Valentina: A Hauntingly Intelligent Psychological Thriller (29 page)

“
I can’t,” I said.

“
Of course.”

“
I’m still a bit all over the place, you know?”

He turned over, pushed me onto my back and kissed me on the mouth
–
not a sexual kiss, but still one a lover would give: tender, his lips soft and unrushed. “I love you, Shone. You’re my home, you know that don’t you?”

My eyes brimmed, overflowed
–
more tears, for God’s sake, pooling inside my ears.

“
You’re my home too,” I said. “You’re the only place I feel safe.”

Waking on Sunday morning I felt as if someone had lifted a heavy weight from my back. The catharsis of the night before had brought this lightness and, as if in sympathy, the sky treated us to a bright winter sun. In bed, with the sky still dark blue, we had turned to each other, still sleepy. We had kissed, he had pushed his hand onto my breast, when Isla woke up and shouted “Mamma!”

Mikey groaned, let his forehead drop on my chest.

“
We have two whole weeks ahead of us.” I said, taking a fistful of his hair, scratching his scalp with my fingernails. “Plenty of time for
that sort o’ thing.
” I left him there and went to fetch our wee baby.

“
We need to think about a party for Isla,” I said as I came back into the bedroom with her, nappy changed, all fresh. “We should have it this week or next. I know that’s not on her actual birthday but you’ll be offshore and I think we should celebrate while you’re here.” I put Isla next to Mikey and stood back to look at them both sat propped up against the white pillows. There is something so tender about the sight of your life partner and the baby child you have made together sitting in a big white double bed. Her in her pink Babygro, thin infant’s hair rubbed into soft fuzzy knots at the back of her head, him bare-chested, dark, both swathed in white cotton. It was something more than precious, it was holy, almost, something that must not, must never, be desecrated. I guess you’d call it a moment of clarity: these two human beings, there on the bed, were all and everything I wanted. They
–
this
–
was home.

I found I could neither move nor speak.

After a moment, I turned away, went over to the bedroom window and pulled the curtain across enough to see out. I looked onto the vast green, the regiment of leylandii at the far end. I had stood in the dark against those scratchy branches, lost in a nightmarish storm of doubt. Now the sun had come up and nothing looked scary any more. Beyond the trees, braids of churned soil lay fallow for the winter and beyond that again, though I could not see it from here, the back road out to Stonehaven, where the dual carriageway headed south.

“
What do you think?” I said, turning to face them. “I could ask a couple of babies from the nursery over
–
might be a way to meet some other mums. And I know Zac’s birthday is near Isla’s so maybe I’ll ask Valentina if she wants to do a joint party.”

He nodded, though he was taken up entirely by Isla. Happy to be invisible to them both, I slipped away to make tea, leaving them to their love-in.

When I came back upstairs, Mikey had put Isla on his knee. He was nuzzling her nose with his, making a funny buzzing noise, making her laugh. When he pulled back, she grabbed his nose with her tiny fingers and he gave a loud
ow
!

“
Her nails are sharp, right enough.” I set his Lord mug on his bedside table and took mine around to my side. I climbed in and kissed Isla’s head. She wriggled, threw herself down into the duvet and laughed. She pulled herself up and giggled again before pausing, her body set in the tension of expectation. I pushed gently on the side of her head. She threw herself down again onto the bedding, this time hysterical. Two seconds later, she hauled herself up again. I pushed her down. More giggling.

“
This could go on for an hour,” I said to Mikey.

She rolled, pushed herself back up. “Dada,” she said.

I nudged his elbow with mine. “She wants you to do it.”

He barely had to connect with her
–
in fact, I bet he never did
–
before she collapsed once again, beside herself with laughter at her own talent for physical comedy, but still managing to pull herself up for one more go.

Mikey pushed her down again.

“
I think it’d be better if we had a party just for Isla,” he said. “Just us, I mean.” He brought his tea to his lips, seemed to reconsider, lowered the mug. “I think we should maybe keep our distance from Valentina. She’s a bit, I don’t know, intense.”

