The Heart Whisperer (40 page)

‘We had to protect her.' The old man's voice was thin. ‘She was only a child.'

‘I was a child!' Nick yelled. ‘I was a child too.'

It was a long time before Claire felt the cold. The damp seeped through her light coat into her jeans and she suddenly realised she was frozen. She remembered Dog. She looked up and down the empty strand. Way off in the gathering dusk, she saw a man and a boy packing away their fishing things. She got up and ran to catch them before they left. ‘Have you seen a big, grey dog?' She had to shout to be heard over the wind.

The man pointed out at the ragged black ribbon of sea and there, silhouetted against the black, Claire saw a small grey blur. The boy laughed. ‘We thought he was a seal. He's been out there for half an hour, scaring away the fish.'

Claire stood as close as she could to the edge of the surf and yelled his name. Finally, he heard her and he came paddling back
and dragged himself out of the water. She grabbed his wet collar and started hauling him back towards the car park, but he was panting hard, and when she stopped to let him catch his breath he lay down on the sand on his side. He was drenched. His eyelashes were crusted with sand and his eyes had a cloudy, opaque look. ‘You're an idiot,' Claire put her hand on his ribs, ‘do you know that?' She could feel the thunder of his heart far beneath them.

Ten minutes passed, then twenty and Dog wouldn't move. ‘Come on,' Claire stood up to encourage him, ‘you just have to get to the car.' He tried to haul himself up but his legs went from under him. He looked at her apologetically. It was almost dark now, the wind was driving in from the sea, bringing sheets of steady rain that drilled the sand around them with tiny holes.

She slid her hands under Dog and tried to lift him but he was too heavy. She scanned the beach. They were alone. She pulled her phone out. It was almost out of battery. Eilish's number rang out. Nick's phone was switched off. She rang directory enquiries and asked for the number of the vet in Wicklow Town. The woman who answered said the vet would see Dog if Claire brought him in.

‘I can't bring him in, that's the problem!'

‘Try your own vet,' the woman said. ‘If it's an emergency, maybe someone will come out for him.'

There was only a sliver of charge left when she got the number of Barnhill Veterinary Practice.

‘Hello?' It was Shane.

‘I've got an emergency.' Claire had to raise her voice above the wind. ‘My dog has collapsed.'

‘I'm just closing up here but the Veterinary Hospital is open all night. I'll give you the number.'

‘It's Claire Dillon from
The Spaniard
. I'm in Brittas Bay in Wicklow. Dog collapsed on the beach and I can't get him back to the car.'

There was a long pause. ‘You're going to have to get someone else to help you because—'

‘I can't,' Claire said. ‘My battery's nearly gone and—' Her phone went dead.

Claire took off her coat and spread it over Dog. Her jeans were soaked through now. She couldn't stay here till the morning if Shane didn't come, but she just couldn't leave Dog here on the beach either. She lay down beside him and squeezed in under the coat. She had finally come back to the place she'd been running away from all her life and now she couldn't leave.

Just when she had given up, Claire saw the yellow beam of a torch moving along the beach.

‘How long has he been like this?' The hood of Shane's yellow rain jacket hid his face but she didn't have to see his eyes to tell he was angry.

‘Since about an hour before I called you. He was swimming. I don't know how long he was in the water. I was distracted.'

He shook his head in disbelief, then lifted the coat and opened one of Dog's eyelids.

‘He hasn't been well for a few days. He was out in the rain all night last week.' Claire's teeth were chattering. ‘And he might have eaten a watch.'

Shane opened his bag and took out a stethoscope. ‘Hold his mouth closed so I can listen to his heart.'

Claire put her hands around Dog's muzzle. He looked up at her through half-closed eyes and the tip of his tail twitched as if he wanted to wag it.

Shane put the stethoscope away and took out a thermometer. ‘He's got a temperature,' he said after a minute, ‘and he's very dehydrated. I'm going to need to put him on a drip and run some blood tests in the morning, so I'll have to bring him back to the surgery.' He shouldered his jacket off. ‘You'd better have this.'

‘It's okay—'

‘Just put it on!'

