Valentina: A Hauntingly Intelligent Psychological Thriller (33 page)

But he was not with me. He was with her. They would be asleep, together. They would wake up, smile at each other, she would bring him coffee, run her hand through his thick, soft hair. I placed my mug on the top of my belly. Beneath, the soft
kick kick
, making ripples in the surface of the milk. With the birth of this kicking little mite, all silence would end. In its place would be chaos, screaming and shit. Another kind of loneliness altogether. A lack of control. Was this, actually, what Michael was offering
–
not the best of both worlds but the worst: insecurity, jealousy, uncontrolled loneliness, two weeks out of four?

But if I refused
–
I wouldn’t even get the two weeks. She would get him four weeks in four. If I pushed him, threatened suicide, took a posting in Malaysia or Oman, he might not come with me. Or he might, but he would become resentful at the loss of the other child
–
the relationship would sour. He would leave, go back to her. She would still get him four weeks in four. I would still have lost, in the most complete way. She, the girl from Govan, would have won.

I went back to bed, lay down. I closed my eyes, tried to regulate my breathing, trick myself into sleep like I used to at boarding school. And then something occurred to me, something so obvious I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before. I sat bolt upright, rigid with purpose. Here I was worrying that Shona would find out.

But what if she did?
So what if she did?

I laughed out loud, clenched my fists. If Shona discovered the truth, as she surely would, wouldn’t that be the best thing that could possibly happen?

I got up again, ran back to the window and looked out onto the rainy street, half-insane with the revelation.

If I fought now, I might win, but for how long? If I rang Shona and told her, forced his hand, made him do something he was not ready to do, he would, ultimately, throw it back in my face. The blame for his losing Shona, whose limited charms were apparently still fresh, would fall upon me. But! If I waited it out, if I played along like a lovestruck fool, she would still find out
–
it was inevitable. And she would go mad. Insane mad, yes, and furious mad. She would, would have to, leave him. The girl who fought for truth and justice would have no choice. Hell, she’d probably piss off back to Glasgow.

I was cackling by then, hysterical with the crystalline clarity of it all. She would have lost. I would have won and, in Michael’s eyes, I would be blameless. Blameless and humble and ready to accept the prize.

Back in bed, I slid a pillow between my knees, lay on my side and closed my eyes. It was too easy. A few months
–
that’s all it would take. A woman like her against a woman like me? I didn’t need to see her in the flesh, I’d seen her on Facebook
–
tiny little pipsqueak of a thing. I knew from the snippets Michael had let slip, from my conversation with Robbie, that there was no contest. She was, I had gleaned, physically and intellectually inferior
–
and she was governed by some misguided, outdated notion of integrity, some unutterably dull working-class moral code. Let him move her and his other child into the stinking countryside. Let her believe his lies, the fool. If she was idiot enough to believe his shaggy dog story in the first place, she deserved to be duped. I would simply ... sit it out. That’s all I had to do until she found out, flipped out and fucked off out of our lives forever. Smug fools deserved all they got. The more I thought about it, the easier it became. I would agree to the plan he thought so elegant. And I knew what my condition would be.

TWENTY-THREE

It was a quiet ceremony. Not one of our acquaintances knew about it. Robbie didn’t even know we were together, so he was hardly going to be the best man. I agreed to keep Michael’s parents out of it since they already knew that Shona and he had moved in together; mine were both back in Melbourne. So no parents and no parents-in-law
–
talk about the best of both worlds. For the honeymoon, Michael told Shona he had a business trip and away we went on a fact-finding mission to Aberdeen. We stayed at the Craigendarroch in Ballater, flipped through property schedules in the four-poster bed, ordered room service: champagne, beef and horseradish on soft white bread. We made love, made plans, made calls to estate agents.

When I saw the two up, two down in Fittie, it struck me as a perfectly adequate temporary hideaway. I sold up in Glasgow and put in an offer. Ironically, it was me, not Michael, who got the first job. Any position Michael could get would have to be onshore and onshore work would not let him have the two-week holiday every month he would need to keep up appearances. So I was bailing him out. It was tough, tougher than I thought, but I was keeping the long game in mind.

