The Heart Whisperer (28 page)

‘Today I feel so happy, so happy, so happy,' the crow puppet sang, and Willow and the rest of the audience sang along with it.

‘Ray, why aren't you singing?' Willow whispered. ‘Did your voice break?'

‘About twenty years ago.' Ray liked singing but he drew the line at the crow song even if Willow seemed to be enjoying it. He had the hang of keeping her amused now. The secret was to keep their get-togethers fresh. Find something unexpected to do. Animals of all kinds were a success just as long as they weren't dead. Last week, he'd taken her to a ‘Meet the Pigs' experience in Wicklow. The smell still haunted him. It was worse than Mossy on a hot day.

After the puppet show was over, they walked up Grafton Street playing Weird-Would-You-Rather-Be? A game Willow had invented.

‘Would you rather be a hamster or a verruca?' she asked him.

‘What's a verruca?'

‘It's on your foot.'

‘A hamster. Would you rather be a hamster or a lobster?'

‘A lobster! Would you rather be a lobster or a toaster?'

‘Toaster. Would you rather be a toaster or a roller coaster?'

They passed a man smoking a joint outside Stephen's Green. ‘Smoking is bad!' he said to her. ‘You know that, right?' Were there other things he should tell her? About drink and drugs?

‘What did Maurice do when you hung out with him?' he asked her, casually. In Your Dreams had a fairly wild reputation and the idea of anyone getting wasted in front of Willow worried him.

‘He did a lot of space pigs.'

‘Space pigs?' Ray's mind boggled.

Willow trailed her hands along the railing. ‘It's where you swing someone around by their hand and their foot? You know?' Ray didn't. It sounded dangerous. ‘And he tells funny jokes.'

‘What kind of jokes?'

‘I don't know. Jokes disappear into my head. Do you know any jokes, Ray?'

He must have heard millions. But they disappeared into his head too.

‘You know your band,' Willow said when Ray was putting her Quorn sausages on to a plate. ‘The Slow Covered Horses.'

‘Smoke!' Ray speared his sausage and put it on her plate. He could eat later. ‘They're covered in smoke not snow.'

‘Yes,' Willow said, patiently. ‘But did you sing any famous songs?'

‘Didn't your mummy tell you about “Asia Sky”? It went platinum in the UK.'

‘Oh!' She wiped her fingers on a napkin and put her plate back on the coffee table. He could tell she had no idea what platinum was but she probably didn't know what the UK was either. ‘Will you sing it for me?'

‘OK.' Ray picked up his guitar and sat down on the sofa. For some reason, maybe because she was watching him so intently, he felt embarrassed and he sang the chorus from the Asia Sky jingle instead of the song.

‘Anata ni furainguhōmu.

AsiaSky ga takaku tobu

Sore wa hontōdesu.

Sekai wa anatadesu.'

Willow frowned. ‘What's a “sicky wa”?'

‘It's Japanese.' He began to sing it in English.

‘AsiaSky takes off into the blue.

Till I'm so high that I can see it's true

The world is small.

When the world's just me and you.'

She made him sing it again in Japanese, joining in, mangling the
words and the tune. She had the worst voice that Ray had ever heard, apart from Claire's.

‘I saw Claire's dog!' Willow said when Ray was helping her to put on her backpack. ‘He was in the garden before. Can we go down and see him?'

‘Not today.' Ray buttoned her coat. ‘Claire and me are having a break.'

‘Like Mummy and Maurice,' Willow said sadly.

Ray wanted to give her a hug but he wasn't sure they knew one another well enough so he pulled her hat down over her dark curls. ‘Knock! Knock!' he said.

‘Who's there?'

‘Boo!' He remembered a joke now.

‘Boo who?'

‘Don't cry!' he said. ‘It's only me!'

She fell laughing back on to the sofa, with her backpack and her coat on and her hands over her face.

Maurice DeVeau may have been on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine twice, but Ray was willing to bet that he had never made Willow laugh like that.

The door to the en suite was open and the splash of water on tiles and the peppery musk of Nick's body wash drifted into the bedroom. After weeks of avoiding him, Kelly suddenly wanted to unzip her sequinned dress and step into the shower with him right now, but if she did, her hair and her make-up would be ruined.