She draped it over her shoulders. It was heavy and it smelled of him. She recognised the scent – a blend of antiseptic hand-wash and pencil shavings. She picked up his bag, he picked up Dog, and they made their way back through the driving rain to the car park.

The Land Rover was parked crookedly beside her car. ‘Can you get my keys?' Shane looked over his shoulder. ‘They're in the pocket of my jacket.' Claire found them and opened the back
door of the Land Rover. Shane laid Dog down carefully on the back seat and covered him with a blanket.

‘Come into the surgery at about half twelve tomorrow. I'll have the results of the blood tests back by then.' He closed the door. His jumper was soaked through and his hair was plastered to his head. It was too dark to see his eyes.

‘You'd better take this.' She handed him back his jacket. ‘Thank you for coming out.'

He opened the driver's door then slammed it shut and she stood watching his tail-lights until they disappeared and she was left standing in the dark.

Claire stood under the scalding water for as long as she could bear it but she was still frozen. She waited for the banshee wail of the pipes to begin but Richard's handyman had fixed them. The flat was eerily silent. She cleared a patch in the condensation and looked in the mirror. Water ran from her locket, down between her collarbones. Before the accident, the oval frames inside used to hold two tiny black and white pictures. One of Claire as a baby, one of Nick, but her mother's body had been in the sea for three days before it was found. Salt water had leaked into the locket. Their faces had disappeared, the way the image of her mother, the picture that she had always carried in her heart was disappearing now.

She had drowned when she was thirty-three but she had been gone long before that. Locked in her surgery, lost in a fog, leaving the old man to look after them. The part Nick hadn't understood was, she was a
doctor
. Why couldn't she make herself better?

The day of the accident, she hadn't turned up to bring him home from school. ‘Would you like a lift, Nicholas?' Mrs Coyle rolled down the driver's window. Peter Coyle watched Nick warily from the back seat. They had been friends in fourth class but hadn't spoken since Christmas.

‘No thanks,' Nick lied. ‘My mum will be here any minute.'

‘Are you sure?' Mrs Coyle shaded her eyes and looked doubtfully up and down the empty road.

Nick stared down at a piece of chewing gum that was stuck to the path. ‘She said she might be a bit late today.'

Mrs Coyle started the engine. ‘Well, if you're certain.'

He stayed exactly where he was outside the school gates until the red Fiat Panda had turned the corner at the top of the road, then he began the long walk home.

Mrs Coyle had brought him home to her house in December because she'd been picking Peter up from violin practice and she'd seen Nick waiting outside the school gate in the rain. She rang his mother but she was out. It was evening before she arrived to pick him up. Nick and Peter were on the landing playing with Peter's Transformers when she rang the doorbell.

‘Is it Sean or Simon?' they heard her saying to Peter's dad when he opened the door. ‘You look more like a Simon. I think it's the beard. It's kind of biblical.'

‘It's Steve.' Mr Coyle sounded embarrassed. ‘Come in, Maura.'

Mrs Coyle brought her into the kitchen and tried to make her drink some coffee. Nick and Peter could hear the row as it broke out.

‘Why don't you let Steve drive you both home?' Mrs Coyle kept saying. ‘He can walk back. He doesn't mind.'

‘His name is Simon,' his mother said, ‘and I'm fine to drive. So you can give me back my keys!'

‘I don't think I—'

‘Oh, please,' his mother said, wearily. ‘Just give me the fucking KEYS!'

Peter looked at Nick with a mix of horror and admiration, but he pretended not to see. He stood up and went downstairs.

‘The prodigal son!' His mother gave him a hug and kissed the top of his head. Beyond the sweet smell of Juicy Fruit and the minty smell of smoke, he could smell the vodka. A sweet, oily, sly smell that gave him a pain in his stomach.

Mr and Mrs Coyle stood at the front door and watched them getting into the Citroën.

‘Bye, Simon!' his mother said. ‘Tell Garfunkel I said hello!' She began to sing ‘The Sound of Silence'. ‘Did you have fun?' she turned to Nick.

He shrugged. ‘It was OK.'

