The Heart Whisperer (12 page)

Nick wasn't on air today but he'd arranged to meet Oonagh for a coffee. She was in the corner of the station canteen, her hair in rollers, her head bent over a plate of chunky chips and a copy of
Grazia
. Nick had already drunk two coffees but he bought a third anyway just to use up more time before he had to admit to her that he'd broken his word. Kelly wasn't going to tell anyone about the Channel 5 show but Rory was probably standing on the corner of Grafton Street and Stephen's Green right now with a megaphone.

Oonagh pointed at a double-page spread as he sat down. ‘Team Angelina? Or Team Aniston? I'd say you're more a Jen than an Angie.'

Nick took a breath.
Name it and tame it
. ‘Look, Oonagh, I'll understand if you're angry about this—'

‘I'm not going to kill you if you pick the wrong one.'

‘I told my wife and a friend about the Clingfilms project.'

Oonagh dipped a chip in a pool of ketchup. ‘I told Owen at the weekend. He kept asking me when we were going to London to meet the production team. I had to put him out of his misery.'

Nick exhaled a sigh of relief. ‘How did he react?'

‘When I told him they wanted a different co-presenter he just roamed around the house with a face like a smacked arse. When I told him it might be you, he started sleeping in the study.'

She licked her finger and began to thumb through the pages of the magazine quickly, then tossed it on to the next table. ‘Honestly. Gorgeous younger woman,' she pointed at herself with a scarlet fingernail, ‘left alone in the marital bed by a man who is about to qualify for his bus pass. You couldn't make it up, could you?'

She looked at her plate of chip halves wistfully then picked one up. ‘This is what happens when I fight with him. I crave carbs. I've just had lunch and all I can think about is dinner. Hey!' she said. ‘There's an idea. The four of us. You, me and the WAHs. I can have you at my place. Owen will have to stop sulking if your lovely wife is there.'

‘WAHs?'

‘Wives and husbands, Nick. You're going to have to be a bit
more au fait with popular culture when you're on a mainstream TV show. How's Saturday?'

‘Look at us!' Eilish said, twisting the wing mirror of a generator van and peering into it. ‘How hot are we?'

They had arrived at the set for the hair care ad at seven and it was now lunchtime. They had been in wardrobe and make-up for five hours. They'd both been fitted with beautiful satin bridesmaid's dresses. Eilish's was a pale, peony pink with a tightly boned bodice that gave her Marilyn Monroe curves. Claire's was cut on the bias in an opalescent green. Layers of heavy make-up concealed her freckles and gave her cheekbones she didn't have. The feathery fake eyelashes that had taken nearly an hour to insert made her dark green eyes look enormous.

‘We do look pretty good,' she admitted, checking herself out in the fisheye of the mirror. ‘Apart from the hair.'

The half-dozen bridesmaids in the ad, the hair stylist had explained,
hadn't
used Vitalustre conditioner. The bride
had
. She was going to throw a bottle of conditioner instead of a bouquet and they were all going to try to catch it. So Claire's curls had been back-combed into a tangle of frizz and Eilish's bob had been combed through with baby oil to make it look lank.

‘I don't care. They could shave my head for thirteen hundred euros,' Eilish said, cheerfully, as they joined the queue for lunch. ‘And I'll catch anything,' she clutched Claire's arm, ‘except salmonella from Greasy Pete.'

Pete Purdue's catering van was notorious. His salmon parcels had nearly killed a clapper loader on
Revenge of the Dawn
. He was in his late thirties with dark, greasy, waist-length hair and a massive crush on Eilish. He was waving at her now, but she pretended not to see him and, instead, steered Claire past the van to a table laid with cheese and fruit.

‘Tell me more about Ray's love child,' Eilish said, spreading Brie on a wheat thin.

‘Nothing to tell.' Claire sighed. ‘I still haven't been able to talk to him.'

‘It's bad enough him blundering in on you and that gorgeous
guy but not wanting to see his own daughter.' Eilish snipped some grapes from a cluster with scissors. ‘That's just inhuman. But maybe it's better, he'd be a pretty awful father.'

‘I don't know,' Claire said. Though the truth was, she did. She just hoped she was wrong.

‘Everybody!' the first AD called. ‘First positions please.' The bridesmaids lined up on the grass by the fountain. ‘Turn over and action.'

