Valentina: A Hauntingly Intelligent Psychological Thriller (21 page)

“
Ally bally, ally bally bee,

Sittin on yer mammy’s knee,

Greetin’ for a wee bawbee,

Tae buy some Coulter’s Candy.
”

She calmed down a little but still each one of her cries pierced the skin and bones of me. She was still so hot, her head lolled back against my arm. Was she simply sleepy or was she becoming listless? Feeling terribly alone, I dialled Valentina’s number.

As always these days, she answered straight away.

“
Val,” I said, halfway to crying. “Isla’s sick. She’s really sick. She’s shitting green, it’s like soup and I can’t get her temperature to go down. I’m going to have to cancel. I won’t get out for food, I won’t get out I don’t think all day, I ... I think I need to take her to hospital.”

“
Shona. Shona?”

I made myself shut up.

“
Shona, listen. You’re right, you do need to take her in. It’s going to be OK, but she might need a saline drip, maybe antibiotics, and you need to get her checked out. Are you listening?”

“
Yes.”

“
Good. Now keep listening. I’m in my car, do you hear me? I’m already in my car. I’m driving over right now and I’m going to take you to the hospital.”

“
I’ve got the car. I can take her.”

“
You can’t drive. You’re hysterical. Shona, stay there, I’m on my way.”

“
Oh God!”

“
Shona, listen, babe. Listen to me. You don’t need to panic, it’s going to be fine. Are you listening to me, Shona? I’m coming over. I’m going to drive you to the hospital. Stay where you are.”

Isla fell asleep before we reached Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, exhausted by her own crying, by pain. When I told them it was the baby I was there for, they put me to the front of the line, told me I’d go straight through.

“
You should go,” I told Valentina, who was sitting on one of the red vinyl seats flicking through an ancient copy of
Saga
magazine. “I’ll get a cab home.”

“
I’m staying right here,” she said. “At least until I’ve finished this mag. It’s gripping.”

I smiled. Now that we were in the hands of the hospital, I had calmed down at least enough to do that. “Has Zac shown any sign of illness?”

“
Nah.”

“
Where is he by the way?” I hadn’t thought. It was her day off
–
she should have him.

“
I dumped him with Red at the shop. I was in town when you called.”

It occurred to me the illness could have come from Red
–
via Valentina. But Valentina had showed no sign of even the merest sniffle.

“
Is Red better?”

“
Hmm?”

“
He was ill,” I prompted. “Must be better if he’s back at work, eh?”

She shook her head, waved her hand. “Oh, you know what men are like, it’s kiss-me-Hardy as soon as they have to blow their frickin’ nose. Then the game comes on and suddenly they’ve recovered.”

“
Isla McGilvery Quinn?”

I turned to see a stout nurse in heavy-framed glasses smiling benignly at us. I raised my hand to her and bent to kiss Valentina on the cheek.

“
I’ll be right here,” she said.

“
Thanks,” I said. “I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”

The doctor diagnosed a nasty strain of gastric flu, common in babies. It came with this specific type of diarrhoea, he told us. At eight months old, well fed, she would have been able to fight it off but we’d been right to bring her in. He wrote down the name of an electrolyte drink to help her recover her salts. Valentina stopped in town, hovered on the double yellows outside the chemist while I ran inside.

“
Lemonade,” I said when I got back in the car. “Flat lemonade. Or ice pops. That’s what we always had after a bug. Electrolyte drinks are a wee bit over the top if you ask me.”

She didn’t reply. Her eyes flicked to the rear view and she pulled out onto Union Street.

“
What about you?” I went on, a little wired after the stress, wanting to chat about anything, nothing, whatever. “Did you have flat lemonade or is it a Scottish thing?”

Again, she said nothing. I looked at her, her face set, her eyes still fixed on the road.

We stopped at the traffic lights.

“
Val?”

She blinked and turned to me. “Oh, sorry, what?” She seemed to have come out of her daydream, back to the present. “What did we have after the shits, is that what you’re asking?” Her eyes drifted to the lights as they changed from red to amber. She engaged first, accelerated through amber to green. “I really can’t remember.” Her tone was cross or bored or both, as if I was getting on her nerves. “My father left when I was two,” she continued, “so I have no idea what he did, shit-wise or otherwise.”