Once Zachary was born, I took up the part-time position with Maple and moved. Simple. I can remember my first day in Fittie
–
trailing my hand along the white walls of that minuscule kitchen and thinking, yes, this is somewhere I can ... wait it out. Michael pretended he had to travel, that he had to do all sorts of training courses, survival weekends, you name it. He simply kissed his Glasgow mistress goodbye and travelled up to his wife in Aberdeen.

I put Zachary in Little Beans nursery up in Rosemount, fixed up the hideaway as best I could. I had everything organised more or less as I wanted. When he was in town, Michael and I lived together at the Fittie house. We were lucky. When the time came, he walked into a job at Maple and out came the property schedules once more.

The cottage was a dream, of course. As soon as I saw it I knew it was mine, would be mine, once I’d dealt with the issue at hand.

“
It’s perfect.” I said to Michael. “For Shona, I mean.”

It wasn’t easy. The day he moved her up, into the cottage that would be mine, that was mine, I couldn’t concentrate. We had been so free. No GPS tracking devices, no subterfuge. Now she was here, things would have to change. My work suffered. I left early, pleading a migraine.

In the end, after hours imagining them half-deranged with happiness, cooing over where to put the Welsh dresser or whatever hellish crap they owned, I cracked. I had to find out if this loneliness really was the controlled state of affairs I believed it to be. Could I get him to drop everything and come to me when I needed him?

It was about 9pm when I sent him the text message. He wouldn’t have his other phone on him, not on the day he moved, so I knew I would have to contact him on what I called his Shone. He’d put my contact in that phone as George Maple so I knew I had to write some kind of work-related code that he would be able to unpick. My long-term intention was to blow his cover, of course, but I had to make it look like it had happened by accident otherwise I would lose. And that wasn’t an option. So I put something like:

Present drilling requirements at HR office asap.

Regards, George.

Again, God knows where that came from
–
funny, how your mind shoots off on tangents when you force it to invent.

He was at my door thirty-five minutes later. I calculated that he must have left the cottage within minutes of receiving my message and I was gratified by that.

“
I came to present my drilling requirements,” he said, grinning, stepping in, lifting me up and carrying me until, bang, we hit the back wall of the living room.

“
Good,” I said. “I’m in urgent need of some drilling.”

We knocked a picture off its hook, a photo of the two of us with Zachary when he was a week old. The frame broke, the glass smashed. Clothes still on, we fucked up against the wall, fell onto the floor, sweaty, flushed, exhilarated.

“
That,” he said, “was unbelievable.”

That, I thought, was exciting. What would happen to that once Michael became mine alone? What would I have to do to keep
that?

Once he’d gone
–
out over the quadrangle, muttering about fish and chips, threading his arms through his jacket sleeves in his immediate and perhaps tactless return to the mundane
–
I lit a joint and opened the front window, stared out into the night.

Did I even want to blow his cover? I was no longer sure. Maybe this could work. Maybe this was a good deal more exciting than real life. Maybe this was
better
.

And then on Saturday morning I got his text:

Put the coffee pot on.

And there he was, fifteen minutes later, at the door. We spent the weekend together. The Spyware worked as well as he’d said it would. She was in his pocket or on his desk, right in front of him, all the time
–
a small orange dot with no idea she was being watched. He knew and I knew that she was there alone in that cottage. We were in Fittie, safe, in our love nest.

I would have stuck it out, kept to myself, but I was too curious. I’m only human
–
any woman in my position would have felt the same, done the same. I’d seen a photo of course. In addition to the one on Facebook, I’d found several on his
Shone
so I’d seen her and the baby. The baby was curiously fair, considering it was the issue of such a dark-haired rake as Michael and his little Celtic pixie. But a photo wasn’t enough. I wanted to meet her, find out what she was like.

So, that first night, while Michael slept, I sneaked out and drove to the cottage, half-mad with some need I could not name. At the end of the lane, I stopped, the cottage walls bright white in the glare of the headlights, and almost fainted when I saw the bedroom curtain twitch.

