The Heart Whisperer (46 page)

When the cocktail came, she took the umbrella out and sucked up a half-inch of it through the bendy straw. Her precious follicle would have to take its chances with alcohol tonight; she knew the risks but she couldn't do this without a little Dutch courage.

A tall, blond guy in a suit a few stools along was checking her out. Way too young, she thought, then stopped herself. What did that matter? He could be a hundred years old. All that counted were his genes.

Colm didn't smoke or take drugs. He'd never been arrested. He played squash. He'd done science at college, so he had to have some smarts, but he was very slow on the uptake.

Kelly had been flirting with him for four and a half cocktails now and he still couldn't take the hint. He was droning on about the gap year he'd spent travelling in Asia. ‘Indonesia's incredible. You ever been?'

She shook her head and sneaked a look at her watch. Quarter after ten. She crossed her legs provocatively and pretended to be entranced while he told a long story about a monkey in Ubud who'd stolen his sunglasses.

‘Hey, I think I've got a picture on my iPhone!' He started scrolling though his library.

‘Colm.' She put her hand on his arm. ‘Can we just get out of here?'

He looked as if he'd just won the Euromillions lottery then lost his ticket. ‘Thing is I don't really have a place. I kinda live with my folks in Stillorgan.'

‘What?' Kelly stared at him in disbelief. She couldn't take him back to her house. It was a mess, and anyway, she didn't want him to know anything about her. A hotel room? The back of her car? No, she just wanted rid of Colm, now. She was going to have to find some other guy and start all over again. She grabbed her jacket and stood up. ‘I'm sorry,' she said. ‘Got to go. Nice meeting you.'

Ray tossed back another shot of tequila but he still felt shockingly sober. Time to bring in the big guns. He tried to catch the barman's eye to order a Long Island Iced Tea. If he went home sober, he'd spend the whole night thinking about Willow, so he wasn't leaving Rococo until he was completely pissed.

‘Well, look who it is!' A woman with long, caramel hair slid on to the stool beside him. She was wearing a tiny black dress and very high heels. ‘Want to buy me a drink?' It was Emma Lacey.

Ray snorted. ‘What do you think?'

She sighed. ‘Come on, Ray, give me a break. I've had a hard day.'

‘Harder than mine?' Ray remembered Willow's cold cheek against his, the sound of her footsteps in the hallway.

‘I was almost trampled to death by a stampeding horse today.' Emma waved imperiously at the barman. ‘Beat that.'

‘Lady Kathryn is the best thing about
The Spaniard
.' Emma stabbed at the ice in the bottom of her empty glass with her straw. ‘I was heavy-pencilled for the next two series. All I did was sneak off to London for
one
little audition and they fired me. They had an emergency script meeting and wrote me out, just like that! Then my fiancé, my
ex
-fiance, Declan, you remember him?' Ray nodded. ‘He told me it was my own fault. Another drink?'

Ray stood up. ‘I don't think so.'

He was on his way to the door when he passed a couple having a fight. A young, red-faced guy in a suit. A very pretty, dark-haired woman in an off-the-shoulder cream dress. It was Claire's sister-in-law.

‘Please! I have to go!' she was saying.

‘You've been all over me all evening.' The guy was holding her arm. ‘You don't just walk away like that. It's not cool.'

Ray stepped between them. ‘Kelly, where've you been?'

She blinked at him, confused and, Ray saw, completely drunk. ‘Sorry, man,' he said smoothly. ‘Was my wife hitting on you? We had a row. Sorry!' He took Kelly's arm and pulled a fifty out of his pocket. ‘Will this cover your bar bill?'

The guy squinted at him. ‘Hey, aren't you—?' he began.

‘Taking her home.' Ray put his arm around Kelly and steered her through the crowd to the door.

‘Well, well,' Kelly said when they were outside. ‘Ray Devine. I wouldn't have pegged you for a hero.'

‘I wouldn't have pegged you for a cradle snatcher so we're even.' Ray whistled and a taxi pulled over.

‘Good New York whistle! I'm impressed.'

‘And completely hammered.' Ray opened the door of the taxi.

‘Time to go home.'