“
I’m sorry,” I said. Why hadn’t she told me this, I wondered. The information felt too big, in a friendship like ours, not to have been mentioned before.

“
Don’t be sorry,” she said, eyes fixed on the road. “I’m not. There’s nothing to say.”

“
And your mother was a teacher, you said?” I couldn’t remember her telling me this either, but I knew it so she must have at some point.

“
Comprehensive school. Pretty thrilling all round, I think you’ll agree.”

“
What did she teach again?”

“
Good grief, Shona,” she glanced at me and rolled her eyes. “What do you want, a resumé?”

“
No. Sorry. I was curious, that’s all.” I fell silent for a second, afraid I’d upset her. But I couldn’t keep it up, I was too antsy. “Do you see them?”

“
They’re both in Aus, so both too far away. In every sense of the word.”

“
I thought your mum was coming over to see you? The day we met, remember? You said she was coming over? You were worried about Zac swearing?”

She shook her head. “I was joking.” She glanced at me and smiled thinly before returning her eyes to the road. “I was trying to impress you.”

She didn’t appear to be joking now.

“
Impress me?” I said. “Why would you want to impress me? I’m just some hack who got herself pregnant a wee bit earlier than she meant to.”

“
Don’t say that,” she snapped. “Don’t devalue yourself like that, Shona. Really. Honestly, you Brits think this self-deprecation thing is so charming but it isn’t. It’s a disaster. It’s what women do or feel they have to do to get people to like them and I hate it.” She was almost shouting, not looking at me, her knuckles white on the steering wheel. “All that
oh, don’t feel threatened by me ’cause I’m no good at anything at all.
What is it, unfeminine or some such bullshit? To be good? I teach yoga. I’m a frickin’ great yoga teacher. So what? Do I have to go around saying I’m the worst teacher in the world, tell people my clients come back year after year because they like my frickin’ leotard? It’s pathetic, frankly.” She took the roundabout on two wheels.

I wanted to tell her to slow down but thought better of it. My cheeks went hot, my eyes prickled.

“
I’m really grateful you took us to hospital,” I said. “I know thank you is not enough but ...”

“
I don’t mean you,” she said
–
more quietly, more kindly, nudging into the build-up of traffic towards the Brig O’Dee. For a moment neither of us said anything.

“
I didn’t realise you felt so strongly about it,” I said.

She shook her head. “I’m trying to get you to value yourself a bit more that’s all. I know you Brits don’t like to blow your own trumpet but what’s the point having a trumpet if you can’t blow it? Pretty pointless trumpet if you ask me.”

“
Where I come from,” I said, “that’s not really our style. But I take your point.”

We crossed the bridge, headed right onto the South Deeside Road. The route was as familiar to me now as my own teeth. Across the Dee, on the golf course, I could see men in tweed caps. I wished Mikey were here, in the driving seat or that I’d taken Isla to the hospital myself. I wished I hadn’t called Valentina. She had dropped everything to help me this morning but perhaps she resented it. It wasn’t the words she said
–
they were good words, solid and sisterly
–
it was the way she had said them, the anger in her voice. Did she secretly see me as pathetic? Now that we knew one another better, did I in fact get on her nerves? I wondered if the kinder words that had followed her outburst were no more than leaves hastily thrown down to cover her tracks. Perhaps there were other things about me she despised. And if she was harbouring an armoury of secret irritations like this, what would it take for her to blast me again?

Back at the cottage, Valentina unlocked the door and headed upstairs to use the bathroom. Inside, a sepulchral cold, colder somehow than outside. I put Isla, who had fallen asleep again, in the living room and came back into the kitchen to set about making Valentina and me something to eat. It was after three and I was cold and starving hungry. Shivering, I put the heating on, emptied some soup into a pan, thick sliced a white loaf I’d taken out of the freezer at dawn and slathered it in thick butter. I was still wearing my coat.

