The Heart Whisperer (43 page)

‘Good Dog,' she whispered to him. He frowned and his eyes half opened then closed again.

She rubbed his back and stared up through the metal matrix of the fire escape trying to find shapes in the clouds, trying not to feel the cold concrete pressing against her back through the rug. But after an hour, all the clouds merged into one and Dog still hadn't moved and she knew what she had to do next.

Dog's ears pricked up. They turned, like satellite dishes, tracking her dad's voice as he limped into Claire's garden, leaning on Nick's arm. By the time he got to the bottom step, Dog had managed to haul himself to his feet. He led them all, unsteadily, into the house then collapsed, exhausted, just inside the door.

Her dad lowered himself into a chair. ‘How are you, Claire?' He was looking straight at her, something he never did.

‘I'm OK.' She had been angry with him for not telling her about
her mum but the anger had burned itself out. She couldn't bear to watch him saying goodbye to Dog. She made an excuse and went into the living room and sat on the sofa. After a minute, Nick followed her in.

He sat in the armchair opposite her and tented his fingers. ‘Are you OK?'

‘I don't know.'

‘I knew you blamed yourself for what happened. I should have told you years ago.'

‘We haven't really seen each other for years, though, have we?'

Nick's face was drawn and there were dark shadows under his eyes. It must have been hard for him, she thought, to keep that secret for so long.

‘Can I ask you something?'

He nodded. ‘You can ask me anything.'

‘Why did she start drinking?'

His shoulders lifted and then dropped. ‘She always had highs and lows but, after you were born, they got really bad. Sometimes I think it might have been post-natal depression. But honestly, I don't know.'

The draught snake used to have a little red leather forked tongue, but Dog had nibbled it off. Claire picked at a loose thread of blue wool. ‘If you knew it wasn't my fault,' she said quietly, ‘then why did you hate me?'

‘I never hated you.' Nick remembered the first time he'd held his little sister. The way the back of her neck smelled like a seashell. The way she used to hold his hand so tightly when they went into a dark cinema. That school picture he'd kept of her on his desk in Washington. Claire had been the one good thing about his childhood, before the accident and after.

‘But you had to look after me,' she was saying. ‘You had no proper childhood.'

‘
The children of alcoholics. Always a child, never a child
,' Nick's therapist used to say. Claire hadn't grown up at all and he had grown up too fast. ‘It helped me, having you to look after,' he said.

‘What was she really like?'

The intensity in her green eyes made him want to look away but
he didn't. His throat tightened as he tried to find the truth. ‘She was clever and funny and she didn't give a damn what other people thought. She could be hard and sarcastic, but I think,' he paused and then continued, ‘it was because she was angry with herself. Underneath it, she was shy and even kind of vulnerable. And she was really, really beautiful.' He looked down at his hands and then he looked up at his sister. He swallowed. ‘At her best, she was a lot like you.'

The receptionist at Barnhill told Claire that Shane would be there as soon as he could. He arrived too quickly, carrying a small black bag. Dog was still lying on the floor by the door. He hadn't even moved when Nick and her dad left. Shane knelt beside him and Claire turned away and looked at her own blurry reflection in the glass door. She had that feeling again, as if her heart was stuck in her throat. ‘Do you have to put him down now?' Her voice sounded thin. ‘I think he's going to die anyway.'

Shane sighed. ‘It might take a few days. Nature isn't always kind. I think he's ready to go now. But why don't I make us a coffee and you can think about it?'

He pulled his jumper off and tossed it on the sofa. Claire stared out at the garden and listened to him moving around behind her, opening and closing cupboards, filling the kettle. He seemed to know, without being told, where everything was. After a minute she heard him putting two mugs on the table so she went over and sat down opposite him.

She wrapped her hands around her cup and looked over at Dog. ‘What will happen?'

‘I'll give him an injection of phenobarbital. He'll fall asleep and then his heart will stop. He won't feel anything, I promise. I've let animals go hundreds of times.' Claire remembered the piece of paper he'd given her the day he had dropped Dog back. ‘This one's on your conscience,' he'd said. Now it would be.

