The Heart Whisperer (25 page)

Ray sat down heavily on the cold metal step. ‘Jesus! What happened?'

‘He fell off a ladder. He was in hospital for a month.'

‘A month?' Ray stared up at her. He felt as if the cold had slowed his brain. ‘Your dad was in hospital for a month? Why didn't you tell me?'

She shrugged and the things they'd said to one another the night they rowed came back to him.

‘Jesus, I turn my back for a minute and you acquire a dog.'

‘I turned my back for a minute,' Claire said dryly, ‘and you acquired a daughter.' She was shifting from bare foot to bare foot on the path, and he knew she must be frozen. She hated the cold.

‘I'm sorry about the things I said. Especially the things I said about you and your mum. I didn't mean any—'

‘Let's not go back there. But I'm sorry about the things I said about you too.'

‘Still friends?'

Claire's hair fell over her face and he couldn't see her expression. ‘I don't know, Ray.' He swallowed. ‘I know that's awkward. Do you want me to move out? It might take a while to find a landlord who's willing to take Dog.'

‘You can both stay for as long as you like.' Ray's teeth were chattering now and Claire was shivering but he didn't want her to go back inside. ‘I'm seeing Willow again, like you said I should. I'm looking after her on Friday.'

‘She's so lovely and I hope …' He wondered if she was remembering that he'd told her it was none of her business. ‘I hope it works out.'

‘Why don't you come along? We could have a Perfect Day or—'

‘I can't.'

‘I could change it to Saturday.' He looked at her profile behind the sleek curtain of her hair. ‘Sunday?'

‘I'm going away.'

‘Where?'

‘To Wexford. I met someone.'

‘The guy from Johnny Foxes?'

‘Someone else.'

Ray picked up a pebble and threw it at the rusting patio heater marooned in the patch of nettles. He missed. ‘Is he nice?'

Claire nodded.

He felt the icy trickle of a raindrop on the back of his neck and then another one. ‘But we can still hang out sometimes?'

Claire shivered. ‘I think I need some space.' It was raining properly now and there was a touch of sleet in the rain.

‘The question is,' Ray said, ‘are we talking the space between the prongs of a cake fork or the space between Alpha Centauri and Polaris?'

‘I don't know.'

Dog, who had been dreamily sniffing a nettle, looked up at the sky and retreated to the back door. Ray's face was wet. ‘I can't
stand Lorraine,' he sang softly to the tune of ‘I Can't Stand the Rain'.

‘I'd better go in,' Claire said. ‘I think Dog is getting cold.'

“Night, Claire.'

“Night, Ray.'

The light in Claire's kitchen went off and then, after a minute, the light in her bedroom went off too. Ray sat on the step watching the garden through the silver threads of sleet. It took a long time but finally it happened, the way it always used to when he was young. He stopped feeling cold and he just felt numb.

Claire lay in the dark beneath the duvet, shivering, waiting to hear Ray's footsteps going back up the fire escape, but the garden was quiet. She knew he was sitting out there in the rain the way he had been that first day she'd spoken to him. Part of her wanted to go out there and bring him in again but another part of her was still wounded by the things he'd said. And she had seven months to keep her promise to herself. Things had only just started with Richard. If she really wanted a relationship, Eilish was right. She was better off without Ray.

After the day that Claire took him back to her dad's house, Dog seemed somehow diminished. He was scared of things that hadn't bothered him before. The hairdryer, the kettle, hot-water bottles. He backed away from the Hoover and squeezed himself into the narrow space between the fridge and the cooker. He was like descriptions of houses written by estate agents that said ‘deceptively large', Claire thought. Except, inside, he was deceptively small.

‘I have to do this!' She switched on the Hoover. Richard was picking her up in the morning and she wanted to make the right impression. ‘I'll be as quick as I can.' She would have been quicker if Dog didn't shed so much. Grey tumbleweeds were drifting around the hall and the bedroom carpet had a fine blur of fur. Dog wasn't technically allowed in there but none of the doors in the flat closed properly.

He was still tucked in beside the fridge after she'd washed down all the floors and polished the mirrors and bleached the loo and the bath. He looked so dejected that she gave him the portion of Eilish's garlic and tarragon chicken that she'd defrosted for herself.

