Valentina Read online

  She frowned. “Up and down, I guess. I’ve not had to tell him off in a couple of days.”

  She made him sound like a child. I stayed at the pond’s edge, pushed the lily pad with my toe. I had never, I realised, invited her and Red for dinner after all. The intention had been lost in the spinning wheel of our new life, I suppose, in the joy of having Mikey to myself for two whole weeks. I guess, seeing him only half the time, I couldn’t bear to share him – but if I let that continue too long, we’d become a couple of bearded hermits.

  “Why don’t you and Red come over one night when Mikey’s next back?” I said. “Nothing fancy, mind.”

  “Sure,” she said. “That’d be lovely.”

  The carp again, rolling down into the depths. There was black too in his scales, beneath the gold. We would have to find someone who could adopt the fish, I thought, when we got around to making the pond into a sandpit. Isla had started to crawl in the last week. So had Zac. The two of them were growing so close, following each other about like brother and sister, copying each other. I would tell Mikey to buy sand when he got back. We should fill the pond before something bad happened.

  Time. I gripped my way through those two weeks blocks without him like a mountain climber on a steep cliff face. One hand hole, one foot hole, shift up, rest, shift up. Isla became better company. Watching her grow and change was a pleasure in itself. Mikey and I decided that I would look for work once she had turned one. I was her only point of stability, he said, and I agreed. I got used to my stay-at-home role, got better at filling the hours, made small tasks last. One hand hole, one foot hole, shift up, rest.

  The kitchen roof sprung a leak. I brought my tool kit from the garage and fixed it. Loose slate, nothing to it. I re-puttied the living room window which had been rattling since we moved here. To stop the cold air blowing in from outside, I bought and fitted an insulation strip to the bottom of the front door. These things I told Mikey on the phone, glowed when he praised my handiness.

  I joined a playgroup, though I had difficulty connecting with anyone there. There were, apparently, grownup women who positively relished the singing of baby songs, who apparently could not wait to talk about their child’s development, vegetable eating, digestive system. And if I’m honest, once I’d met Valentina, other women paled in comparison.

  I went to the supermarket every day while he was away: relief from loneliness and boredom. Or existential despair for sale in coloured rows – depending on my mood. In the trolley, Isla thought she was on a ride at the fair, bless her. I pushed her and let go, pretended to panic as she rolled away. I ran after her, grabbed the handlebar at the last moment, making her jolt and giggle. I loved to make her laugh like that, her head flopping back then forward again as laughter made her weak. I’d spent a lifetime learning to make small thrills count. Of course, I wasn’t poor any more but making simple pleasures out of nothing in this way was lodged in the very atoms of me. I went to town alone, called in at Markies. And who should I see there but Valentina. No mistaking that hair. You could have spotted it from a hundred miles away – or, in my case, from the end of the dairy aisle.

  “Val,” I called after her. “Hey, Val!”

  It was the look she gave me when she turned around. They say people look like they’ve seen a ghost. Well, she looked like that. Like I myself had died and had come back from behind the yoghurts to haunt her.

  “Shona.” She pushed the trolley towards me, seeming to recover, digging in her back pocket, pulling out her phone. She was wearing tight black trousers, a silk blouse and some black high-heeled ankle boots. She looked a lot less hippyish than normal – not like herself at all.

  She stopped her trolley bumper to bumper with mine. “I thought you shopped in the big Sainsbury’s?”

  “I do normally but – call me crazy – I fancied a change. Aren’t you teaching today?”

  “Lunch break.” She checked her phone, frowned. “Sorry, Red’s asking ... hold on a second.” Her thumb twitched over the screen.

  “Is he here?” I looked over her shoulder to see if I could spot him. “I’d love to meet him.”

  “Somewhere. I need him to pick up some peas, hold on.” Her thumb pressed down again. “That’s it.” She looked up, her shoulders dropped an inch. “I’m making pea risotto.”

  “Yum,” I said. “I might copy you.”

  We smiled at one another, neither finding anything to say. I’m no hippy but there was something in the air between us, something she would have described maybe as bad energy. I felt it as if it were a solid thing, something dense.

