The Heart Whisperer (33 page)

‘How do you do it?' Claire shook her head in wonder. ‘You just act as though everything will be easy and then, somehow, it is.'

‘It's just confidence.' He smiled. ‘It's like it says on the necklace I gave you, “Believe in you”. You can do anything, Claire. You have so much talent. You could be huge.'

‘I will be huge,' she closed the menu, ‘if I keep eating as well as this.'

‘There you go again!'

‘What?'

‘Avoiding a compliment. Finding a way to put yourself down. Speaking of compliments, Noel from Beacon told me your voice-over demo was absolutely brilliant and he's already recommended you to a couple of advertising agencies.'

‘I wouldn't have done it at all if you hadn't organised it for me.' She sighed. ‘You're going to have to stop doing all this stuff for me, Richard, I'll only get used to it.'

‘I want you to get used to it.' He grinned. ‘That's my evil plan!'

A waitress came with bread and olive oil and Richard introduced himself and asked if he could put their salmon in the restaurant fridge while they ate.

While he was in the kitchen, Claire looked through the huge window. Out in the square, a man and a pregnant woman were
queueing at the fish stall. Suddenly, the woman grabbed his hand and pressed it against her belly. They both smiled. Some day, Claire thought, she might be standing somewhere in the winter sunshine with a man who loved her smiling into a certain future. She watched Richard, as he made his way back to their table, and she wondered if it might be him.

‘Listen, why don't you come and stay over at my place tonight?' Richard said as they pulled into Claire's laneway.

‘What about Dog?'

‘He'll be fine for one night and we wouldn't be, you know, interrupted.'

Dog liked to lurk out in the hall when they were making love. Sometimes, the door would open a crack and his long, grey snout would appear at passionate moments. Richard found it off-putting.

‘OK,' Claire bit her lip. ‘But I'll have to be back early in the morning to let him out.'

‘Can't you leave him with your dad or your brother, instead? I'll make you breakfast in bed.'

Claire shook her head. She had been around to her dad's twice since Christmas but he had barely spoken to her. Nick was avoiding her too. When she had cornered him to talk about organising a new carer, he'd said that Kelly had decided to stay in Seattle for another few weeks. Nick was the one with an elephant in the corner of the room now. Claire wondered when he was going to name it.

Dog lifted his head when Claire came into the kitchen. The tip of his long tail moved in a slow wag.

‘I'm going to be gone all night so you have to have a pee now,' she told him.

He got up stiffly then stretched and walked over to the door. Relations had warmed between them but he still gave Claire plenty of personal space. He looked out to see if it was raining before stepping into the garden. He had a thing about getting his ears wet.

Richard had arranged to have the garden cleared as a surprise
for Claire. The nettles had been cut back and the rusty patio heater had been dismantled and taken away but somehow that made the garden look worse than it had before. Dog seemed to like it though. He trotted around the bare earth, sniffing everything, and took a long pee before he came back inside and lay down again.

‘I'll leave the TV on and the living-room door open. Anne Doyle will be on in about fifteen minutes,' she told him. ‘She might even be on again at nine, if you're lucky.'

‘Listen to that,' Richard said after they'd made love in his huge bed and he'd come back from having his shower, wrapped in a thick, white towel.

‘What?' Claire sat up.

‘The sound of silence!' He sighed.

‘Except for the ticking of thirty clocks!'

‘You don't hear them after a while.' Richard swatted her with a takeaway menu. ‘And they're a hell of a lot quieter than those groaning pipes of yours. Have you thought about moving? It's kind of a weird set-up you have with that door that connects your place to the landlord's. I don't know what you're paying him but it's probably too much. I play squash with an estate agent. I could ask him to look out for something for you before it comes on the rental market or,' he put the menu down, ‘you could always move in here with me.'

Claire was suddenly very wide awake. ‘What about Dog?'

‘I'm asking you to live with me and all you can talk about is the
dog?
'

‘It's just that I couldn't leave him and Dad can't take him and Nick is—'

‘We can figure something out when the time comes, which I hope it does,' he pulled the towel off and slipped back under the duvet, ‘very soon indeed.'