I need to stop a second and say something. I just realised, the way I’m telling you all this, you must think I had no other friends, but I did. When Valentina was giving classes on Tuesday, Wednesdays and Thursdays, I saw other people quite a bit. There was a baby music group on a Wednesday and I always went out for coffee afterwards with the girls from there. I joined Aquababies down at the baths, took Isla there on Thursdays and there too I made friends with three great lassies who came in from one of the housing estates at the other side of town. But the thing is, none of these pals come into this story and besides, I didn’t connect with them like I did with Val. She and I shared the same dark sense of humour, and we were both outsiders, incomers. That’s what I would have said at the time.

Valentina reappeared and told me I should put Isla into her cot, where she could rest properly.

“
OK. Yes, I suppose you’re right.” I fetched Isla and carried her upstairs. She didn’t stir. I laid her in her cot, placed a thin blanket over her and stayed a moment so I could look at her. Her skin had a soft pink blush now that the storm in her had passed. Her eyelashes curled upwards, tiny blonde spokes, her hands closed into two miniature fists. I sighed and, for the first time that day, relaxed. I stroked her cheek with my finger and whispered to her. “I love you so much, little one.”

I stayed there a moment, composing myself, before returning downstairs. Valentina had laid the table, poured the soup into bowls and was waiting for me.

“
Are you OK?” She took a big, almost bestial bite of the fresh bread. “Do you want a drink?”

“
Not just now.” I sat down and looked her in the eye. She smiled, her lips touching, her canine tooth catching on her bottom lip in that way it did. The closeness between us seemed to return. Maybe I had only imagined a degree of separation, because of what I knew or thought I knew about her.

“
Who were you with that day at the supermarket?” I said.

“
When?” She held my gaze with her intense green eyes and for a moment I thought I would falter.

“
At Markies.” I had to look at my knees. Her stare was too intense. “When I saw you. You said you were with Red but, I don’t know, you were so strange with me and you wouldn’t let me meet him and then I
–
I know I haven’t said anything about it, I didn’t want to ... what I mean is, I saw you. Going out of the car park with ... well, it wasn’t Red, was it?”

When I looked up I knew I had been right. Her cheeks had flushed a little and she was staring into her soup.

“
I’m not judging,” I added, keeping my voice gentle. “But I don’t want us not to be able to talk about things.”

She thrust herself backwards, her chair scraped across the stone tiles. “You want to talk about it?”

“
Yes,” I said. “Don’t you? Otherwise we’ve got this whole ‘thing’ between us. I don’t want it to drive a wedge into our friendship. And, as I said, I’m not judging.”

She was looking at me, unblinking, as if I was mad.

I reached across the table, tried to beckon her forward, to take my hand, but she didn’t move.

“
You’re not out of your mind?” she said. “You’re not going to strangle me with your bare hands?”

I shook my head. “Why would I do that? We’re friends. We’re not here to punish each other, are we? Whatever’s going on, I’m supposed to help you bury the body!”

She gripped the edge of the table with both hands, as if to stand or, perhaps, as if to stop herself from sliding off her chair.

“
You can tell me, you know.”

She screwed up her eyes, seemed incredulous, suspicious even. “Are you fucking with me?”

“
No!” I was panicking. I had pushed her too hard. I smiled, to show her I meant it kindly. “Is it the policeman?”

She shook her head a fraction, as if in hesitation. Her right eye twitched. I was watching her so closely, trying to gauge her reaction
–
I was afraid of scaring her, and yes, to my eternal shame, I was thinking of myself. I didn’t want her to up and leave and never come back. Without her, my world, reduced as it was, would disintegrate.

“
The policeman from outside Markies ... Marks and Spencer’s, you know? The one who tried to give you a parking ticket. I thought it might be him. The guy who pulled you up for waiting on the double yellows. John. Douglas, was it? Duggan? He gave you his number?” I laughed. “I thought you were joking, but I remember finding it in the footwell
–
so when I saw you I thought maybe you’d held onto his number after all and, oh, I don’t know ...”