Valentina: A Hauntingly Intelligent Psychological Thriller (18 page)

At home, I made tea and sat on the sofa in my coat, Isla asleep in her car seat at my feet. Warming my hands on the mug, I sipped and stared at Isla’s perfect face, the soft curved rim of her eyelashes, her damp, plump bottom lip. I should focus only on this, I thought: this child. She was all that mattered. But I couldn’t focus on her, only on my unease. Something had changed between Valentina and me just now at the swimming baths, in the café, and it was that change, nothing else, which lay at the heart of how I felt now. I had not asked about the man in the car but why should I? What she did was her business, not mine. But this not asking had created a distance and I wondered if she felt it too. Today, we had enjoyed each other’s company as we always did. So, on the surface, nothing had changed. But it was a surface, it seemed, neither of us dared to scratch. Was that wrong
–
not to have scratched? Isn’t that what close friends did
–
told each other things
–
everything, sometimes?

But perhaps there was nothing to tell. The rain had been heavy. Red hair can look dark in a certain murky light. I hadn’t seen him in profile. I couldn’t have said whether it was Red or Billy or Bob. There was nothing, no secret, no mystery. I thought of Jeanie, how she always joked that the two of us could never fall out. If we did, she used to say, for reasons of privacy alone, one of us would have to murder the other.

In my memory, Mikey’s homecomings take the form of one single event in which we fly into each other’s arms. And yes, it was true
–
sometimes the second thing he did was put his bags down. But sometimes, we sat upright on the kitchen chairs, his kitbag a great black obstacle between us on the floor. On these occasions, we were solicitous with one another, almost formal, as if natural speech was or would not be possible until the physical conversation had taken place.

This was one of those times. Late October, the weather had turned for good, the air fresh, nippy. Isla was asleep in the living room when he came in and threw his kitbag on the stone tiles. But we did not rush at each other. Instead, we made tea and talked
–
no, not talked
–
we found things to say, both rigid on those stiff-backed chairs. He looked exhausted, face pale, black shadows under his eyes.

“
You look so tired, honey,” I said. “Your face is totally drained. You’re working far too hard.”

He smiled and closed his eyes. “I’m fine.”

“
Can’t you take Monday off? Take a long weekend?”

“
You worry too much, you do.”

I reached across the table for his hand. He leant forward, pushed my hair behind my ear, let his fingers linger there. We stayed like that in perfect stillness, smiling stupidly at the small wonder of ourselves, until he scraped his chair across the tiles and brought his face towards mine. I can see him now, lips parted, eyes closing for our kiss. And then, from the living room, Isla’s heartbroken wail sending us back, laughing.

“
When you’re a teenager you worry about your parents catching you,” I said. “When you’re a parent ...”

Mikey took both my hands in his, kissed the knuckles one by one with a kind of reverence. He was always so adoring when he got back from offshore, worshipping, almost repentant.

He stood to fetch his daughter. “I’ll deal with you later, Miss McGilvery. One thing at a time.”

Time. Time to eat, to give the baby a bath, to coax her into her cot, into dreamland. Time to love. Delayed, our kiss became an event
–
with its own build-up
–
not something we could simply ... do.

We got into bed strange and shy, our pyjamas providing a kind of belated modesty. I lit one of the oil lamps I’d made with Isla.

“
To remind you of your other home,” I said, positioning it on the bedside table. “See the flame? That’s the gas flare. The jar is the rig. You’re in there somewhere, sleeping, in your wee bunk.”

“
I tell you, it smells too nice in here to be a bunk.”

The miniature gas flare hissed. We watched its abstract theatre play out in shadows on the wall. I trailed my fingers down the soft hair of his belly, slid my hand into his pyjama bottoms.

“
Bet your bunk mate doesn’t do this.” I kissed his neck, took a firm grip of him.

“
I’d bloody kill him if he did.”

“
You could close your eyes and pretend it was me.”

“
Never.” He rolled me onto my back, met my gaze with his: his face becoming hazy. His kiss came at last and with it my insides raced. He drew back, the kindness in his eyes replaced by an intensity that was almost cruel. “There’s only you, Shone. You are a one-off.”

