The Heart Whisperer (2 page)

Her dad unwrapped the stems of wilting lilac and put them down on the gravel. ‘Well …' He turned, talking to the air just
behind her shoulder, saying what he said every year. ‘I'm just going to see if I can find Phil Lynott's marker.'

There was a blank in Claire's mind where the funeral should have been. The first time she could remember coming to the graveyard was on her seventh birthday. She remembered sitting on the bottom step of the stairs and holding her feet up, one by one, so Nick could tie the buckles of her red sandals, the ones with the daisy pattern punched into the toe.

He had told her that they were going to visit their mum so she had thought that they were going to heaven because that was where everyone said that her mother had gone.

She had stood just here, holding Nick's hand, looking around at the strange stones that stuck up out of the ground and the heaps of wet clay and the faded plastic flowers under dusty plastic domes. She had been expecting angels with harps and white clouds. Why was everything so dirty? When was her mum going to appear so they could all go home?

She bent down now and touched the silver inscription on the slim, white marble headstone.

Maura Dillon (née McHugh)

Died 1st June 1983

Aged 33.

Beloved wife of Tom and mother of Claire and Nicholas.

‘Tread carefully, for you tread on my dreams.'

She rearranged the flowers, fanning the stems out so that they covered the gravel. What had her mum's dreams been? What did you dream about when you had everything to live for?

Nick took a moment before he opened the door. He had lost it there for a minute in the graveyard but he felt calmer after the drive back with Kelly. He grounded himself with an affirmation. ‘Nothing can harm me when I am guided by my higher self.'

‘Nicholas.' The old man shuffled past without looking at him and disappeared into the living room. The distant roar of a crowd at a football stadium drifted out into the hall from the TV.

‘Little boys' room?' Devine bounded past him and up the stairs.
Probably to snort a line of coke, Nick thought. What was his sister doing still hanging around with that lowlife? He watched Claire locking her decrepit old car and wobbling up the short driveway in her ridiculous shoes.

‘Look,' he said, trying to sound pleasant, ‘I don't want to cause conflict but it's really not OK to invite a stranger into my house without asking.'

Claire flushed. They would be at her dad's house if Nick hadn't insisted on having lunch here, and Ray was practically family. ‘I'll check with you next time.' Nick closed the door and she followed him down the hall to the kitchen.

The walls and the open shelves were painted French greys and greens. A pretty chandelier hung over a table and some carefully mismatched antique chairs. There was a bottle of white wine chilling in a silver bucket on the table. She was dying for a drink but she needed to pace herself.

Kelly was in the garden putting up a parasol and Claire was relieved when Nick went out help her. There were a dozen photographs mounted in white frames on the wall. Nick and Kelly in a rowing boat, in a forest, in a hammock, on bicycles, in ski gear. She scanned them until she found the one she was looking for – a black and white shot taken on the steps of the City Clerk's Office in New York. Claire had never seen a picture of their wedding. There was Kelly in a short, elegant white dress. Nick in a dark suit grinning. It made her tearful to see him look that happy but it made her happy too.

Shit! Ray thought, looking at the hunch of Claire's shoulders. She was on a downward spiral. He pulled the wine bottle out of the ice bucket and held it like a microphone. ‘And they call it …' he sang, ‘… yuppy luh-uh-uh-uve.'

‘Shh!' She pointed at the garden. ‘They'll hear you.' He handed her the wine and she took a quick gulp. ‘What's that on your face?'

‘Nothing.' He rubbed it in. It was a blob of Dr Sebagh's Serum. He'd had a little rummage in the antique cabinet in the bathroom. Kelly had great skin. He peered at a photograph of her in a pair of hiking shorts. She had great everything. Old Nick hadn't done too
badly for himself. ‘I caught Miss America checking me out in the graveyard.'

‘Don't,' Claire jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow, ‘even think about flirting with her.'

Ray put his hands up. ‘I'll behave, I promise.'

Kelly was trying to be nice, Claire could see that, but she thought that lunch would never end. Drinking in the sunshine always gave her a headache and just looking at her sister-in-law made her feel exhausted. Kelly was three years younger than she was but she made Claire feel like a scruffy teenager. She was so perfect, so polished, so completely unruffled by her dad's monosyllabic answers and Ray's little in-jokes and the fact that Nick seemed irritated by everything.

