Valentina: A Hauntingly Intelligent Psychological Thriller (31 page)

Whatever, it is pointless thinking about it all now. She must move on
–
which she will do, in a moment. Right now, she must focus on the task at hand. Sure enough, there’s a faint glow pulsing at the front window. The fire has not yet reached the living room but from the hallway it has cast its solid orange light far enough to be seen from here, beneath the trees. It is not the light itself she sees but the echo of it, she knows that. She knows too that they won’t be able to get downstairs, not now. Even if they wake, they will not be able to reach the phone.

And what of the baby? Oh no. Oh no, no, no. She can’t think about the baby now.

***

PART II

TWENTY-TWO

This is ridiculous. I’m not going to stand here and be painted as the wicked witch to Shona’s simpering
Belle Dormante au Bois
. Please. This isn’t some nasty little affair, it isn’t the story of a sumptuous office Lolita tempting some flaccid grey-faced executive into her petal-strewn bed. Any half-decent looking woman can offer a touch of forbidden silk to a man whose wife is familiar to him as an old woollen sock. Especially once you throw a baby into the equation. Christ, who wouldn’t want to escape that kind of shit-soaked hyperreality? So no, I didn’t bat my eyes at someone else’s man because I couldn’t get one of my own. I had someone of my own. The point here is that Michael was mine. He was mine first.

OK, so we were breaking up around the time he met her. Had broken up. But it was only temporary. What you have to understand is that Michael is a very difficult man, a very selfish man. But difficulty and selfishness don’t stop you loving someone, do they? And we understand each other, Michael and I, always have. We see the world in the same way. We feel things the same way. And you can’t help how you feel, can you?

I’d only ended our relationship because he needed to know what it felt like to lose me. He needed sharpening. I suppose I realised I’d handed it all to him on a plate. Michael has a way of making you do that. Casts some kind of Shamanistic spell and before you know it you’re bringing him breakfast in bed with a gooey expression in your eyes and a broom up your backside so better to clean the damn floor. And then the inattentions begin. Little things. He complains when you ask him for a foot massage. The flowers, because it’s Friday? Forget it. When it’s his turn to cook, out go the spices ground by hand in the marble pestle and mortar, gone is the chilled Sancerre, the home-made tiramisu. In comes the takeaway chicken tikka masala, the supermarket plonk, the tub of Mackies ice cream if you’re lucky. The sex gets lazy, the foreplay predictable, but still afterwards you tell him how you don’t know how he does what he does but, my God, you’ve never lost control like that before. If not, he takes offence.

So I was sick of it. We were both nearing the end of our MScs at Heriot-Watt, he in Petroleum Engineering, myself in Petroleum Geoscience, we both had a lot of work to do. I know we girls have to do everything backwards and in heels but a girlfriend has a right to a certain amount of attention, not just the dregs. I’m really not a dregs kind of girl. Even if Michael’s dregs are better than most men’s finest, creamiest head.

“
I am not the harbour where you moor your fucking boat,” I think were my exact words when I threw him and all his stuff out of my flat. “Come back when you’re ready to commit.”

I should have known he would never do that. Commit properly, I mean. But I did know he would come back. I knew I would win him. Because, you see, there is no one quite like Michael and me. We are made for each other.

So when I saw on Facebook he was seeing someone else, a positively indecent two days after we’d split, I did have a fleeting moment of ... doubt, I suppose, not to mention irritation. Two days. Was it possible to meet someone so quickly? I doubted it. To be romantically entangled so soon, he must have met her when we were together. Had he cheated on me? It was possible, more than possible. It would be typical of him to put the heating on before he got out of bed. Michael can’t stand a single minute without someone adoring him, besides himself of course.

I gave her a week, maybe two. I was studying hard so it was easy to distract myself, in between checking his posts. A month later, he was still posting. No photos, no names, but rave reviews. It was all for me, I knew that. With a connection like ours, we can communicate in code. The whole world can be listening but only we will know what is being said. Of course, if I’d accused him of writing these cryptic messages for my benefit, he would have thrown up his hands and said:
what
? He’s clever.

