statistic three days from now. He's way too big and way too old to be re-homed.' He slipped a lead around Dog's neck and opened a door to another windowless room with a wall of cages. Dog looked around frantically for a way out.

‘I'd take him home with me, tonight,' Shane said. ‘But I don't know how he is with cats.'

‘Not good!'

‘How do you know?'

She stared at Shane, willing her mouth to move. ‘Just a feeling.'

‘You're pretty intuitive around animals for someone who's afraid of them.' His eyes had warmed a little. ‘I don't suppose you'd take him?'

‘I would but I don't have a garden. It wouldn't be fair.'

‘You're right.' He opened the door of a cage. Dog splayed his long legs trying to stand his ground, but Shane gently manoeuvred him inside.

Dog peed himself as the wire door closed then slunk down to the back of the cage. Claire couldn't bear to look at him. He had always seemed so big to her but now he looked pitifully small.

She followed Shane back out to the waiting room. The receptionist was gone. The floor had been mopped with strong bleach that made her eyes water.

‘Thanks for bringing him in.' Shane folded his arms.

‘How much?'

He shook his head.

‘I feel I owe you an apology for that night in Johnny Foxes. I lied to Emma. That guy in the car park isn't my boyfriend, he's just a friend. I'm not even sure he's a friend any more.'

Shane frowned. ‘It doesn't matter. I shouldn't have …' But he didn't finish his sentence. ‘The thing is,' he rubbed his chin, ‘I'm not really in a position to—' He stared up at the fluorescent strip light. ‘My marriage broke up a few months ago.'

Claire glanced down at his hand.

‘I think I told you that my brother died. It's hard to explain but something like that changes everything.'

‘I know.' She could see that he didn't believe her.

‘Right.'

‘My mother drowned when I was six.' She felt disgusted with herself the moment she said it, for just blurting it out like that. ‘I'd better go.' She turned away quickly and swung her bag on to her shoulder and the sound of Dog's lead jingling inside it made her feel even worse.

The nightmares always began differently. In this one, Claire was driving Mossy. Dog was in the back and, suddenly, she realised that the car was underwater. She held her breath and lay across the passenger seat and kicked the door open. She turned around
for Dog but he was gone. She pulled herself out of the car. It was dark but she could see light way above her on the surface. She tried to fight her way up to it but the current was too strong. It sucked her down as if it were swallowing her. With every foot she sank, she felt more of the fight going out of her. Her breath escaped and bubbles fizzed past her face. She woke up gasping, her T-shirt clammy, her face wet.

She got out of bed and went down to the kitchen. She had hardly been drinking since her row with Ray but she opened a bottle of wine and sat at the table shivering. The nightmares always ended the same way. Every time she had one, the day her mother died came flooding back.

When Claire went to bed, she was only five. But when she woke up, she was six. She was going to have a party tea with Nick and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and a special present, though she didn't know what it was yet.

Her teacher, Miss Keane, made a fuss of birthdays. She would write ‘Claire' on the blackboard first thing and, before the lessons started, they would all have to guess as many words as they could beginning with ‘C'. At lunchtime, Claire would get to wear the gold birthday crown while everyone sang the birthday song.

Her mum was going to take her to school as a treat but they couldn't find Claire's sandals and by the time they did, the big hand on the kitchen clock was pointing at nine and that meant that they were already late.

‘Nobody should have to go to school on their birthday,' her mum said. ‘You can stay with me. We'll have fun!' She made French toast and turned on the TV so Claire could watch cartoons and when that didn't stop Claire sulking, she folded her arms and pretended to be stern. ‘I can't have you in my surgery with a grumpy face like that!' Claire had never been allowed into the surgery before. She thought it would be even better than school, but it wasn't.

Her mum made a cave under her desk with a blanket and Claire brought in her dolls and pretended they were sick people. Only one real sick person came. An old man with a red face. Claire peeped out to watch her mum putting a black band on his arm
and pumping it up and then letting the air out with a long, snaky hiss. After he was gone, nothing happened for a long time and Claire started whingeing. She didn't want to, but she couldn't stop. Her mum let her sit in her swivel chair and gave her the plastic anatomical doll to play with but, at twelve o'clock, she gave up and put the ‘Closed' sign on the surgery door and they went into the back garden for a birthday snack. Milk for Claire and Coke for her mum and a whole plate of chocolate biscuits to share. Claire wasn't hungry. Her mum lit a cigarette and exhaled in a little grey puff of exasperation.

