Valentina: A Hauntingly Intelligent Psychological Thriller (22 page)

Her eyes searched mine. Looking for trust, to see if she could trust me, is what I thought.

“
Yes,” she said. “John Duggan. Yes.” She put her face into her hands and let out a long groan.

“
Oh God, that’s a relief.”

I reached out, laid my hand on her arm. “It’s always a relief to tell the truth.”

SIXTEEN

Things with Red had been patchy since before we’d met. This she told me while I made tea. I rested my hand on her shoulder when I placed the cup in front of her on the table. These tender gestures I made, these small loving acts of friendship.

“
I checked his phone,” she said. “This is ages ago. And I found out he’d been on one of those websites where you post pictures of yourself. Of your private parts, you know?”

“
My God. That’s pretty seedy.” I knew people did this but even so I have to admit I was shocked.
“
I mean, not seedy, but it’s a bit anatomical for my taste. But it obviously floats a lot of boats otherwise people wouldn’t do it, would they?”

Valentina produced a packet of cigarettes from her bag and pulled one out. I wondered if she would ask before lighting up and when she lit up I wondered why I’d ever thought she would ask.

“
Seedy,” she said. “You said it. Men are pigs. Animals. So I drove to the beach and I parked up. I don’t know why I went there, I guess I wanted to be alone, have a smoke, whatever. I was leaning over to get my ciggies from my bag I saw that scrap of paper in the footwell. John Duggan. He was a nice guy, I thought. Good-looking too. Fuck it, I thought, you know?”

I nodded even though, to be honest, I couldn’t grasp what she was telling me. No matter how mad at Mikey I got sometimes, I had no idea what it felt like to want to cheat, or how it felt to be cheated on for that matter. The whole idea made me want to put my hands over my ears. But I didn’t. I listened and I believed.

Did I? I certainly told myself I believed
–
maybe that’s nearer to the truth, because if I’m honest I would say that it was at that moment, down, low down in my guts, I began to doubt her. I wonder now if I’d always doubted her, right from the start, on some subliminal level. Why else would I have felt a sudden urge to burst into tears for no apparent reason the night she came for dinner with her African lilies and her black dress? But I did not face the rumbling unease within me. I ploughed on, hoping perhaps that I was wrong, and that it would all work out.

Winter came. I’d spent October and November shrugging my shoulders, wondering what all the fuss was about. The Aberdeen winter
–
how they’d teased us about it back in Glasgow
–
yet in those early winter months, the weather really wasn’t so cold as all that. I’m not saying I was running around the back lawn in a bikini but as long as I put my gloves, hat, scarf and coat on I was toasty. And it wasn’t like I’d moved from the Bahamas.

We spent a quiet Christmas at the cottage
–
holed up with plenty of food and drink and of course a raging fire in the hearth. I went to Glasgow for New Year as Mikey was offshore so that was a low-key affair too: me, Davie and my folks. My other brothers were off with their families. As seasons of goodwill go, it was a wee bit dull to be honest but I didn’t mind, I knew I’d be back to big Hogmanays soon enough.

January came and with it the sub-zeros. I saw Valentina less but we texted each other in flurries a couple of times a week, met up once or twice a fortnight. The cottage froze
–
ice patterns like thick white flock wallpaper on the windows in the mornings. I had to run the heating at night as well as all day to stop myself having to walk about with my shoulders hunched, my arms crossed. I kept the fire going twenty-four seven, woke up early to rake it out and lay it again, sometimes doing nothing more than rekindling the embers still warm in the grate. At that temperature, there was no question of simply popping out to grab more wood from the stables. Not without a full set of arctic exploration gear. No such thing as bad weather, they say. Only inadequate protection.

On Radio Scotland they forecast snow, ten centimetres falling in the north. I knew I should prepare to be snowed in, alone. I could lose phone contact, power, the lot. That was the only time I thought about staying with my folks for the whole duration of Mikey’s trip. I could have stayed on after Hogmanay but I didn’t want to make extra work for my mum and now my confidence was coming back a little I relished the challenge, in my eyes, of the wild.