He licked the bowl clean then lay staring at the back door as if he was waiting for her dad to burst in and rescue him at any moment. He might, Clare thought sadly, be waiting a very long time. At exactly six o'clock, Dog got up and went into the living room and sat in front of the TV. Claire followed him in and turned on the news. She looked around, trying to see the room through Richard's eyes. Her cluttered bookshelves, her yellow velvet chaise longue, her collection of junk-shop mirrors and her
flower fairy lights. ‘Is it shabby chic?' she asked Dog. ‘Or just shabby?' But he didn't look at her, he was mesmerised by Anne Doyle.

Richard was standing in the laneway holding a can of WD40. He sprayed it into Claire's lock. ‘Try it now.'

Claire slipped her key in and the lock turned with a velvety click. ‘Wow!'

‘Wow yourself!' He looked at her short grey dress and then put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her. Nobody had kissed her properly for three years. She had forgotten how nice it felt. If Ray looked out of his window, Claire thought, he'd see them. Then she stopped herself thinking and concentrated on kissing.

‘We should go,' Richard said, pulling away, ‘before I decide I want to stay.'

Dog wagged his tail when he saw Richard. He liked men. He was always checking them out in the park.

Richard did a double-take. ‘OK! I was expecting a Paris Hilton handbag number. What is that?'

‘He's a hairy lurcher,' Claire said. ‘But he's not mine. He's my dad's. I'm just minding him for a while.'

‘Does he have to come along?'

‘I think a day out might cheer him up.'

‘Would you mind if we took
your
car?' Richard said. ‘I've just spent the morning cleaning mine.'

Claire had done her best with her flat but Mossy might as well have a neon sign on his roof – visible from space – that read: ‘Claire Dillon's life is a mess.'

Richard picked up a broken wiper from the floor. ‘Do you mind my asking what you do if it rains?'

‘It still works.' Claire didn't look at him. ‘You just have to use it manually.'

‘You're joking.' Richard started to laugh.

She was trying to see out through the rear-view mirror but Dog was standing up on the back seat and all she could see was a wall of grey fur.

‘Down!' she said. Dog pretended not to hear her and tried to nibble the back of Richard's hair.

‘Down!' Richard said in a deep voice, and Dog crumpled as if he'd been shot. ‘It's a pack thing.' He grinned. ‘You have to show them who's top dog.'

‘I saw some rough cuts of the viral campaign on Friday,' Richard said when they were on the N11. ‘But they weren't right. I've told the agency to go back and re-edit.'

‘Oh God!' Claire said, crashing into fourth and hoping that Mossy was going to keep his car BO in check. It got worse in higher gears. ‘That doesn't sound good.'

‘It's fine. I've seen the rushes. We've got what we need. You did an amazing job.' He put his arm along the back of her seat. ‘So I suppose we should get the history thing out of the way. What's your longest relationship been?'

‘Nearly three years.'

‘Mine too. Three years exactly. I'm still good friends with all my exes, though. How about you?'

‘Not really.'

‘I get that.' Richard flipped down the sun visor. A piece of moss from the soft top fell on to his leg. He brushed it off. ‘It would be hard for a guy to just be friends with you. He'd always want more. How long have you been single?'

‘Three years.'

‘Snap. Do you share your place?'

‘I live on my own.' Claire was relieved that she didn't have to explain that her best friend was an incredibly handsome guy who used to be famous and that he lived upstairs and that there was a connecting door.

Richard's parents lived in a farmhouse just outside Wexford town. There were some strange tubular sculptures on the lawn. A collection of chipped statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary were gathered, in a menacing cluster, around a pot-bellied stove in the porch. The massive chandelier in the hall was made out of tarnished silver cutlery. Claire followed Richard down some steps into the kitchen. It was huge and low ceilinged and every wall was
covered with paintings. There were big abstract canvases, shimmery watercolours and scribbled pen and ink sketches. A charcoal drawing of a large naked man hung above the range. Richard's mother, in jeans and a blue T-shirt, was at a wooden table hacking at a leg of lamb with a blunt carving knife.

‘Thank God.' Her long, dark hair was shot through with silver. She pushed it out of her eyes. ‘Can you fix this bloody knife?'