She remembered her friend Molly in New York telling her how incredibly turned on she was all the time she was pregnant. Maybe it was a sign. She was a week late. She wasn't allowed to do a pharmacy test. The hormone drugs could give a false positive reading. But this could be it!

She zipped up her dress. Most women would have given anything to fit into a size eight but she couldn't wait to fill her wardrobe with loose dresses and maternity jeans. She was going to love every stretch mark, every pang of nausea, every backache.

‘Why are these things so fiddly?' Nick came in, barefoot. He was already wearing his black tuxedo trousers and a white shirt with a black dicky bow hanging loose from the collar. He went down on one knee so she could tie it for him.

‘Will you have dinner with me?' he asked her.

‘Yes.' Those were the first words he'd ever spoken to her.

‘Will you marry me then?'

‘Sorry,' she laughed, ‘I'm already married!'

‘Happily?' She nodded. ‘Really?' He looked so doubtful that she felt a pang of remorse. The last few months had been a hormonal head wreck but if they had managed to make a baby then it would all have been worth while. ‘Really.' She kissed him hard on the mouth.

Nick kissed her back then broke away and checked his watch.
‘I'd like to take you up on that but I need to print out the invitations. Can you be ready in five?'

‘I'm ready now.' She stood up.

‘Beautiful dress. But what's that?' He pointed at the stool.

Kelly looked over her shoulder. There was what looked like a rose petal on the padded blue silk cover. A wonky heart shape. Crimson with a touch of soot at the edges. The roses in the vase on her dressing table were pink. It was blood.

Poor Kelly. Nick wished they could just cancel but tonight was incredibly important. He only had one chance to impress Curtis from Clingfilms. Oonagh had been rehearsing him for weeks. He was primed to deliver impressive nuggets on audience selection criteria and editorial control.

He stopped to straighten his tie in the mirror in the hall. Had the relief he'd felt when he'd seen the spot of blood shown in his face? He stared at his reflection. The old man had become a father at twenty-eight and then gave up on it when he was thirty-eight, just a few months older than Nick was now. He felt too young to have a child and, confusingly, he felt he'd left it too late.

He checked the study for his laptop then he remembered that he'd left it in the boot of the car. His feet were bare and his shoes were still upstairs. Kelly's MacBook was on the sofa in the kitchen. He could log into his email and print the invitations from there. He perched on a stool and flipped it open. A banner at the top of the page caught his eye. It was pink with a headline in white:

‘SHARE YOUR INFERTILITY ANGST WITH OTHER BROODY LADIES.

Would your DH rather talk about the FTSE than the patter of tiny feet? Welcome to the BroodyGals bulletin board. A safe, anonymous space where you can share your hopes and fears.'

Nick smiled. Apart from Niamh, Kelly didn't have any friends in Dublin. It was good for her to have a place to connect with other women. He scrolled down the page and scanned the posts.

‘SadGal-11

Joined 1.02.2011

ME 37

DH 37

TTC 6 months

Help! Before we were TTC my DH couldn't keep his hands off me. Now he runs a mile when I ovulate. What is wrong with guys??? And why can't my DH understand why I want a baby soooooo much. Grrrrrrrrr.'

‘Mum2BSoon

Joined 19.10.2010

ME 40

DH 38

TTC 1 year

@SadGal-11 Grrrrrrrrr. Lol
^*..
My DH is not exactly champing at the bit either. My advice is stay away from emotional stuff and stick to the science bit. Put your DH in charge of your temperature chart. Men love graphs. Hang on in there! Hugs.'

TTC must be ‘trying to conceive', Nick guessed. ‘DH' was ‘dear husband'. The next post looked like a reply from Kelly.

‘BroodyKelly07

Joined 15.08.2008

ME 30

DH 37

TTC 3 years, 1 month.

@SadGal-11. I was TTC for 3 years and my DH had no idea.'

Nick stared at the screen. Kelly had been trying to get pregnant for three years without telling him.

‘My advice is don't tell your DH you're ovulating! Plan a sexy date night every month and act like you can't keep your hands off him! He's not going to ask questions! My DH didn't.'

‘Do I look okay?' Kelly was standing in the doorway in a black dress. Her long dark hair was pinned up and the tiny diamond he'd given her as a wedding present was flashing at her throat. She looked like a complete stranger.