‘Dog didn't eat that watch,' she said, stalling for time. ‘My ex-boyfriend just pretended he did so I'd get rid of him.'

‘
Ex
-boyfriend? That plan backfired, then.'

Claire almost smiled. Richard had tried to get rid of Dog, but in the end, Dog had got rid of him.

Dog shuddered and let out a mixture of an exhausted sigh and a whimper. She stood up and nodded at Shane. ‘Just give me a second.'

Shane looked surprised when Claire opened the door so that Dog could hear the news from the TV in the living room. ‘Listen to that,' she knelt beside him. ‘Can you hear? It's Anne Doyle.' Dog's eyelids parted slightly. ‘I'm sorry,' she whispered. She lifted his head carefully on to her lap. Shane was filling a syringe with bright pink liquid that looked too cheerful to be lethal.

‘Why don't you talk to him,' he said, ‘while I'm doing this.'

Claire remembered standing in the garden, with her dad, listening to him talking to the fuchsia and the lilac and the sweet peas. ‘How do you know what you're supposed to say to them?' she'd asked him, and he'd smiled. ‘You just say whatever comes into your head, they'll understand.'

She leaned down so her hair fell over Dog's face. She thanked him for keeping her dad company for so many years. She told him that his barking had probably saved his life when he'd fallen off the ladder. And how proud she was that he'd stood up to Richard and how much she was going to miss him. She saw the life going out of him, a dying spark behind his opaque marmalade eyes, but she kept whispering to him even after it was gone.

Shane carried Dog out to the Land Rover wrapped in his rug and laid him carefully in the back.

‘Where will you take him?' Claire wrapped her arms around herself.

‘Back to the surgery. I can arrange to have him cremated, if that's what you'd like?'

Claire made herself nod. ‘Can I come with you? I just don't want to …' She didn't want to say ‘leave him yet'. It sounded stupid. Shane looked at her for a long moment. ‘Of course.'

Neither of them spoke on the journey. Claire sat beside him holding Dog's worn leather collar.

When Shane opened the boot, she gave one of Dog's limp paws a last squeeze, pressing her fingers against the pads, one by one.
But she had to look away while Shane carried his body into the surgery.

‘I should get a taxi,' she said when he came out.

‘I've got to go somewhere but I'll drive you home first. I think I left my jumper in your kitchen.'

They didn't talk on the journey back either. Shane followed her back into the house and she found his jumper on the arm of the sofa and handed it to him.

‘Anne Doyle.' He shook his head. ‘That's pretty unusual.'

She nodded. ‘He's a pretty unusual dog. I mean
was
.' She sat on the battered sofa and stared down at the collar in her hands. It was beginning to sink in now.

‘I saw the inside of your fridge,' Shane said. ‘Is there anything you didn't try to get Dog to eat?'

‘Roast cat,' Claire croaked.

‘That's a relief. I'd have to report you to the ISPCA for that.' He sat down beside her on the sofa and then after a long time he said, ‘The beach where I came to pick him up? Was that where your mother drowned?' Claire nodded. He looked away. ‘I go back to Laragh sometimes. That's where my brother, Finn, died. Though,' he rubbed his chin hard with the flat of his hand, ‘I don't think it really matters much where someone dies. It's all the moments before that count.'

His face was turned away; all Claire could see was the side of his head and the tip of an ear through his brown hair. He was sitting incredibly still but she thought, from the way he was breathing, his chest rising and falling deeply, that he might be crying. She put her hand on his knee.

He didn't turn around but, after a minute, he slipped his arm around her shoulder and they sat there, like that, for a long time, still without saying anything, as it grew dark in the basement flat.

Claire was lying on the sofa, her head at an awkward angle on Shane's chest. The kitchen was in darkness except for a quivering rectangle of moonlight that pooled on the floor by the door.

‘Oh my God, I'm so sorry.' She sat up. ‘You said you had to be somewhere. I didn't mean to keep you here all night.'

‘It's OK. You fell asleep. I didn't want to leave you.' She could feel his breath on her cheek but his face was in shadow.

