The Heart Whisperer (21 page)

Use it, or lose it.

It's up to you to choose it.

If you're not too deluded.'

Chip's weedy little voice ruined it but it was a good song. Ray set his laptop to record and, when they started over, he kicked in, deep and husky, closing his eyes to shut out the dreary shed and Chip's pinched little face.

They went over it again and again, changing it, tweaking it. Then Godot's mobile rang. ‘Got to go,' he said. ‘Girlfriend's going to a hen party and I've got to look after the ankle-biters.'

Ray checked his watch. Two hours. Was that it? ‘You want to hear the last track back?' he asked the others.

‘Nah.' Happy pulled on his jumper.

‘I thought it sounded pretty good.' Ray turned to Godot.

‘It's better than anything you could write.' Chip snorted. ‘But then “Asia Sky” makes “Bob the Fucking Builder” sound like “Smells Like Teen Spirit”.'

Even after a three-year break, Chip's sarcasm made Ray feel like a tongue-tied teenager. ‘Fuck you!' he said.

‘Fuck you too!' Chip jerked his little chin at Ray.

‘Yeah,' Happy said, nervously. ‘Especially the Edge. I hate that stupid little beanie.' It was an old Horses joke but nobody was laughing.

‘Why do you have to be such a bitter little shit?' Ray glared at Chip.

‘Same reason as you have to be a talentless sell-out!' Chip spat back.

Ray put on his sunglasses and looked around the shed. ‘It this what talent buys you, Chip? A two-up, two-down in fucking Fairview and a ninety-nine-euro shed from Aldi?'

Chip lunged at Ray but Happy stepped between them.

‘Why?' Ray heard Chip spitting as he walked away. ‘Why did we let Fisher talk us into this? I'd rather go on tour with Jedward than re-form the Horses.'

Everything about Dog seemed designed to freak Claire out. His strange black rubbery lips, the single snaggle tooth that stuck out when he was asleep, the horrible yellowy-grey tangle of his beard. The way he burst out of the kitchen at exactly six o'clock and nine o'clock in the evening, just as the news came on the TV. The way he howled along with the banshee wail of the pipes every time she had a shower.

She had started walking him to the park every morning. Ten minutes there, ten minutes back, twenty minutes round the jogging path, trying to stay as far away from the pond as possible. The one thing that scared Claire more than dogs was water, but Dog wouldn't do what Eilish called his ‘dog bidness' on the lead. Instead, Claire had to follow him around the football pitch at a respectful distance until he had selected exactly the right spot. Eilish had given her a box of disposable kitchen gloves and a roll of pink polka-dot poo bags. Claire double-gloved and double-bagged but every time she reached down to pick up one of his warm turds, she thought she was going to pass out.

And while she was distracted, sprinting, bag at arm's length, for the bin, Dog always made a beeline for the pond. He was obsessed with the swan. He stood by the edge of the water whinnying at it while Claire yelled at him to come back. His obsession was not reciprocated. The sight of Dog seemed to infuriate the swan. It inflated to twice its size and shot across the pond hissing and flapping its huge wings. Every morning, Claire had to run over and clip Dog's lead back on and drag him away before he was attacked. She wasn't sure which would come off better in a
snout-to-beak smack-down but, if she had money to put on it, she'd put it on the swan.

At home, she had tried to lay down clear boundaries. ‘Yours!' she'd said, waving at the kitchen, the garden and the blue draught snake she'd given him so he'd leave her stuff alone. ‘Mine!' She pointed at her boots and the washing basket and her bedroom door. He just raised his tufty grey eyebrows and looked at her as if she were unhinged and then, when she wasn't looking, he made off with anything he could find that was made of leather.

She cradled the phone against her ear and lowered her voice so he wouldn't hear her. ‘I tried to cure him of the leather fetish. I put all my shoes on top of the wardrobe but then he went into the washing basket and when I came back from the hairdresser's, he was lying on my purple suede skirt and that cashmere hoodie that Ray gave me that never fitted.'

‘Sounds like Dog's putting together a capsule wardrobe.' Eilish laughed over a clatter of pans. Claire could hear Greasy Pete in the background, whistling. ‘Maybe he's planning a little trip?'