But then so am I.

It got to late May. He was still with her. Things were not going according to plan. And so, when I bumped into Robbie on Sauchiehall Street, it was the ideal moment to catch up. After the endless
how’s it goings
Glaswegians seem to favour and some pantomime-related small talk, I cut to the chase. I hadn’t seen Michael in a while, had he, Robbie, seen him at all? Yes, yes he had. And was Michael still with that girl he’d met? Yes, yes he was.

“
Heavens,” I said, feigning surprise, placing my shopping bags on the pavement. “That’s weeks now. She must be an absolute goddess.”

“
Well, she’s no’ bad ...” He eyed the bags. “Three pairs of shoes, eh? That should see you right.”

“
I’ll be starting work soon,” I said. “Can’t exactly go into the office in Converse and jeans, can I? So, do you know her?”

“
She works with our Jeanie. They live together, like, you know?”

I smiled, told him that sounded nice, that I was glad Michael was happy.

“
Anyway, so ...” He took a step back. I always thought he might be afraid of me, as short men often are. “I’d better get off.”

“
That’s a great shirt, Robbie,” I said, reaching forward, touching the tips of my fingers against his chest. “Very ... fresh looking. What is it, Ben Sherman?”

He looked down, stuck out his bottom lip and pinched the fabric between his fingers. “I don’t know. Probably Markies, to be honest with you.”

“
Well, it suits you.”

“
Aye right.” He blushed.

“
So,” I said. “What’s she like, this, what did you say her name was?”

“
Shona.”

“
Shona?”

“
McGilvery.”

“
Shona McGilvery. Good Scottish name.”

“
Aye, well.” He shifted from foot to foot. “She’s fae Govan so.”

“
Govan.” I smiled. “Michael will like that. Very authentic.”

I left him and headed for Frasers. I bought some capri pants and two silk blouses from Mango (for the office) and, as a treat for the stress I’d gone through, a gorgeous dressy-but-not-too-dressy LBD from Max Mara. I was so weighed down with bags I had to get a cab back to my flat. Once inside, I kicked the door shut and opened the first bottle of white that fell out of the fridge. I lit a joint and threw myself on the couch. The couch where he and I had ... I stopped myself. So her name was Shona, was it? Shona from Govan. He’d gone out and found himself a nice working-class girl. A real pulled-herself-up-by-her-bootstraps, salt-of-the-earth, have-a-go heroine. He’d come over all wanna live like those much revered common people, and had found a bright wee local lassie with just enough about her to swim out of the swamp.

Classic rebound.

I sucked on the joint, imagined her, Shona. Small, I thought. A ready smile, a gutsy, girl-next-door type, someone that people found charming. I pulled out my iPhone. Facebook ... let’s see ... Shona McGilvery ... here she was. Dark, straight, short hair, a vaguely Inuit look about her, really rather boyish. The ready smile was there. Pale blue eyes with, I’ll admit, a certain intelligence in their regard but even so, what, frankly, did he see in her? Education: University of Glasgow, English Literature and Journalism. Hadn’t travelled far from Mummy and Daddy for her degree. A homebody, then. Maybe she had a mother with nervous trouble or, more likely, couldn’t afford rent. Work:
Glasgow Tribune
. Yes, that was right
–
she was a colleague of Robbie’s sister, what was her name, Jayne? Joan? Shona McGilvery would be a journalist of the morally righteous variety, no doubt, armed with the swords of truth and justice. How unspeakably dull. I closed the page, took another hit, a long slug of white. Whoever she was, she had come in and stolen Michael when he and I were simply enjoying a brief hiatus.

She. Shona.
O
pportunist.

So I did what any woman in love would do
–
I set about getting him back.