She sat there in her linen dress sipping soda water, chatting about books and films and exhibitions as if they were normal people, as if this was just an ordinary Sunday lunch. What had Nick told her, Claire wondered, about the accident? When they were growing up, he couldn't talk about their mother at all.

‘You've hardly touched your salmon, Tom,' Kelly said now. ‘Can I fix you something else?'

‘No, I'm fine, thank you.' Her dad stood up. ‘I might just go inside for a while.' He went back into the house and, after a moment, the sound of the TV drifted out into the garden again.

‘Tom Dillon. A man of few words.' Ray put down his napkin. ‘And most of them are “I'm fine”.'

‘Poor Dad,' Claire said quietly, and Nick felt a hard knot of frustration gather in his stomach. The old man wasn't some tragic figure nursing a broken heart, he was a fraud.

‘Honey,' Kelly leaned over and laced her fingers through his, ‘you haven't told Claire your news! Nick's going to be doing a regular spot as a Couples Coach on the OO in the Afternoon show. He's designed a relationship fitness programme. Isn't that fantastic?'

‘Way to go!' Ray smirked. ‘Love the radio show.' He sometimes listened to Nick's agony uncle slot on Fish FM just so he could wind Claire up about it. He'd text her messages saying
things like ‘love is a verb, not a noun' and ‘you've got to be friends to be lovers'.

Claire kicked him under the table. ‘That's fantastic news. I probably won't see it because I'll be at work.'

Ray kicked her back. ‘I can record it for you.'

‘Sounds like you're busy, Claire?' A tiny diamond on a fine chain sparkled on Kelly's collarbone. ‘What have you been up to?'

‘Um,' Claire's hand went to her locket; she pressed the small gold disc between her finger and her thumb, ‘nothing really.'

Ray refilled her glass. ‘That's not true. You did that short film and that corporate video thing and you had a couple of days on
Forensic
last month.'

‘But it wasn't really acting.' Claire flushed. Extra work didn't require an audition or up-to-date head shots or an explanation for a three-year gap in an acting résumé. You were a face in the crowd of football fans in a freezing stadium, cheering an empty pitch, or a customer in a restaurant picking at the same cold plate of food over and over while the real actors got their lines right. ‘I was just a blur in the background.'

‘I'm sure you're just being modest.'

‘Modesty is Claire's middle name.' Ray leaned over and patted Claire's hand. She laughed and swatted him away.

Nick stood up and began to collect the plates. Maura was Claire's middle name, and if he had to look at Ray Devine's smug face for one more minute he thought he might punch it. Ray was the one who'd encouraged Claire to go to drama school instead of doing medicine or teaching, and now she was in her thirties, broke, with no career prospects, living like a student, and she seemed to think it was a big joke. He dropped a pile of forks into the salad bowl with a clatter.

‘Do you want a hand?' Kelly asked him softly.

He shook his head. ‘I'm fine.' Christ, he thought, he sounded just like the old man. The kitchen was cool after the heat of the garden. He stood at the sink Seven-Eleven breathing, trying to slow his heart rate. He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt this overwhelmed.

After a minute, Claire came inside with the serving dishes. She
put them down on the draining board. She had taken off her shoes under the table; her toenails were painted purple and chipped. ‘Did I say something to upset you?'

‘I just don't think there's anything funny about the fact that your career is going down the pan.'

‘Neither do I.' She turned away and began to scrape salad leaves into the bin. ‘But it's tough out there. There's a recession. Budgets are being slashed.'

Claire had always been a terrible liar. He looked at her now. Barefoot, she only just came up to his shoulder. She seemed almost childlike, but she wasn't a kid any more. She was thirty-three. ‘I just think that maybe it's time to name the elephant.'

‘What?' She was washing her hands. She smiled at him over her shoulder.

‘The huge issue that you're pretending doesn't exist.'

‘Which is?'