Ray heard the bang of the door to the laneway and went to the window. He could see the dog's long, bony grey back and the top of Claire's head below. There was no sign of the suit.

‘Hey!' He pulled the window up and hopped out on to the fire escape. ‘Wait.' She turned to look up at him, reluctantly.

‘I just wanted to ask you how everything is.'

‘Everything is fine.'

‘Your dad?'

She shrugged. ‘He's fine.'

‘And your new guy. What's his name again?' Claire hadn't told him his name.

‘Richard. He's fine.'

‘How was Christmas?'

‘You know …'

‘Fine?'

She nodded. ‘I'd better go in.'

‘Maybe we could all hang out together,' Ray said. ‘You, Rich-ard, me and Izzy.'

Claire peered up at him in the gathering dusk. Her hair seemed to be absorbing all the remaining light. ‘Who?'

‘My girlfriend. Izzy. I've been seeing her for a while now.' It had been weird to be in restaurants and at movies with a girl who wasn't Claire. Weird and kind of boring.

‘You think she'll make it past your twenty-six-day record?' Claire asked him.

‘Got my fingers crossed.' He crossed them and showed them to her. ‘So why don't we all have that drink some time?'

‘I don't think that's such a great idea.' Claire put her key in the door. It was on a key ring that Ray had brought her back from Tokyo. A yellow sunburst with the words ‘warking on sunshine' written on it in red.

‘Willow came up with a great misheard lyric the other day, all on her own,' he said. ‘She heard “Blowing in the Wind” and she thought Dylan was singing “the ants are my friends”.' Claire didn't turn around but she laughed. Ray had missed that laugh. ‘Why don't you call up the next time she's over?'

She turned and looked at him. She was still smiling but her eyes were serious. ‘I'm sorry, I'd love to but I just can't. I don't want to complicate things.'

‘So you need a bit
more
space.' She nodded again. ‘Aye aye,
Captain!' Ray said in a terrible Spock voice. He uncrossed his fingers and made the Vulcan ‘V' sign instead. ‘Live long and prosper!'

Claire and Richard were both up at five-thirty in the morning. He had to fly over to London for a meeting and she had to be on set at six-thirty for her last day on
The Spaniard
.

‘Did you move my shoes and my watch?' he called from the bedroom. Claire froze under the reluctant trickle from her shower. She had a pretty good idea who might have. She made a naked, dripping dash from the bathroom past the bedroom and into the kitchen to retrieve them from under Dog. One shoe was a bit squashed and the watch strap was damp where he'd been licking it. She ran back to the bathroom and put the shoes on the floor and laid the watch on the side of the sink. ‘You left them in here!' she called.

Richard appeared in the door. ‘Did I?' He picked them up. ‘Why is my watch strap wet?'

‘Steam from the shower.'

Dog was in Richard's bad books because he had eaten an entire cooked chicken he'd brought for their supper, including half of the foil bag and all of the bones.

He was in Claire's bad books, too, because yesterday, while they were in the park, he'd taken a dump in front of six people doing t'ai chi. Then, while she was clearing that up, he'd sloped off to enjoy his daily stand-off with the swan. When she was trying to get him away from the pond, without actually looking at the pond, a shouty old man had appeared waving a walking stick at her.

‘Get. Your. Dog. Away. From. That. Swan!' he'd bellowed at Claire, over and over until she thought her ears were going to bleed.

No matter how many times Claire had seen it, she never got over the magic of fake snow. One corner of the wet, muddy Wicklow field had been transformed into a pristine sparkling triangle of winter. The snow was two feet deep. Every branch of the bare tree above her was dusted with a glittering crust of white. Two of the crew were testing out the snow machine and a few flakes were
already whirling through the air from the blower. Claire had to stop herself from sticking her tongue out to catch one the way she had the night she'd sat out in the garden with her mother when she was a little girl.

A rusty Land Rover pulled up and Shane got out. Something woke up in Claire's chest and she forced it back to sleep again as he walked straight past, without looking over, and started chatting to the actor who played the Earl. Claire felt herself flush beneath her thick make-up. He might not hate her so much if he knew she hadn't brought Dog to the pound in the end, but she had no way of telling him. And anyway, why should she? She was involved with Richard now. She stared down at her script and pretended to be studying her dialogue. She had almost a full page of lines.