Drastic action was required. Danger. Nothing a man like Michael loves more. Makes him feel alive. Makes us both feel alive. Shona could never give him danger. She could never understand him like I did. Michael and I are two sides of the same coin, cut from the same cloth, members of the same tribe
–
choose your metaphor. No matter what she could give him now in the short term, I knew in the long term she would bore him into his grave. What makes you feel safe ultimately limits you, and it’s not like they were married, is it? They weren’t even living together at that point, so don’t you look at me like that.

Don’t you dare look at me like that.

And if I happened to catch Michael outside Robbie’s flat that was hardly my fault. And if I suggested a drink I can hardly be accused of overstepping boundaries. We’d had something together, something special, something rare. It was only natural we would go for a drink and a chat. To catch up. We were coming to the end of our studies. And it was good to see him.

“
You’re looking well,” he said, once we settled in our seats.

“
Thanks.” I’d spent a fortune with Frank at Toni & Guy that morning. I should hope I did look
well
.

“
What’ve you been up to?”

I shrugged, crossed my legs. One high-heeled tan mule half-slipped from my foot, a louche surrender to the sticky day
–
the type of early summer heatwave that sends half of Glasgow to hospital with third-degree burns. I don’t get that British obsession with tanning. And fake tan, don’t get me started
–
who wants to look like they’ve covered themselves in gravy browning all summer? Patchy ankles, orange palms? What’s wrong with alabaster skin?

“
I may go to France for the summer,” I said. “I need to plan my next move.”

He took a long drink of his lager, looked around the bar, back to me. Laid his hand on my thigh. “You really do look well.”

“
Thanks. So do you.”

“
Robbie’s out. He won’t be back till later ...”

And if in the passion of the moment I forgot my pill, I’m sorry. It was a mistake, one many before me have made and will make again. They call it the oldest trick in the book but, as I’ve said, it was a mistake.

After finishing his Master’s, Michael got a bar job
–
wanted to
chill out
, he said, which I found curiously unambitious. I picked up some contracting work through an old contact of my uncle’s so I didn’t go to France in the end. I thought I’d hang around for a bit, see whether our
embryonic
relationship would take shape. Michael was still with Shona but I knew that was for form’s sake more than anything. Habit. It was complicated now they’d moved in together, he said.

“
It’s my flat,” he explained to my reflection as I applied my mascara in my dressing table mirror. We were about to head out for dinner. “I can’t exactly turn her out onto the street, can I?”

“
I hardly think she’d be on the street Michael,” I replied, eyeing him leaning on the doorjamb behind me. I picked a clot of black from the end of an eyelash and proceeded to search in my vanity case for my lipstick. But when I looked up, he’d gone. I ran my hand over the hard curve of my belly. What did it matter if he didn’t get rid of Shona immediately? He would soon enough.

And in all the push-me-pull-me-will-he-won’t-he, what I have to say to you is this: for me, things were good. The attentions had returned. I found I adored being the other woman even though, of course, I was the main woman, if that makes sense. It was a revelation
–
like syphoning off the creamy head. The dregs, well, she was welcome to them.

So. Turns out I am really rather fertile. One shot hits the spot. I didn’t want to announce the glad tidings just like that. I wanted him in the right mood. And there’s a particular, very specific moment when men are receptive to anything.

I arranged a rendezvous in our favourite dark bar round the corner from my flat. It was a kind of shorthand between us for what might lie ahead. He told her he had to work a double shift and met me at six. It was July but cold and rainy, the usual disaster of a British so-called summer. The sooner we fled to hotter climes, I thought, the better. Oman would be nice. Maybe Malaysia. Some cushy expat deal. We ordered gin and tonics. A vigorous bout of kissing soon became a get-a-room situation, a rather hurried canter down the street, a racy trajectory up two flights of stairs before we staggered, clothes half-off, into my sitting room. That, Shona, is what men want: sex. Not some washed out little pixie in food-encrusted slippers.