Ray Devine was rummaging around in her kitchen.
Not if he was the last man in the world
. Even though her mind was muddled with cocktails, Kelly remembered thinking this exact thought when he had come here for lunch with Claire. But she only had one viable follicle and he had great genes. He was ridiculously good looking with all that messy dark hair and those cheekbones and that big mouth that lead singers in bands always seemed to have. He reminded her of … but she stopped herself. She wasn't going there. That would just make her too sad. She found a compact in her bag, put on some lipgloss, pulled off her jacket and arranged herself on the sofa. She left her shoes on. He was probably the kind of guy who liked that kind of thing.

‘Your kitchen could use a clean.' Ray came in with two glasses.

‘Oh, I can think of way more fun things to do,' she gave him what she hoped was a wicked smile, ‘than clean a kitchen.'

He came over, sat down beside her and half-filled two glasses with Scotch. ‘I'm not sure you should have this.' Ray had thought about making her a sandwich but all he had found in her fridge was a couple of eggs and a frozen turkey.

‘Why don't I put on some music?' Kelly teetered over to the
stereo and nearly tripped over a pile of plates on the floor. Just looking at her was making Ray feel sober again. He finished his Scotch and picked up her glass. She'd had way too much already. She was prodding at an iPod in the dock. The sound of whale song filled the room. ‘Oops!' She giggled. There was more prodding and Feist came on.

‘Want to dance?' She held out her hand.

She really was very pretty and Ray really was very miserable. If he hadn't seen Claire's pain-in-the-arse brother, Nick, considering suicide by cake slice a few hours ago, he would have been tempted. He shook his head.

‘OK.' Kelly began to fumble with the little bow at the back of her dress. ‘Let's cut to the chase.'

‘You're supposed to be a man slut,' Kelly grumbled after Ray had managed to manoeuvre her on to the bed but refused to touch her. ‘You're supposed to sleep with everyone, irregardless. Oh, I said “irregardless”. I'm turning into an Irish person. I'll be saying “pacifically” instead of “specifically” next, “antidote” instead of “anecdote”.' Ray pulled off her shoes, tossed them on the floor and covered her with the duvet.

‘Come to bed.' She made a grab for him but he moved out of her reach. ‘You've got to be kidding me. You're turning me down?'

Ray nodded. ‘Apparently.'

‘I know why you won't sleep with me!' She sat up, suddenly.

Ray was glad she was still just about in her dress. ‘You're in love with Nick's sister.'

‘Don't be ridiculous.'

Kelly fumbled for a hair tie on the cluttered bedside table and twisted her long hair into a topknot. ‘OK,' she said, ‘if you could be with anyone, anywhere, where would you be right now?'

‘On stage in the Ruby Room in Bangkok,' Ray said, in a flash. But that was a lie. He would be sitting beside Claire Dillon on her lumpy sofa eating cereal and bickering over whose turn it was to have the remote control.

There was something weird about the bedroom, Kelly thought, when she woke up. The baby clothes that had been strewn around
the floor since Christmas had been put away, the bags neatly lined up in the corner. Her bedside table had been cleared. Plates and cups were gone from the dressing table. Someone had tidied it all while she was asleep. She put her hands over her face. Ray Devine!

Her heart jumped into her parched throat. Had something happened? She half-remembered him putting her to bed. She was pretty sure he still had all his clothes on at that point and she was still mostly dressed except for her shoes.

She crawled out of bed and went downstairs. The kitchen was gleaming. The dishes and glasses were all neatly stacked in the open dresser. The floor had been hoovered. The laundry basket was empty. He must have run the machine two or three times.

She slid into a chair and stared at the wall. She had spent weeks choosing just the right shade of grey paint but last night she'd gone out to find a random stranger to father a child. When that hadn't worked out, she had tried to sleep with Ray Devine, a man she despised. But now she couldn't even despise him any more because he'd turned her down, put her to bed and cleaned her house.

Kelly yanked open the drawer where she kept her medicines. She pulled out the last blister pack of Clomid and punched the tablets out on to the worktop one by one then ground them up with the back of a spoon, scooped the powder into her palm, and tossed it into the sink.

The doorbell woke Claire. She grabbed a sweatshirt, unlocked the kitchen door and hurried, barefoot, down the garden path. She knew it couldn't be Shane but her heart still fell when she opened the door and saw Ray slouched against the wall in the laneway.