‘Ok-ey smok-ey!' She pushed the dashboard cigarette lighter. He was supposed to open the glove compartment and take a cigarette out of the green and white packet and light it. He loved pressing the white tip against the red element. The crackle as threads of tobacco caught fire. The first thin plume of grey smoke. But, this time, he didn't move, and after a minute, she leaned over and took out the pack herself.

The car swerved into the middle of the road as she bent her head to light the cigarette and the spaghetti hoops and toast Nick had for tea came back up into the back of his mouth and he thought he might be sick.

She blew a wobbly smoke ring. ‘You've got to stop caring what people think about you otherwise you'll always feel the way you do right now.'

Nick leaned as far away from her as he could, pushing himself against the passenger door until the handle of the window was
digging into his chest. He pressed his face against the glass, watching the mist of his breath fogging it up and then clearing, and he wished that she were dead.

The day of the accident, Nick had gone the long way home so he didn't have to pass Peter Coyle's house. He didn't want Mrs Coyle to know that his mother had forgotten to pick him up again. He worried, all the way, about Claire. Why hadn't she been at school today? It was her birthday, she'd been looking forward to it.

The house was locked and his mother's car wasn't in the drive. He climbed over the wooden gate at the side of the house. Claire's school bag was on the grass beside two deckchairs. A line of ants was marching up the leg of the table past a half-full ashtray to a plate of chocolate biscuits, and then marching down the other leg carrying crumbs.

There were two glasses on the table. One was half full of milk. The other had a lipstick mark and the remains of something brown and sticky at the bottom. He took off his own heavy school bag, sat under the chestnut tree and took out the birthday card his dad had bought for him to give to Claire.

It had a picture of a dog on it and the words ‘Yappy Birthday!' Claire's present was going to be a dog. Nick felt fizzy with excitement thinking about it. It would be his dog too. Claire was nice about sharing.

He tried to read his school books to pass the time but they were too boring. After a while he felt thirsty. He took the milky glass to the tap by the back door and filled it. The water was warm and rusty but he drank it anyway, then he brushed a few ants off the chocolate biscuits and ate them too. After a while he realised he needed the toilet. He held on until it hurt so much that he had to go, then he peed at the end of the garden by the hedge. He saw Mrs Cunningham watching him from her window and he pretended he was looking for a bird's nest until she had gone away.

He sat down under the tree again and then he must have fallen asleep. When he opened his eyes it was dark and someone was shaking him. There were pins and needles in his legs. ‘Nicholas?' It was a Garda in a uniform with a hat. ‘You'd better come inside.'

Every light in the house was on. There were two more Gardaí standing in the kitchen beside the fridge. Nick wondered if the house had been burgled, and then he saw his father's face and he knew that it was worse than that.

People kept arriving with plates of food. People who had never come to the house before. Neighbours, two teachers from school, his swimming coach's wife. They milled around drinking tea and whispering, but his father couldn't speak to anyone who tried to talk to him. Mr Lennon from the newsagent's shook Nick's hand and two women who worked in the library hugged him. The smell of their perfume made him feel sick.

Claire was in her pyjamas. She was passed around the women like a parcel, her eyes round, her face pale from exhaustion. When she was put down for a moment, Nick took her hand and brought her into the living room then closed the door and turned the key.

He helped her to do a jigsaw – a cartoon horse jumping over a pile of flowerpots.

‘You know the puppy I was supposed to get for my birthday? I don't want him any more!' She was trying to fit a piece of saddle into the sky.

‘It's OK,' he said. ‘I don't think he's coming now.'

After the jigsaw was finished, they sat on the corduroy sofa watching a quiz programme with the sound turned down, and Claire fell asleep on Nick's shoulder while he stared at the multiple-choice answers, trying to guess the questions.

a) John McEnroe

b) Jack Nicklaus

c) Rod Laver

d) Bjorn Borg

He hadn't really meant it when he wanted his mother to die. He wished that she would walk through the door now but he was old enough to know that wasn't going to happen. Claire's hair was still damp and it had gone crazy, the way it did when it got wet. He covered her with a woollen poncho that someone had left on the sofa. She could have drowned, he thought. It could have been her instead of his mother, or it could have been both of them.