The Heart Whisperer (32 page)

She ran over and grabbed his collar and pulled the tinfoil package out of his mouth. He pulled his lips back over his teeth and jumped at her. She felt his teeth snap at her fingers, then she fell, face first, into the sand.

When she sat up, her mouth was full of grit. The dog had run back up into the dunes and the beach was empty. Way out at sea there was a tiny smudge of pink, one bright bead in a dark grey ribbon, but her mum was gone.

Richard tapped on Claire's door then came in bringing the smell of churchy cologne and roasting meat. He was already dressed.

‘Mum said to let you sleep in.' He sat on the bed. ‘You must have been really tired. It's nearly twelve. I missed you last night.'

Claire sat up and put her arms around him and held on to him tightly. Jean was right. She had been blaming herself for what had happened for nearly twenty-eight years but it hadn't brought her mum back. The only thing she could do was live her own life. Live it enough for two.

‘Happy Christmas.' Richard took a small duck-egg-blue box out of the pocket of his shirt and handed it to her. Inside was a tiny gold disc on a fine chain with the words ‘Believe in You' engraved on one side.

‘It's lovely,' Claire said.

‘Are you going to put it on?'

Claire pressed her mum's locket between her thumb and her index finger. She had been wearing it ever since she was six. ‘Can you help me?' She lifted her hair and Richard undid the clasp.

Ray opened one eye and saw a tumble of curls on the pillow beside him. For a surreal moment, he thought he was in bed with Claire, then he remembered she didn't have curls any more. The head on the pillow beside him belonged to Izzy, the girl from the park.

‘Oh. My. Goodness.' She turned around and sat up, leaning her head on her hand. ‘There is a Santa and he's finally answered that letter I wrote him when I was fifteen and brought me
Ray Devine
!'

Kelly had found the decorations but she hadn't had the heart to put them up. The delicate frosted baubles and stars she'd spent hours choosing last year were in a pile on a chair and the lights were in a tangle on the living-room carpet. Some of the bulbs had broken. There was a dusting of glass on the floor that crackled under her shoes when she crossed the room.

She had meant to wrap the clothes. She had bought paper. But in the end, she just arranged the bags in a little circle around a potted palm. The half-dozen bags she'd brought home from town and the dozen or so more she'd dug out of the back of the hall cupboard. She'd been hiding them there from Nick but she didn't have to do that any more.

On Christmas morning, she went downstairs in her bare feet
and made egg nog; then she put on a radio station to listen to the carols and drank a glass in the kitchen. She poured a second glass, gathered up the bags and carried them back upstairs.

She spread them out on the duvet and opened them one by one, untying every ribbon, unfolding the tissue paper carefully, shaking the clothes out to get rid of the creases. She took her time looking at every single thing. The white cotton onesies. The tiny summer dresses and shorts and T-shirts. The heavy down-filled snowsuit with the snowflake embroidered on the back. The little cotton sweaters with their mother-of-pearl buttons in rose and oyster and pale blue. The dozen Peter Rabbit burp cloths. The baby Uggs. Everything she needed except the thing she needed most.

Nick carried a tray into the surgery. The old man was ignoring Christmas and, for once, Nick was happy that he was living in denial. He had called Kelly over and over yesterday and she'd finally answered. ‘Can we meet for an hour tomorrow?' he'd asked her.

‘You'll just try to change my mind and I can't let you do that.'

‘I don't understand.'

‘You will when you hold our baby in your arms.'

‘How could you lie to me for three years and then act as if I'd done something wrong?' He sounded like his clients did when they came to see him first – whiny and insecure. ‘All those date nights, I thought you wanted me—'

‘I did want you. I want you now.' Her voice broke.

‘Then let's meet. It's Christmas!'

‘I can't.'

Claire's scrambled eggs with smoked salmon were perfect but the turkey was burned to a crisp. Helen and Andreas had been in charge of it but they had slipped upstairs while it was cooking.

‘It's your fault, Dad!' Helen picked off a piece of charred skin. ‘If you'd let us sleep in the same room, we wouldn't have to sneak around.'

‘The rule is you can sleep in the same room when you're married,' Richard's father said. ‘Not before.'

