The Heart Whisperer (23 page)

‘My dad and my brother do.' Claire felt the shadow of the past fall between them, the way it always did. ‘My mother died when I was young,' she said lightly.

‘Oh.' He put his glass down and looked at her. He was imagining cancer, the way people always did when she said that. The family around the deathbed. Tearful goodbyes. And she let him. She had told Shane too much. She wasn't going to make that mistake again. ‘I don't really like to talk about it.'

He nodded. ‘Did I thank you for your brilliant performance the other day?'

‘Three times since seven o'clock.'

‘When I saw that viral on YouTube, I knew you were comic
gold. The board wanted to take it down but I stood my ground. When sales went up by nineteen per cent they had to admit I was right. I had to fight tooth and nail to get those old dinosaurs to buy the viral idea, but when they see the new campaign, they'll know I was right again.'

‘I hope so,' Claire said.

‘Why haven't I seen you in
Fair City or Love/Hate?
'

‘I haven't been focusing on my career for a while.' A piece of cheesecake slid off Claire's spoon on to the front of her dress. She dipped her napkin into her water glass and blotted it.

‘You missed a little bit there to the left. I mean stage left. Here.' He leaned over, and dabbed at the neckline of her dress.

‘Richard Thomas Doyle!' A tiny girl in her late twenties with Audrey Hepburn hair was standing by their table. She planted her hands on the hips of her short sequinned dress. ‘Groping a lady-person in a public place! Who is this flame-haired temptress?'

‘This is Claire.' Richard put his napkin down. ‘Claire, this is Helen, my little sister.' The girl slid on to the wooden bench beside him and made a swipe for his beer glass. He moved it out of her reach. ‘My least annoying little sister. If you can believe that.'

Helen squinted at Claire from under her dark fringe. She was very pretty and very drunk. ‘Do you work with Richard? You can't be going out with him because you're way too cool and you're not wearing a hair band or a twin set or anything from Lalph Rauren.' She frowned. ‘That doesn't sound right! Hang on. I need to see your shoes.' She ducked her head under the table.

‘Sorry about this,' Richard whispered.

Helen popped back up again, her face flushed, her bun lopsided. ‘Ooh! You're wearing slushy shoes. I mean slutty shoots. Is this a date?'

‘No it's not!' Richard said.

‘Oh my God! It's a date. You're so not his type. This is fabulous!' Helen rummaged in a tiny, sequinned bag and took out her phone. ‘I have to take a picture! I need evidence for Mum and—'

Richard grabbed her phone before she could do it. ‘OK, show's over. Time to go back to whoever you're with, Helen.'

‘I'm on my own. I was supposed to be meeting bloody Aine but
she never showed up. So I had to drink about a gallon of sake on my own. If I'd known you were a few tables away groping some glammy ginger, I would have been over like a shot! Hey! Shots! That's a great idea! Let's get shots!'

‘No shots!' Richard said firmly.

Helen pointed a wobbly finger with a sparkly purple nail at Claire. ‘Wait a minute! I know you! You're that girl with the mad hair in the
Desperate Bridesmaids
thing. Where are all your lovely curlies?' They had been smoothed into submission by the twelve-week blow-dry. No matter what Claire did to it, her hair looked perfectly sleek. ‘Are you a comedienne?'

‘Claire's a serious actress,' Richard said. ‘She has nineteen credits on IMDB.' Claire stared at him. ‘I'm sorry.' He looked embarrassed. ‘I Googled you.'

She laughed. ‘It's OK.'

Richard got the bill and they managed to walk Helen outside even though she insisted on stopping to embrace a life-size statue of Buddha just inside the door. ‘I love the Dalai Lama,' she murmured to it. ‘He's just so real.'

‘I'm afraid we're going to have to take a rain check on that drink.' Richard looked up and down George's Street for a free cab. ‘I can't send her home to her apartment. It's by the canal. She'll fall in. She can stay at my place.'

‘I don't want to go to your place.' Helen grabbed on to Claire to keep her balance. ‘It has too many clocks. Tick! Tick! Tick! And you iron everything. Don't let him iron me!' she pleaded with Claire.

A cab pulled up and they manoeuvred her into the back and Claire got in beside her. Richard sat in the front.

