The Heart Whisperer (30 page)

There were no missed calls on her phone. She tried Nick's number but all she got was his message. ‘This is Nick Dillon, couples counsellor. Leave your number and I'll call you right back. Have a good day.' She sat on the bed hugging her knees, praying for him to call and when he didn't she called Niamh.

‘Not a great time,' Niamh said. ‘Linh is shouting the house down. Rory reversed over her Little Mermaid.'

‘We had a fight,' Kelly whispered. The shrieking in the background died away as Niamh moved into a different room.

‘You two never fight. What happened?'

Kelly picked at a congealed blob of egg on her arm. Niamh
knew that she was trying to conceive but not that she'd been trying for three years. ‘He doesn't understand.'

‘Join the club!' Niamh snorted. ‘I spend the day running around after Linh then Rory comes home and expects me serve him a gourmet dinner and do the dance of the seven veils. Get used to it, Kelly. Once kids enter the picture, the whole perfect couple thing goes out the window.'

It was an hour, maybe two, before she could bear to face the kitchen. She swept up the splinters of bowl, cleaning away the egg as best she could. Two of the cupboard doors would have to be repainted and a dozen tiles in the splashback would have to be regrouted. She washed her hands, took out her notebook and started to make a list.

‘Kelly?' She pushed her sleep mask up and looked at the clock on the bedside table. It was nine in the morning. She'd overslept. ‘It's me. I'm at the old man's house. I meant to call you last night.'

‘Don't worry.' She swung her legs over the bed, turning her back on the empty space where he should have been lying. ‘I got the message.'

Nick rubbed his eyes. His head was still foggy from the Oxy-Contin. ‘What?'

‘The message that you don't want to have a family with me.' Kelly's voice was cold. ‘If you'd changed your mind, you would have called.'

‘Look, let's try not to fall into the Blame Game Trap.' He'd talked about this on the OO show only last week. ‘I'm going to give the old man his breakfast then organise a temporary carer and then I'm coming home.'

‘Don't,' Kelly said, ‘unless you're happy to keep trying to have a baby.'

‘Kelly, can you at least acknowledge that we have some issues to sort out before we commit to having a family—'

‘No!'

‘You're saying that if I don't make you pregnant, we're over?'

‘I'm saying that if you stop me trying to have a child, I'll stop loving you, and we'll be over anyway.'

Nick had a pitiful shower under the frayed rubber hose that attached to the bath taps. He had a session booked with a couple at eleven and a meeting with Oonagh at one. He had called her after he'd called Kelly. She had been short but at least she was prepared to see him, without conditions, which was more than his wife was.

He got dressed then went down to the kitchen and made an omelette and some tea and brought them into the surgery with the Difene. The old man was already in his chair, his face grey and clammy from the effort it had taken him to get there. ‘Need a hand getting dressed?'

‘No, I'm—'

‘Fine,' Nick said. ‘Claire says you're to take this.' He shook a pill out on to a saucer.

‘I don't need it, Nicholas. Why don't you just go home now?'

‘This is my home,' Nick snapped. ‘I grew up here, remember?'

Oonagh was sitting on the sofa in her dressing room in a black slip eating a Snickers bar. ‘Did Owen pay you to screw up the Channel 5 job?' She was fully made up but she still looked pale. ‘I can't think of any other reason for what you did the other night.'

Nick had swallowed the pill the old man had left on the tray with a cold mouthful of tea. It wasn't as strong as the tablet he'd taken last night but it blurred the edges. ‘I can't apologise enough, Oonagh. You put so much work into this and I let you down. Maybe it's just as well. I'm not sure I would have been any good at presenting anyway.'

She scrunched up the Snickers wrapper and dropped it on the floor. ‘Spare me the mock humility and the sincerity act. I've seen how much you love being in front of the camera and how much the camera loves you. You wanted this as much as I did!'

‘I just want to help people.'

‘Help me!' she shouted. ‘I had a call from Curtis this morning. Turns out Clingfilms have a Plan B. An American couple. Husband and wife. We were the number-one choice until you blew the whole thing out of the water.'

‘Sorry. Again.'