‘This is Jean,' Richard said, ‘my mum. This is Claire.'

Jean wiped her hands on a tea towel. ‘We've all been dying to meet you.' She came over and hugged Claire. She smelled of roasting meat and L'Air du Temps. ‘You were a huge hit with Helen. I have to warn you, she's already named all your future children.'

‘Where's the knife sharpener?' Richard was rummaging in the drawer. He noticed the drawing above the fireplace. ‘God! Is that—?'

‘Frank Murphy.' His mother nodded. ‘He's our next-door neighbour,' she said to Claire. ‘Amazing physique. You'd never know it if you saw him with his clothes on.'

‘Oh, Mum!' Richard said. ‘Do we have to?'

‘Leave me alone,' she grabbed the knife back, ‘and go and nag your sisters. I told them to lay the table but they're probably just laying into the wine.'

Aine was two years older than Helen, but they could have been twins. They were sprawled across two sofas in the cluttered living room, their dark heads bent over the Sunday papers.

Helen jumped up. ‘I was going to apologise for being so pissed the last time I met you.' She sighed, tragically. ‘But there's no point now. We're already on to our second bottle of white. This is my big sister Aine. This is Claire, the actress of the slutty shoes.'

‘She does look like a young Julianne Moore.' Aine stared at Claire approvingly.

‘Now if I could only act like her,' Claire said, ‘I'd be sorted.'

Jean gave Dog the lamb bone and he carried it off reverently to a corner of the kitchen while the rest of them went into the living room where the table had finally been laid. They barely fitted around it. Jean, Richard, Claire, Aine and Helen, Richard's dad –
Sean – and Andreas, Helen's boyfriend, who looked like a Greek god and spoke hardly any English.

Helen and Aine were a rowdy double act. They grilled Claire all through lunch. About her job, her flat, her shoes, her encounter with Jonathan Rhys Meyers and her preference for wearing skin illuminator under or over her foundation. When they ran out of questions, they turned on Richard.

‘Richard couldn't sleep,' Helen speared a potato off his plate, ‘if his CDs weren't all in alphabetical order. I used to swap around Backstreet Boys and Right Said Fred and he'd have nightmares for a week.'

‘I don't even know who Right Said Fred is,' Richard scoffed.

‘Oh yes you do.' Aine smirked. ‘ “I'm too Sexy for My Shirt”. You used to sing it into a hairbrush in the bathroom mirror.'

‘Helen's room was a no-go area.' Richard refilled Claire's glass. ‘It looked like a bomb had gone off in an underwear factory.'

‘True. Aine once sent me a postcard from Irish College,' Helen snorted, ‘addressed to Helen Daly, Knickeragua.'

‘Nicaragua?' Andreas frowned at Helen.

‘She doesn't mean the place, sweetheart!' Helen said. ‘She means my room was full of knickers.' She pulled up her skirt. ‘Pants!'

‘Helen!' Jean rolled her eyes. ‘Can we get through one lunch without seeing your underwear?'

‘Seriously, Claire, you need to know what you're getting into here,' Aine said. ‘Richard has lost two grandparents, three cats and a gerbil—'

‘A hamster,' Richard interrupted.

‘—but I've only ever seen him crying once, when he caught Helen using his razor to shave her legs.'

Helen lifted one leg up and pretended to shave it with the handle of her fork.

‘What do you both do?' Claire said. ‘When you're not trying to embarrass your brother?'

‘Touché.' Aine grinned. ‘I'm an engineer and Helen's a chemist.'

‘I work for Big Pharma and Andreas is a sheep farmer in Crete.' Helen ran her hand up the back of Andreas's shirt. ‘It's perfect!'

‘Before we get into the Helen and Andreas show,' Aine said, ‘I
need to point out that Richard did have his uses. He could do a brilliant forgery of Mum's handwriting when we wanted to mitch and he makes the world's best full Irish breakfast.'

Helen rolled her eyes. ‘That's because he timed the ideal cooking length for every ingredient in a fry – mushrooms, eggs, bacon, sausages – and made a little chart thing with symbols. Mum still has it somewhere.'

‘Anything else you'd like to add?' Richard pushed his plate away. ‘Or have you finished destroying my character?'