‘I should go.'

Neither of them moved. Claire was suddenly very conscious of every centimetre of space between her lips and his. She couldn't tell whether she was moving towards Shane or whether he was moving towards her but the distance between them was shrinking and then they were kissing. It was a long, deep kiss and it sent a current through Claire that connected every part of her, from the roots of her hair to the soles of her feet. Shane bit her lip and she felt her nipples harden beneath her thin T-shirt and she knew from the way his breath changed that he felt it too. She slid back down on to the sofa and he fell down with her. His mouth moved from her lips to her neck.

‘I can't do this,' he mumbled, into her hair, but he didn't let go. She could feel his body pressing against her. He kissed her ears then swooped from her hairline to the tip of her shoulder and her head fell back over the arm of the sofa. Through the warped glass pane of the door, she saw a sky full of upside down stars.

Then Shane pulled her to her feet and peeled off his jumper, he yanked her T-shirt over her head and they stumbled glued at the lips and the hips through her kitchen and staggered up the steps to the dark hall. He lifted her up and pushed her against the door that led up to Ray's flat, but she managed to drag herself away, breathing hard and they both tottered into her bedroom. Then they were falling on to the bed and Shane was pulling off the rest of his clothes and she was telling him through gritted teeth to hurry. She had wanted this ever since she'd seen him across the courtyard on her first day on
The Spaniard
. Eight months was a long time to wait; she couldn't wait a second longer.

Claire lay perfectly still, savouring the weight and the heat of Shane's body beside her. Then, finally, she turned her head on the pillow and looked at him. Up close, his face seemed to contain every colour. There were tiny pixels of mauve and violet in the dip above his upper lip. The dark shadow of his stubble had flecks of yellow and crimson. There were speckles of copper and silver in his heavy eyebrows. Her head was telling her that the most
beautiful man in the world couldn't possibly be in her bed but her heart was telling her that he was. He opened his eyes and smiled at her but there was a wariness in that smile which dropped into the spreading pool of her happiness like a heavy stone. She shivered. He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. ‘Your hair used to be curly. You changed it.'

‘It's changing back.' The twelve-week blow-dry was wearing off. She could feel the curls and the kinks beginning to return.

‘Listen,' he said, and she nodded though she already knew she wouldn't want to hear what he was going to say. She wanted to push herself into him and pull him into her so they didn't have to get up and face reality. The empty rug in the kitchen and the hollow in her heart where the memories of her mother used to be.

‘Last night,' Shane reached under the covers and threaded his fingers through hers, ‘was incredible,' he squeezed her hand, ‘but I wasn't …' he rubbed his thumb along her palm to her wrist and back again, and again, ‘I didn't expect this to happen. The thing is, I was on my way to meet my wife. We just started seeing one another again. Trying to figure out if we can try to work things out.' He sighed. ‘I don't know that we can but right now it's—'

‘Complicated?' She smiled, sadly.

‘Open ended. I should have explained, I'm sorry.' He turned to look at her.

‘Don't be,' she said, and she meant it because if he had stopped to explain everything then last night wouldn't have happened.

After he was gone, Claire pulled her clothes off again and got back into the bed. The pillow still smelled faintly of Shane. She buried her face in it and fell deeply asleep again.

The nightmares always began differently. In this one, Claire was floating out to sea, perched on a plank of wood. She was a few yards away from the shore, trying to paddle back in, but the current was taking her away from the shallow water that danced with sequins of light, out towards the grey line of the horizon. Then the plank was gone and she was in the water, the tremendous weight of it closing over her head. She tried to fight her way back up but her body was heavy and the force of the water was too strong. Then, just as she was about to give up, she felt an arm
around her neck dragging her upwards. Her face broke the surface and she gasped for air. She was on her back and someone was swimming behind her, pulling her in to the shore away from danger. When it was shallow enough to stand, Claire found her feet and turned around. The woman had long wet red hair and green eyes. Her eyelashes were spiky with water. For a moment, Claire thought it was her mum, then the woman smiled and she saw the tiny gap between her top front teeth and she realised she was looking at herself.