‘What about engaged?' Helen grinned. She held up her left hand. A solitaire sparkled on her ring finger. The kitchen erupted into shouting and cheering and kissing and hugging. By the time they sat down to eat, the turkey was cold as well as burned, but they'd had so much sparkling wine that nobody cared.

Richard and his sisters bickered all the way through dinner. About how to spell ‘disconcerting', how many legs a fly had, which episode of
The Office
had made Aine pee herself and whether or not Santa was a pervert.

‘He's a grown man,' Helen said. ‘Who breaks into houses! And how does he know if you've been good or bad? Because he's a creepy stalker!'

‘Santa is happily married!' Richard insisted.

Aine knocked his paper hat off. ‘Why doesn't he have children, then? I bet he's gay. I bet Mrs Claus is his beard!'

Richard's mother shook her head. ‘I'm sorry, Claire, you must think we're a bunch of savages.'

‘Oh God!' Aine pretended to fall face first into her plate. ‘My little sister is getting married before me!' She pointed her fork at Richard and Claire. ‘You two better not be next. I don't want to be the bloody spinster in this family.'

‘Can't make any promises.' Richard put his arm around Claire and Aine threw a sprout at him.

‘This family is way past the stage of food fights,' Jean said. ‘The boys can clear up and the girls can make coffee and we'll have it by the fire.'

She smiled and Claire stood up, her heart expanding. She was one of the girls. She was part of the family.

Kelly put it off until she couldn't put it off any longer, then she sat up in bed and dialled the number. ‘Hi, Mom! Happy Christmas!'

‘Kelly-Anne, what a wonderful surprise,' her mom said, as if this really was a surprise and not a carefully choreographed once-a-year call. ‘Happy Christmas, sweetie! How's the weather over there? Do you have a white-out?'

Her mother seemed to have confused the climates of Ireland and Iceland, and Kelly hadn't bothered to correct her.

‘Yep!' she said, looking at blinds she hadn't opened.

‘A white Christmas, oh my! It's raining here, of course. How's Nick?'

‘He's good, Mom. But I can't talk for long. We're just going to visit his dad.'

‘Oh.' A tiny awkward silence opened up between them and then her mom rushed in to fill it. ‘Well, you know you and Nick can visit us any time, honey. Christmas or not. I know you're busy but you're always welcome here. Your dad is still in bed but I know he'll want to wish you a happy holiday.'

Kelly heard her mom cross the black and white tiled kitchen she had only been in a handful of times since she left home. She heard her mom's footsteps on the stairs and then she heard her dad's sleepy voice.

‘Is that my little girl?'

She closed her eyes and her throat tightened, locking her voice under a sticky glob of egg nog. They weren't bad people. They'd tried to do their best, she knew that. But they'd taken something from her. She had tried to forgive them for that, but she couldn't.

It had been raining all night and the lawn was drenched. Nick's shoes were going to be soaked if he went across the grass but he couldn't risk leaving by the front door at eight in the morning. He didn't want the neighbours to see him.

If the papers found out that the
OO in the Afternoon
couples coach had broken up with his wife and was hiding out in his father's house, they'd tear him apart. Maybe he had it coming to him but he'd put Oonagh through enough. She was still clinging to the hope that Curtis was going to hire them, though it looked less and less likely now. Nick was sorry for her but he was also relieved. He just wanted the whole thing to go away.

He glanced around to make sure that nobody was watching from the upstairs window next door then opened the back door and stepped out on to the soggy grass.

‘Hello, Nicholas.' Mrs Cunningham appeared at the wall. She was holding a weed spray, though it was far too early in the year to be spraying weeds.

Nick felt like he had when he was twelve and he'd been waylaid by neighbours bringing the washing to the launderette or walking home from school with a bag of shopping from Superquinn. They'd swoop on him, masking their nosiness with concern. His skin crawled now the way it had back then.

‘Lovely morning, isn't it?' She wiped rain off her glasses. ‘How's the patient?'

‘Well, thank you. I was just dropping in to make him breakfast.'

‘Aren't you very good?' The rain was really coming down now, soaking his jacket, flattening Mrs Cunningham's frosted curls.
Nick was due at Fish in twenty minutes. He didn't have time for this. ‘You've always been so good to your father and your sister, Nicholas. I often say to Brian, “That poor boy had no proper childhood.” ‘

Nick pulled his phone out of his pocket and stared at the screen. ‘Sorry, I have to take this.'