  “Is everything all right?” I asked her.

  “Sure, why not?”

  “You look very smart.”

  She pinched up her blouse. “Oh this? Yeah. Corporate gig. Have to look the part before I strip off to the leotard and say ta-dah! Stiffies all round!”

  I smiled, nodded, looked at the floor.

  “Where’s Red?” I asked after a moment. “I could say hello.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Actually we’re tight for time, babe. But the four of us are getting together for dinner soon, right?”

  I winced with embarrassment. Mikey had been home and gone again since that conversation and still I hadn’t organised the dinner.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll ask Mikey tonight when he calls, see what day is good. That way we’ll get it on the calendar.”

  She looked in my trolley, at the six yoghurts rattling around in the bottom. “Petit Filou, eh?”

  “Aye. No Petit Filou chez nous! Pity flew out the window. I need a petit f’lu jab – good grief, I’m gonna stop now.” I laughed, felt myself blush.

  She was smiling. Her canine caught on her bottom lip in the way it did, making her look almost coy. “Listen, we’re still on for Friday morning swim, right?”

  “Of course. Swimming baths at nine thirty.” And now we were exchanging information we both knew.

  “Don’t forget your costume.” She laughed, looked behind her and back again to me. “I love the way you Brits say baths instead of pool.” Her phone beeped. She checked it and made to turn away. “Red’s got the peas. See you Friday, babe. Better wax our legs, eh?”

  “Aye, and the rest. See you.”

  I watched her go, didn’t move until she’d disappeared into another aisle.

  At the checkout, I looked for her to wave goodbye but couldn’t spot her. I made my way out with shopping in one hand and Isla on the opposite hip. Outside, the rain was coming down in sheets. I found my keys, pulled my coat over the two of us and ran over to the car park. I threw the shopping in the boot, heaved Isla into her seat. As I tried to clip her in, my coat slipped from my shoulder. In seconds, the rain soaked my sweater. My hair flattened against my face but I no longer cared. I was as wet as West Coast Willy, as my dad used to say, and there was a certain pleasure in giving in to elements beyond my control.

  I was about to make my way round to my side of the car when I saw, pulling out of the exit to the car park, Valentina’s old Toyota. The passenger side was nearest me. Naturally, I think, I strained to get a look at Red. I was only curious. I must have been about ten metres away and I couldn’t see well for the rain but from a distance I was pretty sure I could see that the man in the passenger seat had dark hair because he was talking to Valentina, his face turned towards her, the back of his head, then, towards me. Valentina had told me he was called Red on account of his red hair. I had seen a photo of him – there was no way his hair could look dark, not even from a distance, not even if he had got wet.

  My guts flipped over. I climbed into the jeep and started the engine. Put the blower on high to clear the windscreen. I felt rushed, panicky. Guilty. I had spied on my friend and, as spies deserve, had discovered something I didn’t like, something I had no right to know. She hadn’t met my eye just now in the supermarket, had made conversation in the strangest way. It had been as if she were mimicking herself, but not getting it right. And now I knew why. Whoever
it was she was with, I was pretty sure it wasn’t Red.

  I jumped into the car and started the engine. Valentina was already pulling out, heading for the roundabout. I tried to back out and keep sight of her car at the same time but it was so hard with the rain streaming down the windows. I almost crashed getting out of the car park, caught sight of the Toyota heading towards the lights. But I was three cars back already. At the lights she turned left as they changed from amber, leaving me stranded on the red behind a queue of traffic. I sat as high as I could, straining to see. But it was useless. Why was she heading left when she lived on Union Grove? Was she going to his place, with food and wine, to spend the afternoon there? The thought was too horrible. I was building it up into more than it was. I slammed my hand on the steering wheel and cursed. Whatever the explanation, I had lost her.

  THIRTEEN

  As planned, I met Valentina at Aberdeen City Baths that Friday. As planned, we took the kids swimming. We splashed about, we smiled at our children, eyes bright and pinked with chlorine, we laughed about the woman whose swimming costume had gone see-through at the back. We went for coffee. Chatted about this and that. Said goodbye.