It was her last scene and her longest one so far. The shepherdess was trying to rescue her sheep in a blizzard and the Earl, who was riding past, stopped to help her. Then, while they sheltered from the snow, she broke the promise she'd made to his wife, Lady Kathryn, and told him she'd seen the Spanish ship. He ‘looked at her for a long moment' and touched her cheek and told her she was a ‘loyal wench' before he rode off again to confront his wife. There was something satisfyingly karmic about the idea that Claire was having a ‘moment' with Emma's husband, even if he was only a fictional one.

Claire was pouring herself a coffee to try to get rid of the soapy taste of all the fake snow when Emma came floating across the courtyard in a pale grey velvet gown and matching shoes. ‘Claire, how are you? I haven't seen you for ages. Are you still keeping a low profile after that awful YouTube thing?'

Claire gave her a level look. ‘I've just been busy.'

‘Oh, me too! It never ends.' Emma picked up an apple and looked around for a knife. ‘They have me here around the clock. I'm literally in every second scene. I had to pull a sickie last week just so I could sneak off to London to do an audition for a sitcom. Don't tell anyone. It's a secret. But let's just say that Becky Martin, the woman who won a Bafta for
Peep Show
, might be directing it! Denise!' She grabbed the arm of the runner who was
passing by. ‘Can you be an absolute angel and get me that knife over there? I don't want to ruin my shoes.' She turned back to Claire. ‘How's poor Eilish, by the way? I heard she's horribly scarred. Will she ever be able to work again?'

‘She's fine—' Claire began.

‘Here you are, Miss Lacey!' The runner came back with a knife.

‘Oh, I wouldn't wave a knife at Claire!' Emma giggled. ‘She got into a fight with another actress a few months ago and broke her nose!'

The only card game that Willow could play was Go Fish, which was incredibly boring, so Ray changed it to ‘Go Horrible Sea Creatures', bringing a bit of creative madness to it.

‘Do you have any sixes?' Willow stared at him over her cards.

‘Go smelly brown skunk fish!' Ray said. Willow picked up a card, giggling. ‘Do you have any sixes?'

Willow shook her head. ‘Go giant slithery squid!'

‘That's Atlantic pollocks. I know you have at least one.'

‘That's rude!'

‘Pollocks?'

She fell back on the sofa shrieking with laughter.

‘Babe!' Izzy looked up from the sofa where she was flipping through a magazine. ‘My head!'

She was hung over. They both were. They'd been the last to leave the VIP area in Lillie's Bordello last night. Ray's head felt as if it had been used as a spacehopper. If Willow hadn't been there he would have been on his third Bloody Mary by now.

‘Do you have any eights?' she giggled.

‘Why don't you look out the window,' he told her, ‘and see if it's still raining cats and dogs.' She trotted over and he went over and lay down beside Izzy. He'd spent the whole morning trying to keep them both onside. It was exhausting. They'd got off on the wrong foot after Izzy went out for the paper and came back with three bacon bagels.

‘Willow's a vegan,' Ray warned her as she was unwrapping them.

She licked some ketchup off her finger. ‘I'll have hers, then!'

‘Not sure you can eat meat in front of her. I don't want to upset her.'

‘But you don't want to upset me either, right?' Izzy gave him a ketchuppy kiss. ‘It's my hangover cure. We just won't tell her what it is. It'll be fine.'

Willow's little nose wrinkled as soon as Ray carried the plates in. ‘Ray,' she said, ‘what's that funny smell?'

‘It's just a teeny, tiny bit of bacon.' Izzy put the coffees down.

‘Bacon is another word for pigs,' Willow said, sadly.

‘I had no idea!' Izzy pretended to look horrified, then she went back into the kitchen and they heard her noisily scraping a plate, but Ray could see her scoffing the bagel behind the door.

‘I had a good time last night,' she whispered, winding her long, strong legs around his. ‘Mr VIP! Do you want me to come back later, when Little Miss Sunshine is gone?' That was his hangover cure, Ray thought, sorted.