She frowned. ‘I didn't hear it ring.'

‘It's on vibrate. Hello?' He clamped the phone to his ear. ‘Yes,' he said, pretending to be listening to someone on the other end. ‘Yes.' He nodded. Suddenly the phone did ring. Nick fumbled with it, trying to press ‘answer' with his wet finger. Mrs Cunning-ham was watching him with a tight little smile.

It was Oonagh. Her voice was fizzy with excitement. ‘Curtis just called. Clingfilms want us! We're going to Channel 5. We're going to be presenting
The Ex-Factor!
Congratulations!'

Nick's heart plummeted, like an out-of-control lift, past the painkiller he'd taken half an hour ago, down through his wet shoes into the lawn.

‘Bad news?' Mrs Cunningham said when he'd hung up.

He nodded. ‘Yeah.'

Kelly slipped a Fionn Regan CD into the car stereo so she didn't have to listen to Nick's radio show. Hearing his voice would make her miss him even more than she already did. She couldn't risk that. She had to stick to her ultimatum.

‘Be Good Or Be Gone' began to play. She fumbled for ‘eject' and the radio came on.

‘I'm afraid that I can't talk about it,' Nick was saying. ‘I'm sorry.'

Kelly froze.

‘Oh, come on,' Dom cut in. ‘Put us out of our misery! He's shaking his head, folks. He's keeping his cards close to his chest, and what a lovely chest it is, if I may say so. Someone left Doc Nick out in the rain and we can see right through his shirt, ladies. As clearly as we can see that he's too coy to admit that he'll be heading up a new UK relationship reality TV show with the lovely Oonagh Clancy.'

‘That's not official—' Nick tried to cut in.

‘But it's all over Twitter!' Dom chuckled. ‘Check it out, tweeps!'

Kelly stared out at the rain that was hammering down on the windscreen, turning the car in front of her into a blurred blue and silver watercolour. Nick had told her that he'd lost the Channel 5 show but that had obviously been a lie just to get her to stop taking the Clomid.

‘If you've got a problem,' Dom was saying, ‘call in now and give the great Doc Nick one last chance to solve it before he departs for greener pastures.'

Kelly switched the radio off. She did have a problem. She had an ultrasound next week and, if there were any viable eggs, she was supposed to have sex. Maybe Dom Daly was right. Maybe she should give Nick one last chance.

If Claire had known, back on her birthday, how much her life would have changed by the new year, she would have been astonished by the progress she would make.

There were the small things. The fact that she was drinking less, going to bed earlier and getting more exercise than she had for years.

There were the medium-sized things. The fact that she hadn't done a single extra job in months. The fact that she had had four days' work on
The Spaniard
. The auditions she was showing up to every week. The voice-over demo she'd finally made.

There were the large things. The fact that she wasn't broke all the time. The fact that her long friendship with Ray, a friendship she'd thought would never end, seemed to be over. And the fact that, for the first time since Declan, she thought she might be able to trust someone again.

When Richard wasn't away on business, they spent every moment together. They had driven down to Wexford for Helen's engagement party and taken Aine to a comedy gig and met his parents at a rugby match. When his family talked about skiing in France at Easter or a trip to Achill in May or a wedding in Crete in the summer, they didn't ask whether she'd be there or not, they just presumed that she would.

Richard came into the bedroom, wrapped in a towel. ‘What do you fancy doing today?' He had to yell over the squealing of the pipes. ‘The usual thing,' Claire yelled back. She hugged herself as she made the barefoot dash past the various freezing draughts blowing around the hall to the bathroom. Having a usual thing to do was still new, still wonderful.

They walked Dog in the park then sat outside the Insomnia coffee shop in the January sunshine reading the papers. Then they drove into town and wandered around the bustling farmers' market in Temple Bar. They bought wild salmon cutlets for dinner and Richard kissed Claire beside the flower stall while she kept one eye open and picked a little tuft of Dog's fur off his shoulder. Then they went to Heaven. They didn't have a booking but Richard had a word with the manager and in less than a minute they were seated at a table by the window overlooking the square.