A huge grey shadow passed by her bedroom door. ‘Hang on!' She poked her head out. Dog was fleeing down the hall with an ankle boot she'd just taken off dangling from his mouth. She chased him into the kitchen.

‘Drop!' She stood a few feet away from him and windmilled her arms. ‘Eilish, he's drooling all over my boot! What will I do?'

‘Give him ham.'

Claire opened the fridge and took out a slice. Instantly, a gleam came into Dog's eyes, his mouth opened and the boot fell out and hit the floor. He took the ham delicately from her fingers.

‘Wow! That's the first food he's had since he arrived.'

‘It sounds like he's pining for your dad. Give him a hug from me.'

‘This is purely a business arrangement.' Claire shuddered. ‘I didn't sign up for hugging.'

‘Have you told your dad that you didn't bring Dog to the pound?'

‘Not yet. That horrible carer woman says he doesn't want to see me.'

The hospital with its set visiting hours had given Claire an excuse to see her dad every day but, now that he was home, she hadn't seen him for nearly a week. She called every day but Sinead kept insisting that he wasn't ready for visitors.

‘You can't let that woman keep you out of your father's house,' Eilish said.

‘I'll figure out a way around it.' Claire ran her hands through her hair and then stopped. ‘Aaah! You should see what they've done to my hair. I look like I've been dunked in a chip pan.' She'd spent the morning in a hairdressing salon having a three-month blow-dry. She wasn't even supposed to comb it until she got on set tomorrow.

‘Speaking of hairdos,' Eilish laughed, ‘I gave Pete a short back and sides back at the B&B last night. He looks quite presentable! Got to go. Good luck tomorrow. Break a leg!'

It was never going to happen. The Horses were never going to reform. Those two years of stardom had just been a brief, bright blip.

Ray had wanted to curl up in a foetal position with a bottle of tequila, but instead he'd had to listen to Andy from Sounds Familiar giving him shit.

‘The client hated that chick you used for the Mocca Place jingle. She sounded way too Lady Gaga.' Andy had sounded pissed off. ‘You know the rules. What you come up with has to sound the same but—'

‘Different.' Ray tried to sound upbeat. ‘I'll give it another shot.'

‘Forget it. We sorted it in-house. Just don't let me down on the Bentley's Bagels brief. It's a big one. The deadline's Friday. Enough time?'

‘Absolutely,' Ray had said.

But it was Monday now and he was still hitting the same brick wall. Andy had already left five messages this morning; he had to crack it by the end of the day.

It wasn't the money that was at stake here, it was his confidence. If he couldn't write a jingle for a bloody bakery product, how could he write a decent song?

He stared at the hypnotic red and green and blue sound-waves
on the Pro Tools screen. He'd wasted the last six hours fiddling around with ‘Heaven Must Be Missing A Bagel' and it still sounded like shit.

He watched the silent rough cut of the Bentley's Bagels TV ad again. A half-naked couple were rolling round in bed. The guy was trying to take playful bites of the girl's bagel. As you would, Ray thought bitterly, if you woke up with what looked like Rosie Huntington-Whiteley's younger, prettier sister.

He racked his aching brain. ‘Bagel in a Centrefold'? ‘Bagel Eyes'? Then it came to him. ‘I'm Loving Bagels in Bed'. It was perfect! Thank you, Robbie Williams. All he had to do now was rework the track so it wasn't too close to the original. He mailed the mpeg at exactly twenty-nine minutes past five. Three days over deadline but he'd pulled it out of the bag.

The thought of sitting around the apartment worrying about what he was going to do for the rest of his life made him feel like ending it, so he had a shower, got dressed and headed out.

Ray grabbed a basket at the door of Fallon & Byrne and stood around in the organic vegetable section, looking clueless. Embarrassingly, this tactic usually worked well, but tonight, for some reason, it didn't. Finally, a dark-haired girl in a tight red coat smiled at him. ‘Is this a celeriac or a Jerusalem artichoke?' he asked her.

It was squash and her name was Edel. She was a twenty-four-year-old trainee solicitor with a tongue piercing and a feeling that she'd seen Ray before. He watched her trying to work it out.