  At home, I made tea and sat on the sofa in my coat, Isla asleep in her car seat at my feet. Warming my hands on the mug, I sipped and stared at Isla’s perfect face, the soft curved rim of her eyelashes, her damp, plump bottom lip. I should focus only on this, I thought: this child. She was all that mattered. But I couldn’t focus on her, only on my unease. Something had changed between Valentina and me just now at the swimming baths, in the café, and it was that change, nothing else, which lay at the heart of how I felt now. I had not asked about the man in the car but why should I? What she did was her business, not mine. But this not asking had created a distance and I wondered if she felt it too. Today, we had enjoyed each other’s company as we always did. So, on the surface, nothing had changed. But it was a surface, it seemed, neither of us dared to scratch. Was that wrong – not to have scratched? Isn’t that what close friends did – told each other things – everything, sometimes?

  But perhaps there was nothing to tell. The rain had been heavy. Red hair can look dark in a certain murky light. I hadn’t seen him in profile. I couldn’t have said whether it was Red or Billy or Bob. There was nothing, no secret, no mystery. I thought of Jeanie, how she always joked that the two of us could never fall out. If we did, she used to say, for reasons of privacy alone, one of us would have to murder the other.

  In my memory, Mikey’s homecomings take the form of one single event in which we fly into each other’s arms. And yes, it was true – sometimes the second thing he did was put his bags down. But sometimes, we sat upright on the kitchen chairs, his kitbag a great black obstacle between us on the floor. On these occasions, we were solicitous with one another, almost formal, as if natural speech was or would not be possible until the physical conversation had taken place.

  This was one of those times. Late October, the weather had turned for good, the air fresh, nippy. Isla was asleep in the living room when he came in and threw his kitbag on the stone tiles. But we did not rush at each other. Instead, we made tea and talked – no, not talked – we found things to say, both rigid on those stiff-backed chairs. He looked exhausted, face pale, black shadows under his eyes.

  “You look so tired, honey,” I said. “Your face is totally drained. You’re working far too hard.”

  He smiled and closed his eyes. “I’m fine.”

  “Can’t you take Monday off? Take a long weekend?”

  “You worry too much, you do.”

  I reached across the table for his hand. He leant forward, pushed my hair behind my ear, let his fingers linger there. We stayed like that in perfect stillness, smiling stupidly at the small wonder of ourselves, until he scraped his chair across the tiles and brought his face towards mine. I can see him now, lips parted, eyes closing for our kiss. And then, from the living room, Isla’s heartbroken wail sending us back, laughing.

  “When you’re a teenager you worry about your parents catching you,” I said. “When you’re a parent ...”

  Mikey took both my hands in his, kissed the knuckles one by one with a kind of reverence. He was always so adoring when he got back from offshore, worshipping, almost repentant.

  He stood to fetch his daughter. “I’ll deal with you later, Miss McGilvery. One thing at a time.”

  Time. Time to eat, to give the baby a bath, to coax her into her cot, into dreamland. Time to love. Delayed, our kiss became an event – with its own build-up – not something we could simply ... do.

  We got into bed strange and shy, our pyjamas providing a kind of belated modesty. I lit one of the oil lamps I’d made with Isla.

  “To remind you of your other home,” I said, positioning it on the bedside table. “See the flame? That’s the gas flare. The jar is the rig. You’re in there somewhere, sleeping, in your wee bunk.”

  “I tell you, it smells too nice in here to be a bunk.”

  The miniature gas flare hissed. We watched its abstract theatre play out in shadows on the wall. I trailed my fingers down the soft hair of his belly, slid my hand into his pyjama bottoms.

  “Bet your bunk mate doesn’t do this.” I kissed his neck, took a firm grip of him.

  “I’d bloody kill him if he did.”

  “You could close your eyes and pretend it was me.”