‘Sorry isn't good enough! I talked Curtis into letting you explain what happened. He's giving us ten minutes on Skype at
one fifteen.' She looked at him with real desperation. ‘There is an explanation, isn't there? If there isn't I am in deep, deep shit. Things are bad with me and Owen. The OO show is on its way out. I have to get this Channel 5 job. You have to make this right.'

‘Hey, Curtis!' Oonagh beamed at the laptop screen. She had backcombed her blonde hair and poured herself into a very tight green dress.

‘Hey, gorgeous!' Curtis was in the back of a moving car. Nick could see the road disappearing in the window behind him. He was wearing a T-shirt that said ‘You lost me at “hello” ‘.

‘Nick.' He flashed Nick a tight little smile. ‘How are you feeling, mate?'

Nick forced himself to smile. ‘Better, thanks. Listen, about the night of the awards—'

‘These things happen,' Curtis said distastefully, as if they only happened to other people.

‘You must have thought I was out of my mind, but the thing is …' Nick swallowed and said the first thing that came into his head. ‘I was on really strong painkillers. My back was in spasm. I could barely walk. I should have just stayed at home but it was such a key meeting that I didn't want to miss it.'

Curtis blinked. ‘Bad back? That figures. You looked way too strait-laced to wear sneakers with a tux. What were you on?'

‘What?'

‘What painkillers?'

‘OxyContin.'

‘Hillbilly heroin!' For some reason, Curtis seemed impressed. ‘You and half of Hollywood.' He narrowed his eyes. ‘You don't make a habit of it? You're not an alkie or a druggie?' Nick shook his head. ‘You're happily married? No skeletons in the closet?'

Oonagh snorted. ‘Nick and his wife are so happily married they'd make you throw up.'

Curtis nodded. ‘
The Ex-Factor
has to take the moral high ground. We can't have you pulling a Charlie Sheen or an Angus Deayton. Hey,' he said to someone in the front seat of the car, ‘we should put Charlie and Angus on our list of celebrity judges.' His mobile started to ring. ‘Got to go. Good meeting. I'll be in touch.'

Ray wasn't spying on them. He just happened to be looking out of the window at the exact moment when they came into the garden from the lane. Claire in a black jacket and a sparkly black beret hanging on to the arm of the suit who had practically moved into the basement. The suit was definitely not, Ray thought, an actor. He was too well dressed and he didn't have a goatee or sideburns. He watched them disappear under the fire escape and went back to his desk and opened Pro Tools.

He was supposed to be working on a new brief from Sounds Familiar. A five-second music sting for You Alone ready meals. They'd given him ‘Mmmh, Danone' as a reference but he couldn't make it work. A monkey could write this with his hands tied behind his back, he told himself, in Chip's weedy sneer. He went into the kitchen to get a beer. Did monkeys have hands, he wondered, or paws?

He picked up the iPad and Googled. Hands. That sorted that out. He stared at his own hands. Willow's were miniature versions of them, down to the slightly crooked knuckles on his little fingers. Ray wouldn't have minded looking after her today but Ash had taken her down to her uncle's house in Cork for a few weeks. They wouldn't be back till New Year.

He picked up the remote control and put it down again. He didn't want to put the TV on in case he saw the Bentley's Bagels ad again. It wasn't even supposed to be on in Ireland. Ray had written it for the Canadian market. But Bentley's, it turned out, were now available in Superquinn. Sounds Familiar had lodged a generous payment for the extra market in his bank account and now the ad was running in every break. The guy trying to bite the
girl's bagel, Ray singing on the soundtrack he'd stolen straight from Chip.

‘You can toast them or bake them

Just wait till you taste them!'

Ray didn't want to think about what Chip was going to do to him if he heard it. He'd probably toast him and bake him right before he killed him.

Willow had left her copy of The Werepuppy behind. He picked it up and flipped through it, putting off working. A business card slid out from between the pages. ‘Izzy Heffernan. Art Attack Print Gallery.'

He was about to bin it when he remembered the redhead from the park! She must have slipped it into the book before she handed it back to him. He shook his head. That was a smooth move. He should call her and tell her that.