Nick had no jacket, no phone, no shoes and nowhere to go. He had driven to the hotel on automatic. Now he had no idea what he was doing there. He pushed through the awards guests milling around the foyer and ducked into the empty, wood-panelled bar. He leaned on the polished counter and put his head in his hands.

‘What'll you have?' A barman was standing in front of him.

‘Vodka. A double.'

The familiar, sharp, sickly smell of it turned his stomach. He wasn't sure it would go down but he put the glass to his lips and poured it down his throat until he felt the ice rattling against his teeth.

His mind had shut down in the car but it began to race now. Moments came flooding back to him. Times when he and Kelly had Two Listened and Soul Gazed. Their Honesty Box. Their Open Heart Policy. Their Complaints Journal. Every day he met couples who deceived one another in a hundred different ways. He had thought they were different.

‘Nick! Why aren't you answering your phone?' Oonagh was wearing a fitted pink dress that had relocated her cleavage to just beneath her collarbone. Her face was a smooth mask of make-up. Something iridescent glittered in the corners of her eyes. ‘Where's your dinner jacket?'

‘Your accent sounds comple …' The vodka had muddled his head and he couldn't find the word. ‘Totally different when you're not on TV. Did you know that?'

‘Jesus! What have you got on your feet?'

Nick had left the house in his bare feet then remembered, at the last minute, that there were trainers in his gym bag in the boot. ‘There was a break-in,' he said. ‘I got locked out of the house.'

This didn't make sense but Oonagh was too angry to notice. ‘Why didn't you call me? Curtis is already here. Everyone's at the table.' She looked at his empty glass. ‘You're not drunk, are you?'

He shook his head. The room swung around him in a dizzy whirl. ‘Just got a scare.'

Oonagh grabbed his arm and dragged him out into the empty foyer and into a ballroom packed with circular tables. A dozen pillars of coloured light bounced overhead. He followed her through the labyrinth of tables. She stopped at one directly beneath the stage. He took in the faces. Ita Fox and a man who must be her husband. A fashion designer and his boyfriend. Owen, looking like a beefy James Bond, and a very young, very skinny guy with longer hair than Kelly. The guy bounced up and gave
Oonagh a hug. He was wearing leather jeans and trainers with his dinner jacket.

‘Curtis, this is Nick Dillon, Ireland's go-to guy for couple trouble.' Oonagh pushed Nick forward and Curtis pumped his hand. He had a scarily firm handshake. ‘Snap!' Curtis grinned, nodding at Nick's trainers and then at his own.

Oonagh sat opposite Nick and launched into a lively discussion about the challenges of reinventing reality TV for an audience that had seen it all. Nick was supposed to join in but all the sound bites she had taught him, all the statistics he had learned, were gone. All he could think about was the message board.

‘I was TTC for 3 years and my DH had no idea.'
Kelly had been lying to him since pretty much the day they got married.

‘Red or white?' The waitress was hovering at his shoulder.

People drank to forget, Nick remembered. How drunk did you have to get to do that? ‘Both.' Dinner was a blur. He didn't touch his food. The wine, both kinds, tasted like vinegar but he drank them anyway and asked for refills every time the waitress came around.

Curtis tried to engage him, asking questions about Fish and We-Fit and his private coaching sessions, but after a few monosyllabic answers, he gave up.

Nick was vaguely aware of Owen smirking at him from behind a centrepiece of silver helium balloons and Oonagh mouthing indecipherable things and telegraphing frantic messages with her fake eyelashes. But all he could think about was those date nights. They had seemed spontaneous but they had been planned like military manoeuvres around Kelly's cycle. He had thought she wanted him but she hadn't, she wanted him to make her pregnant.

There was a break between the meal and the awards and Nick stood up, unsteadily, to go to the bathroom. Oonagh grabbed his arm as he passed her chair and pulled him down to her level. ‘For Christ's sake, sober up!' she hissed. ‘Or don't come back!'

He locked himself into a cubicle. Lies and secrets. Secrets and lies. He'd grown up with them. He'd crossed the Atlantic to get away from them. Now they'd caught up with him again. He leaned his head against the flimsy cubicle partition. Way off in
the distance, he could hear the muffled jabber of an announcement, the boom of music then the machine-gun fire of applause.