  “Never.” He rolled me onto my back, met my gaze with his: his face becoming hazy. His kiss came at last and with it my insides raced. He drew back, the kindness in his eyes replaced by an intensity that was almost cruel. “There’s only you, Shone. You are a one-off.”

  Buttons can be unbuttoned. Strange can become familiar, shy can become bold, what has been shrouded can be revealed. Your lover’s skin is your skin, his hands your hands, his mouth, your own – searching, finding, in the warm light of home. I fell into him, felt the heady release that falling brings.

  “I love you,” I said, gripping handfuls of his soft hair, sitting astride him, easing him into me. “I love you so much.”

  “I love you too.” He sat up and closed his mouth around my nipple, took my buttocks in his hands and moved us both towards the edge of the bed. My legs wrapped around him, he stood and walked us over to the bedroom door. “I miss you every single day.”

  “Oh God,” I managed, between gasps, my shoulder blades rubbing against the smooth wood of the door. “Oh God oh God oh God ...”

  Sex is weird, isn’t it? I only mean in the sense that sometimes, afterwards, the return to the mundane can feel surreal. One minute, you’re as intimate as it’s possible to be, the next you can be talking about, I don’t know, what television programme you fancy watching the next night or whether the bins need emptying.

  “I’ve invited Valentina and Red over for dinner on Wednesday night,” I told Mikey once we’d snuggled down under the covers, my head on his chest, our legs intertwined. “I’ve finally got around to inviting them.” I was hoping that, upon meeting Red, I would find in him some trace of the man I had seen in her car. I was keen to move forward from the awkwardness I had felt these last weeks.

  “Who’s Red?” Mikey asked.

  I hit him on the chest. “Valentina’s husband, stupid!”

  “Oh. Yes. Right.”

  “I haven’t met him, myself,” I said. I was wide awake now. Sex does that to me sometimes. “I’ve seen a picture though. He’s got proper red hair. That’s why they call him Red.”

  “No shit.”

  I sniggered, kissed his chest. “Funny that they both have red hair, isn’t it, with Zac being so dark? She didn’t say whether we should call him Graham or Red or what. I’ll have to ask her.”

  A deep, low breath. Another.

  “Mikey?”

  The rig always tired him out, poor lamb. He was dead to the world.

  On Wednesday morning Valentina sent a text:

  Red got man cold.

  OK to come me myself and I tonight?

/>   No worries if you wanna cancel.

  My first thought was that they’d fought. He’d found out she was seeing someone else and there’d been a showdown. My second thought was that she knew what I’d seen and knew that if I saw Red, I would realise he was not the same man as the one in the car. My third thought was that Red might have a cold. That there was no lover, no deception. I decided to call her.

  She answered after a couple of rings. “Shona, hi!”

  It was noisy in the background, like a café or an office.

  “Shit, sorry, Val. I forgot you’re at work. Are you in the middle of a class?”

  “About to be. They’re getting changed. Is that OK about Red? Did you want to cancel?”

  “Of course not. I was just checking you were all right. I thought you’d had a fight or something, I don’t know.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “No reason.” I hesitated. I’d said the wrong thing. A phone rang in the background. It didn’t sound like a mobile phone. “Where are you?”

  “Church Hall. No one under eighty allowed unless accompanied by both parents.” She laughed. “Yikes, think I might have said that a bit loud. I’ll see you later anyway. Want me to bring anything?”

  “No. Not at all. Yourself. And Red, obviously, if he feels better.”

  “Will do.”

  We said our goodbyes, rang off.

  I’d bought ingredients for a lamb tagine. I’d never made one before and it felt like the most monumental effort to actually plan and cook something from a book. I cleaned the cottage and laid the fire, then, around six, started on the food. I was still chopping coriander with my apron on when Valentina’s car pulled up outside at 7:30pm. I had said 8 for 8:30pm. I checked my appearance in the hall mirror and swore at my reflection. I was a total mess. Hadn’t had time even to brush my hair or do anything that would make me look less like the wreck of the damn Hesperus. I had planned to make myself decent in the last half an hour – a half hour I no longer had. And the table hadn’t been set.