Nick lay awake, staring up at the styrofoam tiles on the ceiling and listening to the old man groaning in his sleep in the room downstairs. The pain was worse at night. He sounded as if he was in agony but it was his own fault. He had eighteen inches of metal in his leg but he wouldn't even take a paracetamol.

Nick swore under his breath. How long was he going to have to lie here and listen to this? He had thought that, after Kelly cooled down, she'd agree to meet, but he had been wrong. He'd only managed to get her on the phone once and she had refused to Two Listen or Dissolve the Story or Retie the Bond unless he agreed to continue trying for a baby.

‘We had a deal,' she said. ‘You were going for the Channel 5 job. We were going to try for a baby.'

‘But I've lost the Channel 5 job—'

‘That doesn't change anything, Nick.'

What was he going to do – Nick fought a wave of panic – if she didn't change her mind? Where would he go if he couldn't go home?

His old therapist would have a field day if she knew he was sleeping in his parents' bed. They had decided together, over two years of painful weekly sessions, that some things just couldn't be fixed. Sometimes you had to just close a door and walk away. But
when Nick had moved back into this house, the door had opened again and all the feelings he thought he'd worked through had flooded out. Guilt. Helplessness. Claustrophobia.

He had tried positive affirmations, meditations and calming visualisations. He had flipped through every self-help book he owned but nothing worked, so he just kept taking his father's tablets.

It wasn't a huge decision. He just put them on the plate every day and when the old man left them there, well, he swallowed them himself. At least the painkillers took the edge off the panic and the sleeping tablets meant he got a few hours' sleep every night before the old man's groans woke him up again.

There were pregnant women everywhere. At bus stops. In shops. There were two of them at the next table in Cake Café sharing a slice of Victoria sponge. Kelly felt achy with envy just looking at them. ‘I'll take the butternut squash soup,' she told the waiter, ‘and I'll have it at a table outside.'

‘You do know it's December out there?' He shook his head. ‘I'll make you a hot-water bottle to keep you warm.'

‘Thank you.' His kindness made Kelly want to cry; she was always on the verge of tears now.

She went out into the tiny courtyard, sat on a damp cast-iron chair and put her shopping bags carefully on the chair opposite. How much had she spent? she wondered with a little jolt of panic. Five hundred dollars? Six?

‘All set for Christmas?' One of the pregnant women was standing under the awning trying to light a cigarette. She pulled her loose blue cardigan around her bump to keep the cold out. Pregnant and smoking. Kelly's heart squeezed itself into a tight knot of resentment.

‘Why am I even doing this?' The woman shivered and clicked her lighter again. ‘I've been trying to give these things up.'

Kelly made herself smile. It was a professional smile, about as real as a two-dollar bill, but the woman smiled back and Kelly felt her resentment begin to soften. It wasn't the woman's fault that she was pregnant and that Kelly wasn't. ‘When are you due?'

The woman blinked at her through a cloud of smoke. ‘Due what, love?'

‘Oh!' Kelly said. ‘Oh! I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to …'

The woman flushed, dropped her cigarette and crushed it under her heel. ‘I'm not pregnant,' she said, quietly, ‘but apparently I'm fat.'

‘I know he's hopeless and unreliable,' Claire pulled on a red suede boot, ‘but I'm not sure I can live without him.' Mossy's gearbox was on its last legs and something called his floorpan had to be replaced. It was going to cost the unbelievable sum of five thousand euros. Richard had sweet-talked his insurance company into letting Claire keep the Yaris for another few weeks, but she was going to have to decide whether to keep Mossy or let him go. Her mum's car!

Eilish picked up a shoe, looked at the price tag and dropped it as if it were on fire. ‘Look, Claire, I know Mossy is more than just a car but he is falling apart and five grand is a lot of— ouch!'

Claire pinched her arm. ‘Shh!' she whispered. ‘That's my sister-in-law!' Nick had told Claire that Kelly had gone to the States for Christmas but there she was, on the other side of the Brown Thomas shoe department, stepping off the escalator wearing a cream coat and carrying half a dozen shopping bags.

She caught Claire's eye then turned away quickly and hurried over to the lift. ‘I don't get it!' Claire turned to Eilish. ‘If Kelly is in Dublin, why is Nick still at my dad's? Do you think I should try and talk to her?'