“
But you guys got on really well when she came,” I said. “So well, in fact, that it was me that went to bed and you two that burnt the midnight oil.” As I said the words something inside me shifted. The lightness I had felt on waking was replaced by a cloudy, heavy feeling.

“
I think Isla’s party should be just us,” he said. “The three of us. That’s all.”

“
Can I at least invite wee Zac?” I said. “They’re so close, that’s all.”

“
I’d rather you didn’t if that’s OK.” He reached for my hand and held it. “I understand what you’re thinking, and I know it’s hard for you to understand this but when I’m offshore I miss you two so much. You’re all I think about when I’m in that bunk. Even in the day, even when I’m busy, I catch myself looking out towards the land, and I want to come home so badly.” He pulled my hand up to his mouth and kissed it. “I want it to be the three of us. She’s only one after all.”

He looked into my eyes. The cloudy feeling left me as quickly as it had come. That’s what happens when what you see in your husband’s kind brown eyes is love. I had not thought about, knew nothing about, what life was like on the rig, apart from what Mikey told me. I could only imagine how grim it must be to be woken in the middle of the night by the grunt of a stranger shitting, wanking or snoring, to be out for hours on the cold oily deck, the North Sea wind whipping your face, staring back to shore. But I felt the melancholy of it then, as if I myself had been there with him. If he and Isla together in the white bed represented something pure for me, I thought, then that must count doubly so for him.

“
Ignore me,” he said. “If you want to have a big party for her, that’s fine. Honestly. I’m being selfish.”

“
No, you’re right,” I said. “Of course it’s OK just the three of us. I was being selfish.”

He closed my head in his hands and kissed me on the nose. “You’re amazing. You get it, don’t you?” With a comic old man groan, he turned away and got up. Rearranging his boxer shorts, as he always did, he wandered towards the bedroom door. He was whistling happy birthday.

We never celebrated Isla’s first birthday. My God, it’s hard to keep hindsight out of this, it’s nigh on impossible.

TWENTY-ONE

Having agreed not to invite anyone to Isla’s birthday party, I asked if I could invite Red and Val over again, as a compromise. Initially reluctant, once he’d agreed, Mikey’s enthusiasm bordered on the evangelistic. Not only did he offer to cook
–
I was only too delighted to let him
–
but, before I knew it, he’d ordered a rotary barbecue affair for the back garden and a whole rabbit from a butcher in Banchory. I couldn’t help but laugh when he announced all this the moment he got home
–
like a kid with big news.

“
Bloody hell,” I said. “You never do things by halves, do you?”

The day came. It was the middle Saturday of his time at home. I was happy to get out into the garden and prepare the fire, which I did in the very early evening. It was
–
well, it was fun.

“
We need red-hot embers,” I told him, once I’d got the fire going, finding him in the kitchen with his chef’s pinny on. I went over to where he was standing at the counter, put my arms around his waist and laid my head on his back. “You know, to roast the poor, innocent beast.”

But he didn’t hear. Headphones on, too busy doing things with rosemary and cider marinades. I left him to it, singing
Bright Eyes
at the top of my lungs, and carried Isla upstairs to bed.

And this is where I have to stop. I have to stop what I’m telling you and say this.

Had I known that this was to be the last happy moment of my life, the last time I would ever feel safe, or loved, or like I even had a home, I would have made sure I lived that moment second by precious second. I would have held Isla for longer. I would have sung her one more song. I would not have been impatient to get back downstairs and start the party. I would not have rushed her to bed. In fact, if I’d had any control over the world, over time and space and the cosmos, I would have stayed upstairs, closed my eyes and held onto her forever.

So.

I was still on the landing when I heard Valentina’s voice, the conspiratorial sound of her throaty chuckle.

The two of them were in the hallway. I saw them from halfway down the stairs. She was standing close to him, her hand laid flat on his chest, her left foot kicked up behind her. She was giggling. I remember that most of all. Her, giggling.

The cloudy feeling in my gut returned. No, I thought. No. But what I knew was: yes.