I killed the lights but almost in the same moment realised what a stupid idea that was. I turned the headlights back on and drove up to the old farmhouse at the top of the track, turned the car around and drove back slowly
–
no rush, ain’t nothin’ dodgy goin’ on here
–
a wrong turn on a midnight cruise. So I saw nothing and I have no idea what she saw, only that she didn’t see me. All in all, it was a disappointing, pointless and extremely tiring trip.

In the days that followed, I tried to think of a way I could casually call in
–
not so easy when the cottage is miles from anywhere. Could I pretend to be a canvassing MP? Mobile something or other, make-up consultant, image consultant, personal shopper?
Madame, we’re doing complimentary grooming sessions in the Aberdeenshire area today as part of our introductory offer ...

No. That wouldn’t work. I’d never keep a straight face.

The solution came one evening. I was in the kitchen of our Fittie hideaway, preparing Zachary’s bottle while Michael indulged in one of his tedious phone calls to her
–
part, he said, of the plan’s authenticity:
if I really were offshore, Georgie, I’d ring her daily wouldn’t I?
He’d told her they weren’t allowed mobiles offshore after one of the roughnecks had been driven insane by his wife calling him and threatening to sleep with someone else if he didn’t get himself home that instant. That was actually true
–
he’d heard the story in the office. So, not that I was listening, but I couldn’t help but hear him say the name of the nursery. And the time. Blue Moon. Monday. Two o’clock.

Monday was my day off. Michael cycled to work and I went straight to Monsoon and spent a fortune on a maxi skirt I didn’t even like. In Oxfam I found a pair of ghastly red leather shoes that positively screamed orthopaedic. I went home, put on the shoes and the skirt with an old t-shirt of Michael’s, which I knotted at one side. I studied my reflection and laughed like a drain. Here was one thing I hadn’t considered: that this would be so much fun.

At The Blue Moon, dressed in my ridiculous get up, I made out like I’d been trying the doorbell. A chance meeting, that’s what I was going for. If it’s easy to avoid someone when you know their exact location, it’s even easier, when you set your mind to it, to meet someone by chance. And then, in the nursery, I only had to brazen it out with the staff. Of course there was no appointment! But faced with a weak mind, a strong mind will always win.

I had every intention of leaving it there. I’m not a pervert and I’m not a stalker. This wasn’t some sinister plot. All I wanted to do was see her, maybe speak to her, try and figure out what she had that I didn’t. And yes, I should have said goodbye and walked away. My plan, after all, was only to sit and wait. That’s all it ever was.

But here’s the thing. I had hated her
–
for over a year. I had wanted to hate her. But, when I met her, I didn’t hate her at all. I actually liked her. I don’t know, I think I’d imagined some rictus grinning homemaker, all baby charts and absolutely zero sense of humour. But she wasn’t like that. She was sarcastic and open and honest. She was darker in spirit than I thought she’d be and, now that I’d met her, now that I’d gone to so much trouble, I thought it might be nice to hang out. What harm could it do? Michael would never know. I had no other friends, I needed company on my days off and besides, this way I could help things, at a pace controlled by me, towards their inevitable conclusion.

And so I got a lift from Shona and put myself, metaphorically speaking, in the driving seat.

I couldn’t believe it when she agreed to let me come to the cottage. She couldn’t get the front door open, I had a better hang of the key than she did. Can’t say I liked what she’d done with the place. The pictures on the walls were a clueless hotch-potch of prints and photos and her crockery was that cream, raised fruit design favoured by people who don’t know their own taste. But it was easier to fake enthusiasm, fake everything for that matter, in an Australian accent. There’s a sense in which you’re not in your own skin. You’re not yourself. You can get away with anything. I spent my childhood in Australia. Tourak, a wealthy suburb of Melbourne. When my father left, we came back to the UK, to be near my mum’s family in Hampshire. I told Shona my father left when I was two but actually I was twelve, old enough to understand the immediate effect if not the long-term damage. My mother’s family is rich, I may as well get that over with so you can get on with the judging. Silver spoon, all of that. Go ahead, get it all out of your system. My grandparents paid for my education and, because they were paying, they got to choose the convent school I so loathed. That was when I decided I would never again let anyone pay for anything on my behalf. I would never sacrifice my financial independence, never be beholden. I would be in control of my own choices.