The bride had a waterfall of shining blonde hair but she was a terrible shot. The Vitalustre bottle kept flying over the head of the bridesmaid who was supposed to catch it or falling short and exploding on the grass. Once it went sideways and the lighting cameraman had to duck out of the way to avoid being decapitated.

Claire jumped and jumped again. After twenty-two takes, sweat was running down the back of her neck and her calves were aching. Finally, on take twenty-three, the shot went like a dream. The bride tossed the bottle over her shoulder and it flew straight into the hand of the right bridesmaid. The crew cheered.

‘We're just going to do one more shot for luck,' Desmond, the director, yelled from behind the camera. ‘Bridesmaids, you're looking a bit limp.' He held up the Vitalustre bottle. ‘I want you to look as if you want this more than you want George Clooney's babies.'

Conditioner had never worked on Claire's hair but she lined up with the other bridesmaids and got ready to jump one last time.

The bride threw the bottle and this time, it came straight at Claire. Before she could stop herself her hand shot up to catch it. She heard her own Maria Sharapova-esque grunt as her fingers closed around the bottle, then she heard a sharp ‘crack' as her elbow connected with something soft, and when she looked down Eilish was on her knees with blood pouring from her nose.

‘This is what I should have worn to my wedding.' Eilish gazed down at her ruined dress while they were waiting in A & E. ‘It turned out to be a bloody mess too. I thought marriage was for life, but after Holly goes, I'll be on my own.'

‘You'll meet someone.'

‘I'm too cynical to let my guard down again.'

‘Wedding brawl?' a man with a stab wound in the next chair asked, giving their dresses a once-over.

‘Yeah.' Eilish held up her fists. ‘You should have seen the bride.'

After she had finally been X-rayed, had her broken nose set and the half-inch gash over her eyebrow stitched up, Claire drove Eilish home to Sandymount and helped her out of her dress and put her into bed.

‘I'm so sorry,' she said, handing over an ice pack. ‘I'm officially the world's worst friend.'

‘Emma Lacey is the world's worst friend. You come a close second. Now give me another one of those painkillers.' Claire handed one over. ‘And a glass of wine.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘It's for the pain!' Eilish groaned. ‘The terrible, terrible pain.'

Claire ran to the kitchen.

‘Claire! I'm messing. It could have happened to anyone. We'll put it in
Eyelash and Eclair
. We'll still be laughing at it when we're ninety. Now hurry up and get that wine, “Wold's Second Worst Friend”.'

The Clancys' house was on a pleasant suburban road in Sutton but it looked as if it had been airlifted in from the Hollywood Hills. It had a vast steel and glass extension with, bizarrely, a grass roof on it. When Kelly had seen it in
Irish
Homes magazine the grass had been neatly trimmed, but now it was like a meadow.

Owen answered the door with a tumbler of whisky in his hand. A naked baby was crawling along the Paul Smith runner behind him towards a steep flight of stairs.

‘Oops!' Kelly darted past him and caught up with the baby as he was hauling himself up on to the first step. He looked at her for a moment and then began to cry.

A girl of about four in pyjamas with a plastic bag tied around her shoulders like a cape appeared above them on the suspended glass walkway. ‘Excuse me!' she said politely to Kelly. ‘Can you turn that baby down! We're trying to play.'

Oonagh Clancy came up from the kitchen in a clingy pink
velour tracksuit and high-heeled gold sandals. ‘Oi, Oslo! Put a sock in it!' The baby stopped crying and bobbed his head round Kelly's neck towards her. ‘You're Kelly, right?' She sounded different now that she wasn't on TV. ‘Look at the state of me.' She planted a kiss on Kelly's cheek. ‘The sitter called in sick. I haven't had time to get changed or change this yoke.'

‘I'll look after him.'

‘Are you sure?'

Kelly put her arms out, took the baby and held his warm weight against her chest. ‘Just show me where everything is.'

‘Paris! Vienna!' Oonagh called up to the mezzanine. ‘Get the nappies and the wipes from the fertility room.' She smiled at Kelly. ‘It's the utility room but it's where all the kids were conceived. Owen is scared to even look at the tumble dryer in case I get pregnant again. Darling,' she said over her shoulder, ‘take Nick into the den and make him comfortable.'

‘Glenmorangie? Dalwhinnie? Lagavulin?' Owen was standing, like a bouncer, in front of a cabinet full of single malts.

Nick didn't drink but he didn't want to refuse. ‘Whatever you're having.'