‘Why do you look so familiar?' she said when they were sitting down in the wine bar sharing a bottle of Merlot. ‘Have you killed anyone? Sued anyone? Are you getting divorced?'

Ray shook his head and looked mysterious. It was always better to let them do the work themselves.

Edel had green-painted toenails and a tattoo on her hip. ‘Best Before April 30th 2008?' Ray said, afterwards. ‘What's that about?'

‘Should have gone to Specsavers!' She got out of bed and wrapped herself in a towel. ‘It's
2018
. My thirtieth birthday. It's
all downhill after that. Oops!' She smirked, seeing his face. ‘Did I touch a nerve?'

‘It's different for boys.'

‘You keep telling yourself that.' She leaned over and pinched his thigh. ‘And ask Santa for some anti-cellulite cream because all the skincare stuff you have stashed in your bathroom doesn't work.'

Ray flushed. ‘It belongs to my sister.'

‘Tell your
sister
,' Edel's smirk got even bigger, ‘that
my sister
is a model and the only thing she uses is Preparation H.'

‘On her face?'

‘It tightens skin anywhere.'

Ray picked up his guitar and began to play the Bentley's Bagels track he'd composed earlier. It still sounded pretty good.

‘What's that?' Edel was zipping up her black pencil skirt.

‘Just something I wrote.' He was going to add ‘for you', but he didn't. She wasn't the kind of girl who was going to buy that.

‘Sounds like “Loving Angels Instead”.' She stepped into her shoes.

Ray's fingers froze on the strings. ‘Really?'

‘Really. The firm I work for specialises in copyright theft.'

Ray did a quick bridge into Chip's song, the one they'd fooled around with on the day of the jam. Edel looked over her shoulder. ‘Now
that's
good. Did you write that one all by yourself?'

He nodded.

‘I'm impressed!'

Ray didn't have to give Edel the speech about being too focused on his music to get involved, etc., she was in too much of a hurry to listen.

‘I know how I know you!' she said when she was on the step outside his front door.

Ray smiled. ‘Busted!'

‘You were in my yoga class a few months back. You hooked up with the teacher afterwards.'

Ray had a blister on his tongue from Edel's tongue piercing and a panicky feeling that she was right about the Robbie Williams track. He ran back upstairs and opened Pro Tools and got to
work again. An hour and a half later, he was typing another email to Andy.

‘Sent you the wrong demo earlier. Robbie Williams sound-alike I ruled out. This was the one I meant to send. It's an original track but I think it works pretty well. Ray.'

He still had the recording of Chip's song on his laptop.

‘You threw away what you had before.

You got to face it or waste it.

Use it, or lose it.

It's up to you to choose it.

If you're not too deluded.'

Ray hadn't had time to do much with the arrangement but he'd dashed off new lyrics and recorded them himself.

‘Try Bentley's Bagels, you'll want some more.

You can toast them or bake them

Just wait till you taste them

You won't want to waste them

Just remember to share them.'

Desmond, the director of the original Vitalustre ad, swooped into the hair and make-up department in Stealth Studios, kissed Claire on both cheeks, then punched her, painfully, on the arm. ‘You and me really ruffled a few feathers with that YouTube viral,' he said, as if the whole thing had been his cunning plan all along instead of a huge mistake. ‘I don't think you met the Vitalustre marketing director, last time, did you? This is Richard. Your biggest fan.'

‘It's true.' Richard was in his thirties with fair hair and the most immaculate grey suit Claire had ever seen. She wished that her hair wasn't hanging over her shoulders like overcooked spaghetti. ‘Your comic talent has single-handedly redefined the Irish hair care sector.'

‘You mean
single-elbowedly
,' Claire said with a half-smile.

‘You see?' Richard laughed. ‘That's what I'm talking about!'

Everyone else laughed too. Desmond, Lily the hairdresser, Nicky and Fiona the make-up assistants, and the snotty costume designer whose name was almost certainly not ‘Vogue', and Claire laughed along. She'd been an extra on enough ad shoots to know that the client was always the star of the show.

Vitalustre were using the budget they'd been going to spend airing the original ad on TV to make three new spots that they hoped would go viral. The scripts were fine but Claire wasn't sure they were funny enough for people to share on their Facebook walls. But that, as Eilish would say, was not her fish to fricassee.