For twenty-four hours I stayed holed up in the cottage for fear of getting stranded outside with no way back home. But the snow stayed shy in its cloud and I, meanwhile, stayed indoors, trying to teach Isla to walk, trying not to bounce off the walls. When there was no word from Mikey that night, I assumed the phone lines were down. The next day, seeing little more than a thin, greyish slush, I decided the forecasters were exaggerating and that I would brave the roads no matter what. By that stage, getting stranded in town looked like a better option than going stir-crazy. I could always stay at Valentina’s over on Union Grove in an emergency.

A trip to the shops required a survival kit: candles, matches, blankets. I packed chocolate biscuits as well. By the time I’d done all that, it was three o’clock in the afternoon and the light was all but gone. I decided to stay cosy indoors and go to town the following morning instead.

I woke to whiteness, phantom light. A childish excitement rose up in me at the sight of all that snow
–
thick white stoles bending the branches, softening the line of the ground with all that glittering white. Perfection. Out here, no feet to vandalise the surface. I wished Mikey were there to see it
–
so much I got a pain of longing in my chest.

I dug out the car and left the engine running to warm the interior. I cleared the driveway up to where the lane had been gritted. By the time I finished I was sweating, my back and shoulders ached. I went to fetch Isla from the playpen. She had on her new snowsuit and looked like a marshmallow. I ran to pick up my keys and turned
–
turned and saw her, Isla, walk two steps towards me.

I fell to my knees. “Isla! Clever! Come to Mummy!”

She fixed me with her eyes and gave a toothy grin, wobbling a little. She regained her balance, took three more steps then fell down.

“
Clever girl!” My eyes filled with tears. She was walking.

She got up, held onto my finger while I led her, step by slow step, towards the door. I led her outside, saw the incomprehension in her face.

“
Snow,” I said. “This is snow!”

Isla’s first steps. Isla’s first sighting of snow. Our first snow at the cottage. Mikey was missing so much.

“
No!” Isla pointed, eyes wide, forehead creased in wonder. “No!”

“
Snow! That’s right!” I grabbed my iPhone from my bag. “Snow,” I said, taking a photo of her holding the snow up to her face, another of her licking it, another of her wrinkling her nose in delight at its delicious coldness. “Snow, snow, snow.”

I filmed her then: two steps and down, four steps and down, giggles, picking herself up, determined. Snow in her hands, eating it, blowing it, finding it hilarious. Like that she moved and tasted and fell towards the car, while I took way too many pictures. After a minute or two, she held up her hands and whined. Her tiny fingers were dark pink. I ran back into the house and grabbed her gloves from the trunk. I took the gloves out to her, breathed warm breath into them and put them on her little ice-cold hands.

She let me pick her up and strap her into the jeep. I drove slowly, no more than ten miles per hour along the lane, hooked like a blind woman over the steering wheel. There’s a line of pines opposite where the track hits the T-junction. They block the view so at first you can’t see out onto the fields. When I drove out from behind them, the sight took my breath away. There was nothing else on the road so I stopped the car. White, as far as I could see. No sign of my lone horse, my houyhnhnm. And vast. The vast whiteness of countryside under snow, the vast white sky.

Snow. In Iceland they have fifty words for it, don’t they? Here, we’re reduced to fitting adjectives around our one inadequate little noun: thick snow, white snow, snow like foam, foam-like snow. Snow that creaks like polystyrene underfoot, snow that melts to dirty slush at the roadside, snow that covers everything, that makes even the grimmest landscape look pure.

In town, the ruined snow lay scooshed up against the roadsides in dirty brown cornices. Rudimentary snowmen gesticulated with stick arms in some of the gardens, where kids had been too excited to wait until they got back from school to start building. Later, they would race to the slopes and the parks, dragging their plastic sleighs along behind them. They’d return home, blue with cold, shivering, asking for hot chocolate. At the thought of them, these unknown kids, I felt a rush of something warm and unnamed
–
a formless idea of the future took solid shape in my mind: Isla, a walking, laughing girl coming in through the back door of the cottage, flushed with cold, bright with her life’s adventures, and some other child, a brother perhaps, trailing in behind her, cheeks flushed like hers, snow in his duffle coat hood. How lovely that would be
–
to warm their wet hands in mine, to peel off their ice-flaked jackets, sit them by the fire and bring them hot chocolate.