‘Would you like to go to the park to see the deer? Or to Howth to feed the seals? Or to town for a proper grown-up lunch?' Claire shook her head. ‘What is
wrong
with you, Claire?' Her mum looked at her over her sunglasses. And even now, twenty-seven years later, Claire didn't know why she had been so difficult that day.

‘How about a magical mystery drive?' Her mum stood up. ‘We can take a picnic!'

The wicker basket was one of Claire's favourite things. There were blue gingham napkins and little knives and forks and plastic goblets. Everything packed neatly into its own little compartment. Her mum made tomato sandwiches and filled a flask for herself and put in some bricks of cold Kia-Ora for Claire. Then she made Claire close her eyes while she wrapped her birthday cake in tinfoil. But at the front door, Claire hung back. ‘I don't want to go,' she pulled at the skirt of her mum's yellow dress, ‘unless Nick and Dad can come too.'

‘Your dad's at work and Nick's at school, you know that, Claire.' Her mum sounded exasperated. ‘But we can go anywhere you want.'

Anywhere?
Claire thought hard. ‘I want to go to the sea to learn how to swim.'

Nick had started swimming classes in school but she wasn't supposed to start for another year.

‘It's a deal.' Her mum ran upstairs to get her swimsuit before she changed her mind.

The little green car zipped along the country roads. Usually Claire was in a good mood on mystery drives but today the smell of her
mum's cigarettes made her head hurt. They stopped in Wicklow town and her mum bought her a yellow bucket and spade and a pink blow-up swimming ring with an inflatable Dalmatian head.

The long beach was quiet. They spread out the plaid rug near a ruined bathing hut and her mum helped Claire to put on her navy swimsuit. She had forgotten her own bikini so she took off her yellow dress to sunbathe in her bra and pants.

A man passed by smoking a cigarette and her mum asked him for a light. She poured Claire's juice into a little plastic goblet and filled her own goblet from her flask and they had a birthday toast and Claire began to feel a bit better.

Her mum lay down on her stomach on the rug and opened her library book. ‘Why don't you make a sandcastle,' she said, ‘while I have a little read?'

Claire tried but it was hard without Nick to help. She was supposed to be learning to swim but her mum had fallen asleep so she decided to practise herself. The water was icy and it fizzed and hissed and nibbled her toes, but she stepped into her ring and waded out until the water lifted the frilly white skirt of her swimsuit.

A wave curled and swept past her and she felt it tugging at her knees. The next wave lifted her off her feet. She held on to the Dalmatian head and kicked her legs. She was doing it. She was swimming. After a minute, she looked back to see if her mum was watching her but the beach was so far away that all she could make out was the little postage stamp square of the rug.

She tried to turn herself around but her legs were too tired to kick any more. Two seagulls standing on a floating plank watched her with sharp eyes. A really big wave came rolling towards her and then she lost her grip on the slippery Dalmatian head and slid through the ring and the sea closed over her like a silvery trapdoor. Water rushed into her nose and down her throat. She managed to hold on to the ring and came up coughing, her eyes stinging with salt. The beach was gone now and Claire was surrounded by walls of grey water. The sea gulped her down and spat her out again and again, as if this was a game. Then, just as she was getting too tired to hold on to the swimming ring any
more, she felt an arm lock under her chin and her mum was swimming beside her, churning the water up, pulling her in.

When they got to the beach, she fell on the sand on her hands and knees and her mum patted her back till she coughed up some sea and then lifted her up in her arms. ‘It's OK,' she said. ‘You're safe.'

If Claire had known those were the last few moments that she would ever have with her mother, she would have tried to learn her by heart so that she would always remember her. But instead, she bucked and struggled until her mum put her down. Then she put her hands over her face and started to wail.

‘It's your fault!' she sobbed. ‘You were supposed to teach me but you fell asleep. You ruined my birthday.'

Claire felt wrung out when she woke. She stood in the shower with her hand on the tap wondering whether to turn the water on. If she had a shower, it would make her hangover headache better. But then the pipes would start their banshee shrieking and right now even the sound of her own breathing made the headache worse.

Her phone rang; she put her hands over her ears then tiptoed into the kitchen. ‘Hello,' she whispered.

‘Claire? Shane O'Neil.'

‘Oh! Hello!' she said too loudly, setting the hammer of her headache off again. Her heartbeat joined in. ‘How did you get my number?'

‘You gave it to the receptionist. Is this a bad time?'

She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and realised she was completely naked. ‘No.'

‘Good. I'm going to call over.' He sounded different, business-like, busy.