‘Is Willow gone?'

He nodded. ‘Seven o'clock flight to London. I've been up all night.'

‘Doing what?'

‘Walking around, thinking.' This wasn't true but it sounded a hell of a lot better than ‘I've been fighting off your horny sister-in-law and cleaning her house'. ‘I need a coffee. Can I come in?'

Claire gave a little shrug. ‘OK.'

Ray took his jacket off and sat on one of the folding chairs.
Claire was wearing a long sweatshirt and her hair was pulled over one shoulder in a coppery tangle. Foreigners always thought that everyone in Ireland had red hair, but it was actually pretty unusual. It took two people with two copies of a recessive gene on chromosome 16 to make a redhead as beautiful as Claire. When she turned away to fill the kettle, he realised, with a jolt, that he would know her back anywhere. The left shoulder a fraction of an inch higher than the right. The triangle of freckles between her shoulder blades.

He knew now what had made him write ‘Asia Sky'. He cleared his throat. ‘Hey, you want to know something funny?'

‘I'm not exactly full of “ha's”, Ray.' Claire spooned coffee into a glass cafetière then poured in boiling water.

He tried to keep his voice light. ‘I've only written two decent songs in my life. One was for Willow and the other one was for you.'

Claire held up the cafetière. ‘Damn! There's a crack in this.'

‘Claire, I need …' His throat closed over a lump of emotion before he could finish.

‘I know. It's on the way.' She was still peering at the cafetière.

‘I need to tell you something. I didn't realise until Kelly said it, but it's true.'

‘Kelly?' She looked up at him suspiciously. ‘When were you talking to Kelly?'

‘I found her in a bar, really drunk, so I took her home and …'

‘What?' She was frowning at him now.

‘Nothing.' He stood up. ‘Why?' He crossed the small kitchen. ‘Would you be jealous?'

‘Jealous?' Claire's green eyes widened.

‘Shh!' He put his hands lightly on her shoulders. Then he leaned down and kissed her.

The cafetière hit the floor and smashed. Scalding coffee splashed up over Ray's jeans. He jumped away as Claire stepped out of his reach.

‘Did you hear that?' Ray was smiling. He couldn't help himself. ‘That was the sound of you and me breaking the One Kiss Clause. We have to try being a couple now for a year. That was the deal.'

Claire was looking at him as if he'd lost his mind.

He took a step towards her, heard the crackle of broken glass under his shoe and stopped. ‘I love you,' he said quietly. ‘I think that I always have. I just didn't know it till last night.'

‘Ray. You're just upset about Willow.' Claire slipped past him and grabbed his jacket. ‘Go and get some sleep.'

‘I know this is sudden but when you think about it—'

‘I don't want to think about it.'

‘You love me too, Claire.'

‘No.' She shook her head. ‘I don't. I love someone else.'

‘Richard?' Ray felt a jab of doubt, like a stitch, in his side. ‘I thought you said he was gone?'

‘He is. And now I need you to go. Please.'

Ray's heart was sinking like a stone. He'd thought it all through while he was cleaning Kelly's house. They could gut the house, turn it into one big living space. And they could have a child. They could make what neither of them had ever had – a real family.

‘Look,' he tried to find her eyes, ‘I know this is a shock, on top of finding out the truth about your mother—'

Claire froze. ‘You knew about Mum,' she said softly, ‘didn't you?'

He nodded. Even seven years after the accident, when his parents moved into Hawthorn Drive, the neighbours were still talking about ‘poor Maura Dillon'.

‘You never told me.'

‘I didn't think it would do any good.' He tried to take her hand but she pushed him away.

‘I've changed my mind,' she said. ‘You can stay.' Relief washed over him. Then he saw her face. ‘I'll go.'

‘Go where? You live here.'

She shook her head. ‘Not any more.'

Ray listened as Claire banged around in her bedroom then watched her bump her wheelie suitcase past him and up the stone steps into the garden.

After she'd closed the door, he made himself a cup of instant coffee, folded up a pizza flyer and tucked it under the leg of the wonky table, then sat down and stared around the kitchen. There
was a tiny smear of blood on the lino where Claire must have stepped on a shard of broken glass.