‘Is she going to hurl her cookies, boss?' the taxi man said. ‘Because if she does—'

‘I'll pay for a full valet,' Richard craned to read the licence taped to the dashboard, ‘Frank.'

It was only nine-thirty, way too early to be going home. Claire felt disappointed. The whole evening had been going so well.

‘Richard is the white sheep of the family,' Helen told Claire in loud stage whisper. ‘We think our mother might have played offside with a German tourist. He's the only one with blond hair.'

‘Don't listen to anything she says!' Richard said from the front.

‘I need to take a picture of your shoes now!' Helen said. ‘Hold this,' she handed Claire her phone, ‘while I look for my phone.' She rummaged in her bag. ‘I can't find it. You'll have to come to Wexford for Sunday lunch so I can show you to my mother and my sister. My sister is a fruit loop, but you'll like her.' Her head sank down on to Claire's shoulder and, immediately, she fell asleep.

The taxi parked at the top of the laneway with its hazard lights on and Helen snoring inside. Richard walked Claire to the door in the lane. She jiggled the key in the lock and then gave the door a little kick to get it to open.

‘Well, goodnight.' She turned to look at him. It was the first cold night of the year and their breaths met in a little white puff between them. ‘Thank you for a—'

He put his hands lightly on the shoulders of her red coat and kissed her. It was a short kiss but long enough for her to see a couple of stars.

He wound a strand of her hair around his finger. ‘I'm going to be away in Germany for ten days but why don't you come to Wexford on Sunday week for lunch? To my folks' place? Helen will forget she asked you but I think it's a great idea.'

‘OK.' Claire remembered Dog. She couldn't leave him on his own for a whole day, not again. ‘We might have company.'

‘Do you have kids?'

‘I'm looking after a dog.'

‘No problem. I'll pick you up on Sunday week. At about eleven, and I'll bring some WD40 for that lock.'

Claire let herself into the kitchen. Her lips were still tingling from the kiss.

‘I'm home,' she called. She had started talking to Dog as if he were a person, she realised, the way her dad did. After a second, she heard the faint ‘thump, thump' of his tail on the floorboards in the hall, as if he was talking back.

There was something weird, Ray felt, about a guy going to a film on his own in the middle of the afternoon, but it was better than sitting around the apartment trying to digest the terrifying truth that he was never going to have another shot at fame. Perhaps Claire had been right, maybe he was just a jingle writer after all. His phone buzzed so he got up and went outside into the cinema foyer to take the call.

It was Ash; she sounded upset. ‘Can you take Willow for a couple of hours on Friday?'

Ray examined his face in the window of the ice-cream concession. He'd been using the Preparation H but the lines by his nose looked just the same. ‘I thought you'd gone back to London to work things out with your boyfriend.'

‘Fiancé. Ex-fiancé.' Her voice was shaky. ‘I did. But I'm back in Dublin. I have to get a job and get Willow into a school. I have an appointment to see one on Friday afternoon so I wondered if you'd look after her.'

‘Look,' Ray said carefully, ‘she didn't have a very good time with me.'

‘I know but it'll only be for a couple of hours. Please, Ray. My parents are going to a wedding. I'm really stuck.'

‘Can't you get a friend to do it?'

‘I don't have friends here.' Ash sighed. ‘Not any more.'

‘Snap,' Ray sighed.

‘What?'

‘Just say when.'

Two grubby boys of five and six were standing on bottle crates at the table decorating gingerbread men with icing and Smarties. They watched Kelly shyly while she measured up the kitchen.

‘Thanks, Pauline.' Kelly closed her notebook. ‘I think I've seen enough.' Years of running her own business had given her a sixth sense for window shoppers. Pauline seemed nice but she didn't look like someone who had a spare twenty grand to extend the kitchen and put in new units. ‘I'll be in touch with some estimates next week.'

‘There's no rush.' Pauline pushed her hair out of her eyes. ‘We'll have to save up to get it done. I lost my job so I'm at home all day with the boys now and we spend most of our time in here. It's such a mess.'

The lino was grotty and worn. The tiles above the sink were coming away from the wall. There was a leak behind the dishwasher. The smell of damp hit the back of Kelly's nose and her stomach did a queasy flip.

Could this be morning sickness? she wondered with a flutter of excitement. Her period wasn't due for another week but maybe one of the blurry grey dots she'd seen on the ultrasound screen was turning into a baby.