What was he doing? He had spent the first half of his life trying to fix Claire. He was supposed to be done with all that. But apparently he wasn't. ‘That you don't have what it takes for a cutthroat world like acting.' Claire's smile faded. ‘I'm sure you have talent, but you don't have the …' He searched for the word. ‘… resilience.'
The ability to recover from setback and cope with rejection
. Claire had always been too soft. Too quick to give up and give in. She was doing it now.

‘I didn't come in here for a coaching session. I came in to say I was sorry …'

‘Are we all supposed to just stand here and watch you throwing your life away? What's wrong with you, Claire?'

She flinched as if he'd slapped her.

He tried to sound professional, as if she was a client instead of his sister. ‘Look, it's not rocket science. If what you do isn't working, change it. If you can't change it, do something else. Don't let your fear keep you stuck. Do one thing that scares you every day.'

‘Can she do the one thing that scares you,' Ray Devine was standing in the doorway, glaring at him, ‘instead?'

‘Damn!' Kelly said, after everyone was gone. ‘I totally forgot!' She went over to the fridge and brought out a glass stand with a cake on it. ‘I made this for Claire.'

It was perfect, like everything she put her hand to. White-iced and tied with a red satin ribbon. There was a black icing stiletto with a red sole standing on the top.

Nick had a flashback to walking down to Lennon's shop to buy Claire a cake after they got back from the graveyard that first year. He didn't remember what kind of cake he'd bought. He just knew that none of them had eaten it.

Kelly put the cake back in the fridge. ‘Honey, you look stressed. Why don't we go upstairs and Two-Listen?'

Nick shook his head. He was too burned out to talk. Whenever he was around Claire and the old man, all the years of therapy disappeared. He regressed to being a teenager, trying to fix everything again and failing. ‘Can we just Hug Until Close?'

‘Sure.'

He took her in his arms and they stood in the middle of the kitchen holding on to one another for a long time and Nick forced himself to focus on the moment. The way their breathing slowly synchronised. The weight of her hair on his bare arm, the warmth of her body through his shirt. She was his family now, this beautiful woman, not the messed-up girl and the monosyllabic old man. That was all that mattered.

‘Jesus,' Ray said. ‘Is it not enough that your brother is the King of Psychobabble? Does he have to win the prize for World's Biggest Shit too?'

‘It's not his fault.' Claire was jiggling the key in the lock of the door in the laneway.

Claire's capacity to live with broken things astonished Ray. Her taps dripped. Her water pipes howled. She had no letter ‘P' on the keyboard of her laptop. Once, Mossy had lost reverse for two months and she'd just driven around Dublin, parking on corners.

‘Let me do that.' Ray took the key and gave the door a sharp kick. A flake of faded green paint chipped off but the door swung open. He followed Claire through the tiny, nettle-choked garden
and down the steps to the door of her basement flat. ‘Your place or mine?'

Claire shook her head. ‘I've had it with today.' They went inside and she kicked off her shoes and switched on the fairy lights that were looped above the old-fashioned kitchen presses.

‘Come on. One mojito? Or a manhattan or margarita.' They were supposed to be working their way through the A to Z of cocktails but they'd been stuck on ‘M' for months.

Claire sank down on to a folding IKEA chair, put her elbows on the table and rubbed her eyes with her fingers. ‘I'm supposed to go to an open casting first thing tomorrow.'

‘For what?'

She took a baggy sweatshirt off the back of the chair and pulled it on over her head. ‘That new costume drama, The Spaniard,' she said from underneath it. Her head reappeared, her hair springing out like corkscrews. ‘I think Lorcan sent me the email by mistake.'

Ray leaned against the draining board and folded his arms. If Claire was really going to start going back to auditions, this was not a good time to do it. ‘Are you sure you're able for a cattle-call?' he said carefully.

She tugged the sweatshirt down over her knees and hugged them. ‘I'm not sure of anything,' she said.

‘Tell you what, skip the casting, let's do Muckanaghederdauhaulia. I'll make a mix-tape.' Claire loved road trips and Ray had a thing about visiting randomly named Irish villages. Thermonfeckin, Emo, Bastardstown, Camp.

Claire tugged the sweatshirt sleeves down over her knuckles. ‘I don't know.'