All that had gone before came back in one wordless rush and, as the air left me, I gripped the bannister tight. My husband and my best friend were not the casual acquaintances they claimed to be, not any more. They were something much more intimate, something that violated me, that ripped the heart from my entire life. Did I have it as clear as that in my mind? Not in that moment. The knowing was bodily, as it had always been, only now that knowing came stronger, filling me up with a kind of white heat.

“
Hello,” I said. I was still polite. Still friendly. Still holding onto the bannister for dear life.

Why, I have no idea. Conditioned response, maybe, of a working-class girl brought up to be nice, or maybe I was simply newly and badly injured, bleeding out, waiting for the pain to start. “What are you two up to?”

Valentina swung round to face me, all smiles. “Hey, babe. Michael reckons he’s burning a bunny in the backyard.”

“
Nice alliteration.” Is it possible I could have said that? I remember myself saying it. I was on the bottom stair, one foot in the hallway with no idea how I had got there. I could feel my legs trembling and wondered if she could see. Upstairs, Isla’s wind-up toy plinked its plastic lullaby. “Where’s Red?”

She threw up her hand in a stop sign and rolled her eyes. “The bastard double booked. Frickin’ idiot. I am so furious with him right now I can’t even go there.
He was meant to book the babysitter and he couldn’t even manage that. I’ve had to bring Zac with me, I hope you don’t mind. He’s in the living room, out for the count.”

“
Let me get you some of the wine Val brought,” said Mikey. “It’s sparkling Shiraz. It’s red but you serve it cold, apparently.”

“
Sure,” I said. “Why not?” I took the drink, drank half a glass in one go.

“
Wow,” said Mikey. “You were thirsty. We haven’t even toasted.”

I held up my glass, meeting Mikey’s gaze. “To you, my darling, love of my life. To us.”

“
I’ll drink to that,” said Valentina.

A loaded silence lowered like mist. Or maybe not
– maybe it was just me, my own private mist, my own loaded silence.

Mikey headed out into the garden, saying he had to turn the rabbit. Valentina helped me fetch the salads from the fridge. She was chatting about something
–
it hardly matters what. I could hear the interrogative rise of her Australian accent, see out of the corner of my eye her languid, confident movements, her arms reaching out when she spoke, her teeth, the way her hair moved as one fluid, shining thing. There were baked potatoes in the oven, a French stick on the table. I had set the table that afternoon, for four. A centrepiece posy, cloth napkins, napkin rings. Valentina readjusted the bowl of home-made coleslaw, straightened the glasses, picked at the vegetable crisps.

“
This table is awesome,” I heard her say, then, “a real art.” Then, “Homemaker.” And, “Such an eye for detail.”

Charm. That’s what they had in common, her and Mikey. Both funny, both so affectionate, both a little bit irresistible.

“
Are you fucking my husband?” I asked her.

She made no reply, moving instead towards the wine bottle, picking it up, pouring wine the colour of pomegranate seeds. I realised I had not said the question aloud.

“
Excuse me,” I said. “I’ve left something in the bedroom.”

I ran upstairs. Breath catching in my chest, I rummaged around in my bedside table for a packet of tissues. I began to cry. I cried silently, suppressed the gasps that I knew would be heard downstairs. I can think of no reason now for wanting to spare them the sound of me crying beyond not wanting to spoil the evening.

My iPhone was on the bedside table. On the screen, the WiFi signal indicated half strength. Had I ever tried to connect up here in the bedroom? It was possible I hadn’t. I usually kept my phone in the kitchen
–
if I came upstairs during the day it was only to change Isla. I thumbed my way into my email account and watched twelve little white envelopes download. All of them junk, apart from one, from Jeanie, with an attachment. I checked my text messages
–
there was one from her
–
sent that afternoon at 5:13pm.

Check your email now.

I opened Jeanie’s email. It said:

FYI. Finally found a picture of Georgia
Smyth-Banks aka Wendy. Got in touch
with the photographer from the parish
newsletter and he had some
head shots.
Stroke of luck, eh?
Recognise her at all?