‘You mentioned you might want to take a few pictures,' Pauline was saying.

Kelly forced herself to nod. She'd already wasted an hour, another five minutes didn't matter. She took a few random snaps of the kitchen then opened the back door and stepped on to the patio. Her heel caught in the wheel of a discarded tricycle and suddenly she was pitching forward and the broken paving stones were flying up at her face. She managed to break her fall against the pebbledash wall.

Pauline came running out. ‘Are you OK?'

The heel of Kelly's hand was grazed and beaded with blood. ‘This garden is a death trap!' Her voice was shrill. ‘I could have lost my baby!'

‘I'm so sorry!' Pauline took her arm and brought her back inside.

Why had she said that she was pregnant? Kelly tried to think of a way to take it back but couldn't.

‘Please, sit down.'

‘I can't.' Kelly was due in a carpet showroom in Dun Laoghaire in under twenty minutes, then she had to stop by an attic conversion in Monkstown. How was she supposed to act as if she cared about underlay and dormer windows when a baby might be growing inside her? She felt her eyes prickle with tears.

‘Let me clean that up.' Pauline guided her into a chair opposite the boys. ‘I'm guessing this is your first?'

Kelly nodded. Did a nod amount to a lie? she wondered.

‘I was terrified when I was pregnant with Finn.' Pauline rummaged in a drawer and found some cotton wool and a bottle of TCP. She cleaned the gravel off Kelly's hand and wrapped it in a tissue. ‘I did lots of things wrong but it all worked out.' She smiled at the two little boys who were picking Smarties off the floor and sticking them back on to the gingerbread men.

‘You're so lucky,' Kelly said.

‘Two rounds of IVF for Finn. Three for Dan.' She laughed. ‘We'll still be paying the loans off when we retire.'

‘I'm on Clomid.' Kelly stared down at her hand. ‘Second cycle.'

‘Ah yes, Clomid!' Pauline made a face. ‘The wonder drug with absolutely no side effects except that it turns you into a complete psycho.'

‘I don't care if I turn into a psycho as long as it works.'

‘So you're not pregnant?' Pauline looked confused.

Kelly bit her lip. ‘I don't know why I said that. It scares me how badly I want this …'

Pauline smiled. ‘I bet it scares your husband too, right?'

Kelly nodded. ‘I think it does, a bit.'

‘Won't Greasy Pete mind you giving me all this food?' Claire watched Eilish ladling coq au vin on to a foil tray.

‘I've got him eating out of my hand. He thinks I'm Nigella Lawson's younger, prettier sister. Bless!' Eilish tried to squash the tray into Claire's tiny freezer but it wouldn't fit. ‘Why don't you bring some round to your dad?'

‘He won't eat it,' Claire said. ‘But that's a good idea. It would give me the perfect excuse to get past the bloody gate-keeper.' Sinead was still insisting that her dad didn't want to see anyone.

‘You could bring Dog!' Eilish said.

Dog was stretched out under the table, his legs and enormous paws protruding at odd angles. When he heard his name, he rolled over, revealing a squashed sandal.

‘I wish he wouldn't do that!' Claire went over and retrieved it.

‘Let's see which he prefers.' Eilish spooned some chicken on to a plate. ‘Jamie Oliver or Kurt Geiger?' She took the sandal and put it on the floor beside the plate.

Dog looked from one to the other, the mobile tip of his long black snout twitching, his eyebrows doing a little dance of indecision, then he wolfed down the chicken.

‘Enough Dog talk!' Eilish said. ‘I want to know all about this Richard person!'

Claire filled her in on the date with Richard. ‘He's picking me up on Sunday. We're going to drive down to his parents' house. He's going to fix my rusty lock.'

‘I bet he is!' Eilish smirked. Claire didn't even want to think about going to bed with anyone. Her lock had probably seized up by now. ‘So is he a keeper?'

Claire forced herself past the tiny little ache of regret she had about Shane. ‘It's early days but—'

‘You like him?'

‘I think I do.'

‘Woo hoo!' Eilish got up and did a salsa round the table. Dog stood up so she grabbed his sideburns and planted a kiss on his shaggy head. ‘She likes you too. She's still a bit scared of you, but she'll get over that!'