The roads in the centre had been cleared by sheer volume of traffic. My aim was no more specific than to while away some time, to make a trip out of nothing. I decided to call in at a new deli that Valentina had told me about. John had introduced her to it. It was at the top of Market Street, she’d said, where the picture framer’s used to be. It was called The Grocery and they had the best fresh Italian bread
–
John was half-Italian
–
brands of oil and wine you’d never heard of, delicious fresh savouries displayed in a clear chilled counter. Apparently this arrangement was based on the American idea of a village store. According to John.

So I went in. And that’s when I saw Mikey. Nothing unusual about seeing your partner in a deli
–
unless of course he’s meant to be in the middle of the North Sea.

I saw the back of his head first. I knew better than to react. I was used to seeing the back of his head, his profile, him, everywhere. I’d called after him once or twice, only for that person to turn to me and not be him
–
to my eternal embarrassment. This was what missing someone meant sometimes. It was a kind of grief. So when he did turn, when he did see me, when it was him and when his face spread in shock, I too reeled.

“
Dada,” said Isla from the sling, her voice seeming to come from my heart.

“
Shona.” He put up his hands as if he were under arrest and blushed. I tried to think if I’d ever seen him blush about anything before.

I cannot remember exactly what I did. Perhaps I took a step back, perhaps my mouth dropped open
–
but nothing came out.

“
Red-handed.” His face creased into a smile.

“
What ...?”

He emitted a strange avuncular chuckle, still shaking his head. “Caught me. Red-handed.” He pulled me to him and kissed my head before crouching to kiss Isla in her sling. “Caught Daddy in the act, haven’t you?” He rubbed her nose with his. She giggled. “Now, don’t tell Mummy, but Daddy got sent home at seven o’clock this morning so he was picking up some scrummy bits and pieces for a surprise.” He pushed his finger to his lips. “Shh. Don’t tell.”

“
Shh,” said Isla. “Dada.”

“
I’m right here, darling.” He stood straight and kissed me on the cheek. “That’s a shame. I was hoping to arrive like Prince Charming with a luxury hamper.”

“
But you’re on the rig.”

He threw out his hands, his mouth a flat line. “Compressor’s gone. The gas compressor. They’ve had to send for the suppliers to fix it so they’ve moved to skeleton staff. There’s a whole squad flying over. They need the beds so here I am – booted off!”

I met his eye. My head felt wrong on my neck, like I was holding it at an odd angle but couldn’t stop myself. “How come you didn’t phone?”

“
What’s the matter?” He frowned, tucked a strand of my hair into my woolly hat. “You don’t seem very pleased to see me.”

The pink in his cheeks was receding. The lady at the counter was asking him if the olives in the square plastic tub were enough. Through the glass cabinet, on the other side where the lady was serving, I could see a wrap of cold meat, a small box of four designer chocolates and a bottle of Prosecco with an orange label: Valdobbiadene. Superiore. D.O.C.G. Valentina was right, I thought. I’d never seen that brand before.

“
I tell you what,” Mikey was saying, “I won’t tell you what we’re having. At least that bit can be a surprise.”

I’m not confident I can tell you the rest. Maybe I should say nothing more. But I’m almost there, so I guess I may as well finish.

Mikey suggested grabbing a cup of coffee. I let him take my hand and lead me to a small café near the dock. It was a greasy spoon place, with linoleum floors and Formica tables. The kind of place folk like Mikey go, due to some perceived notion of authenticity. Me, I hate those places. Authenticity isn’t something I’ve ever felt the lack of.

“
I’m gonna have the full Scottish,” he said. “May as well now we’re here, eh? What about you, Shone?”

“
Just a cup of tea, thanks.” I fussed over Isla, looked at her, looked at the floor, looked anywhere but at him. Why I behaved like this, I had no idea at the time. If you’d asked me then, in that moment, I’d have said strangeness. Strangeness was all I felt.