‘I'm having a double.' Owen pulled the cork out of a bottle and half-filled two tumblers.

Nick forced a sour mouthful of whisky down his throat. ‘That's quite a view.' He went over to the window and pretended to look out at the stretch of beach and the patchwork green hill of Ireland's Eye. But it was hard to enjoy the scenery with Owen looming behind him.

‘I remain confident and unaffected by negativity,' he told himself, under his breath. Then he turned around. ‘Listen, Owen, I'm sorry if I've stepped on your toes.'

Owen frowned. ‘If you stepped on my toes, you'd know all about it.'

The little girl Nick had seen from the hall ran into the room holding the edges of her bin-bag cloak with her fingertips.

‘Oslo's spitted up all over the lady!' she said, delightedly. ‘And it's orange.'

‘Aargh! I know there's Vanish in here somewhere.' Oonagh slid open the lacquered doors of the floor-to-ceiling units. She had changed into a low-cut white jersey dress while Kelly was changing the baby.

I want this
, Kelly thought, and she didn't mean the Eileen Gray table or the Arne Jacobsen chair or the Stuart Haygarth chandelier. She wanted the jumble of plushie toys and LEGO on the floor and the bottom half of the pair of pink pyjamas that had been abandoned at the door of the bathroom and the dusting of baby powder on her fingertips.

‘What are we going to do about your dress?' Oonagh frowned.

‘It'll come off with baby wipes.' Kelly handed Oslo over to Oonagh and opened a packet.

‘You'd better not puke on Mummy, you little tinker.' Oonagh lifted the baby up and kissed the powdery folds of his fat thighs. ‘Or she'll take you back to the shop!'

Kelly blotted away the stains on her dress, wiped her hands carefully and put them out to take Oslo again.

‘Gorgeous
and
an earth mother!' Oonagh gave her a calculating look and Kelly looked right back. She had met plenty of women like her. If Nick had been a different kind of man, she'd have been worried.

Oonagh handed Oslo over. ‘No wonder your husband is impervious to my charms.'

The two little girls were planted in front of a DVD in their bedroom, but Kelly insisted on holding on to the baby. She ate with one hand while he sat gurgling on her lap. Owen barely spoke. Oonagh and Nick talked non-stop about Clingfilms. Kelly tried to look interested but every time Oslo turned his head and pressed his warm cheek against her face she felt her heart softly implode.

‘That was a wonderful meal,' she said when Oonagh was clearing the plates. ‘Who does the cooking?'

‘The Butler's Pantry in Howth. When you have three kids everything except chicken nuggets and spaghetti hoops goes out the window.' Oonagh sighed. ‘You two lovers probably had breakfast in bed this morning and a candlelit dinner last night.'

Nick smiled at Kelly.

‘Who needs breakfast in bed?' Kelly ruffled Oslo's fuzz of sticky-up hair. ‘When you have this sweet little monkey to wake up to.'

‘Sorry, love,' Oonagh laughed, ‘but I think you're talking through your ovaries.'

Even after he'd brushed his teeth, Nick could still taste the whiskey on his tongue. It turned his stomach. The whole evening had made him feel nauseous. Dinner had been awkward. Oonagh hadn't seemed to notice how rude Owen was being and every time he tried to talk to Kelly she was fussing with the baby. Afterwards they'd moved to some uncomfortable sofas around a rock and gas fire. Owen had finished off the bottle of whisky and dozed off. Then, just when he thought they could leave, Oonagh had produced an iPad and spent the next hour and a half showing Kelly photographs of her children.

When he came out of the bathroom, Kelly had lit candles and put on a relaxation CD. The bedroom sounded as if it was full of bickering birds.

She was sitting cross-legged on the bed, her dark hair caught up in a loose ponytail, wearing tiny white cotton shorts and a camisole. They hadn't planned to have sex. Nick wasn't sure he was up to it. ‘I know tonight was awful,' he said. ‘Thank you for being there for me.'

She smiled. ‘I'd like to share something with you.'

Nick hauled himself on to the bed, sat cross-legged opposite her and took her hands.

‘I know how much you want this Clingfilms job and I'm here to support you every step of the way.'

‘What I hear you saying—' he began.

But she put a finger on his lips. ‘I don't want to Two Listen,' she said gently. ‘I just need you to hear me.' He nodded. ‘I know we agreed to wait until I'm thirty-three to try for a baby but I want to be sure that, when we do, it'll happen.'