Buttons can be unbuttoned. Strange can become familiar, shy can become bold, what has been shrouded can be revealed. Your lover’s skin is your skin, his hands your hands, his mouth, your own
–
searching, finding, in the warm light of home. I fell into him, felt the heady release that falling brings.

“
I love you,” I said, gripping handfuls of his soft hair, sitting astride him, easing him into me. “I love you so much.”

“
I love you too.” He sat up and closed his mouth around my nipple, took my buttocks in his hands and moved us both towards the edge of the bed. My legs wrapped around him, he stood and walked us over to the bedroom door. “I miss you every single day.”

“
Oh God,” I managed, between gasps, my shoulder blades rubbing against the smooth wood of the door. “Oh God oh God oh God ...”

Sex is weird, isn’t it? I only mean in the sense that sometimes, afterwards, the return to the mundane can feel surreal. One minute, you’re as intimate as it’s possible to be, the next you can be talking about, I don’t know, what television programme you fancy watching the next night or whether the bins need emptying.

“
I’ve invited Valentina and Red over for dinner on Wednesday night,” I told Mikey once we’d snuggled down under the covers, my head on his chest, our legs intertwined. “I’ve finally got around to inviting them.” I was hoping that, upon meeting Red, I would find in him some trace of the man I had seen in her car. I was keen to move forward from the awkwardness I had felt these last weeks.

“
Who’s Red?” Mikey asked.

I hit him on the chest. “Valentina’s husband, stupid!”

“
Oh. Yes. Right.”

“
I haven’t met him, myself,” I said. I was wide awake now. Sex does that to me sometimes. “I’ve seen a picture though. He’s got proper red hair. That’s why they call him Red.”

“
No shit.”

I sniggered, kissed his chest. “Funny that they both have red hair, isn’t it, with Zac being so dark? She didn’t say whether we should call him Graham or Red or what. I’ll have to ask her.”

A deep, low breath. Another.

“
Mikey?”

The rig always tired him out, poor lamb. He was dead to the world.

On Wednesday morning Valentina sent a text:

Red got man cold.

OK to come me myself and I tonight?

No worries if you wanna cancel.

My first thought was that they’d fought. He’d found out she was seeing someone else and there’d been a showdown. My second thought was that she knew what I’d seen and knew that if I saw Red, I would realise he was not the same man as the one in the car. My third thought was that Red might have a cold. That there was no lover, no deception. I decided to call her.

She answered after a couple of rings. “Shona, hi!”

It was noisy in the background, like a café or an office.

“
Shit, sorry, Val. I forgot you’re at work. Are you in the middle of a class?”

“
About to be. They’re getting changed. Is that OK about Red? Did you want to cancel?”

“
Of course not. I was just checking you were all right. I thought you’d had a fight or something, I don’t know.”

“
Why would you think that?”

“
No reason.” I hesitated. I’d said the wrong thing. A phone rang in the background. It didn’t sound like a mobile phone. “Where are you?”

“
Church Hall. No one under eighty allowed unless accompanied by both parents.” She laughed. “Yikes, think I might have said that a bit loud. I’ll see you later anyway. Want me to bring anything?”

“
No. Not at all. Yourself. And Red, obviously, if he feels better.”

“
Will do.”

We said our goodbyes, rang off.

I’d bought ingredients for a lamb tagine. I’d never made one before and it felt like the most monumental effort to actually plan and cook something from a book. I cleaned the cottage and laid the fire, then, around six, started on the food. I was still chopping coriander with my apron on when Valentina’s car pulled up outside at 7:30pm. I had said 8 for 8:30pm. I checked my appearance in the hall mirror and swore at my reflection. I was a total mess. Hadn’t had time even to brush my hair or do anything that would make me look less like the wreck of the damn Hesperus. I had planned to make myself decent in the last half an hour
–
a half hour I no longer had. And the table hadn’t been set.

I opened the door and stepped out.

“
Hi there,” I called across to her as she got out of the car.

She blew a kiss and waved
–
like celebrities do on the red carpet
–
and emerged from behind the car. She was wearing a white woollen coat I hadn’t seen before with high spike-heeled boots. Here on my driveway stood a woman who would not have looked out of place at a law firm cocktail party or an elegant dinner in the world of high finance.

I looked down at my tartan slippers, covered in crusted baby food, at my apron, spattered with sauce. Thank God I’d thought to have a shower while Isla had her nap. At least I was clean. What kind of boast that was, I don’t know. I reached behind me to untie my apron but found I couldn’t unpick the knot. She was opening the back door of the car, pulling out a bunch of flowers from the seat.

She sashayed
–
she could do this, even on gravel
–
toward the gate, pushed through, kicked it shut behind her. She shook back her hair. It was super straight, shining with a high gloss even in the falling light. As she came forward, I could see she’d put on lipstick, the same colour as her hair, setting off her polished appearance to a kind of dusky, autumnal perfection. Yoga girl, high-polished executive: she had, I realised, a chameleon-like quality.

“
Hey, babe.” She kissed me on the cheek and handed me the flowers: three exotic, bird-like plants, bright, spiked heads like cock’s combs. “These are for you.” She bowled into the house.

I closed the door against the cold night. “Let me take your coat.”

But she had already taken it off and was hanging it on the hook. She smiled and walked across my path, into the living room.

“
Oh, you’ve lit a fire, how lovely.”

I made my way back to the kitchen, laid the flowers on the counter and began to wash the last few pots in the sink. I should have offered her a drink but irritation had taken hold of me and, if I’m honest, powerlessness had made me resort to this pettiness: not offering her a drink yet. She was so early. Why? And why come at all when her husband was so sick he couldn’t make it? Under the same circumstances I would never have come. I wouldn’t have wanted to leave Mikey alone when he was ill. Valentina must, I realised, have been nothing short of desperate to come ... here, to this wee house in the middle of nowhere, for what? We weren’t exactly the bright lights, Mikey and I, the big ticket, and yet here she was. Since I’d met her, I’d thought I needed her friendship more than she needed mine but that night I thought: maybe not.

She came to stand next to me at the sink, put her arm around me and kissed me on the cheek. I could see us both reflected in the black window: her, taller in high heels; me, a dwarf, in slippers. I moved away, went to get the nibbles, came back with bowls, a packet of nuts and a bag of crisps.

She was leaning back against the counter, her rather formal black dress opaque and fitted, showing off her yoga teacher’s body every bit as much as her swimming costume did. I turned back to my task, tried not to notice that I was sucking in my stomach, tried not to admit to myself how pathetic that was.

“
I hope I’ve got a vase big enough for those lovely flowers,” I said, pouring out the nuts. “They look like they’ve been carved from wood. What are they, by the way, they’re beautiful.” And expensive, I thought but didn’t say.

“
African lilies,” she said, turning to open the glassware cupboard, reaching out two flutes. “There’s a spectacular florist off my road. I always ask for Rachel. She gets whatever I want for me.” She pushed back a lock of hair that had fallen over her face and winked. “Can I do anything?”

“
There’s a couple of bottles of fizz in the fridge. You could open one of those.”

“
Now there’s a job I can do.” Her delivery dripped with suggestion, and it made me smile the way your naughtiest friends do sometimes. I couldn’t help but watch her as she strode over to the fridge and flung it open
–
she had the unapologetic bodily confidence of an actor and my God her stomach was as flat as a chopping board. “Shall I bring these olives out too? Oh look, you’ve done little rolls of
–
is that Parma ham? God, I love Parma ham, yum.”

“
It’s bresaola, actually,” I said. “It’s got rocket and Parmesan inside. Just a recipe I found.”

Black against the white light of the fridge, Valentina tipped back her head, pinched a roll from the plate and lowered it whole into her open, waiting mouth. She closed her eyes and gave an indecent groan. “God. That. Is. So. Good.” She swallowed, opened her eyes. “Where’s Michael? Not had another heart attack has he?”