Valentina Read online

  “Good grief, Shona,” she glanced at me and rolled her eyes. “What do you want, a resumé?”

  “No. Sorry. I was curious, that’s all.” I fell silent for a second, afraid I’d upset her. But I couldn’t keep it up, I was too antsy. “Do you see them?”

  “They’re both in Aus, so both too far away. In every sense of the word.”

  “I thought your mum was coming over to see you? The day we met, remember? You said she was coming over? You were worried about Zac swearing?”

  She shook her head. “I was joking.” She glanced at me and smiled thinly before returning her eyes to the road. “I was trying to impress you.”

  She didn’t appear to be joking now.

  “Impress me?” I said. “Why would you want to impress me? I’m just some hack who got herself pregnant a wee bit earlier than she meant to.”

  “Don’t say that,” she snapped. “Don’t devalue yourself like that, Shona. Really. Honestly, you Brits think this self-deprecation thing is so charming but it isn’t. It’s a disaster. It’s what women do or feel they have to do to get people to like them and I hate it.” She was almost shouting, not looking at me, her knuckles white on the steering wheel. “All that oh, don’t feel threatened by me ’cause I’m no good at anything at all. What is it, unfeminine or some such bullshit? To be good? I teach yoga. I’m a frickin’ great yoga teacher. So what? Do I have to go around saying I’m the worst teacher in the world, tell people my clients come back year after year because they like my frickin’ leotard? It’s pathetic, frankly.” She took the roundabout on two wheels.

  I wanted to tell her to slow down but thought better of it. My cheeks went hot, my eyes prickled.

  “I’m really grateful you took us to hospital,” I said. “I know thank you is not enough but ...”

  “I don’t mean you,” she said – more quietly, more kindly, nudging into the build-up of traffic towards the Brig O’Dee. For a moment neither of us said anything.

  “I didn’t realise you felt so strongly about it,” I said.

  She shook her head. “I’m trying to get you to value yourself a bit more that’s all. I know you Brits don’t like to blow your own trumpet but what’s the point having a trumpet if you can’t blow it? Pretty pointless trumpet if you ask me.”

  “Where I come from,” I said, “that’s not really our style. But I take your point.”

  We crossed the bridge, headed right onto the South Deeside Road. The route was as familiar to me now as my own teeth. Across the Dee, on the golf course, I could see men in tweed caps. I wished Mikey were here, in the driving seat or that I’d taken Isla to the hospital myself. I wished I hadn’t called Valentina. She had dropped everything to help me this morning but perhaps she resented it. It wasn’t the words she said – they were good words, solid and sisterly – it was the way she had said them, the anger in her voice. Did she secretly see me as pathetic? Now that we knew one another better, did I in fact get on her nerves? I wondered if the kinder words that had followed her outburst were no more than leaves hastily thrown down to cover her tracks. Perhaps there were other things about me she despised. And if she was harbouring an armoury of secret irritations like this, what would it take for her to blast me again?

  Back at the cottage, Valentina unlocked the door and headed upstairs to use the bathroom. Inside, a sepulchral cold, colder somehow than outside. I put Isla, who had fallen asleep again, in the living room and came back into the kitchen to set about making Valentina and me something to eat. It was after three and I was cold and starving hungry. Shivering, I put the heating on, emptied some soup into a pan, thick sliced a white loaf I’d taken out of the freezer at dawn and slathered it in thick butter. I was still wearing my coat.

  I need to stop a second and say something. I just realised, the way I’m telling you all this, you must think I had no other friends, but I did. When Valentina was giving classes on Tuesday, Wednesdays and Thursdays, I saw other people quite a bit. There was a baby music group on a Wednesday and I always went out for coffee afterwards with the girls from there. I joined Aquababies down at the baths, took Isla there on Thursdays and there too I made friends with three great lassies who came in from one of the housing estates at the other side of town. But the thing is, none of these pals come into this story and besides, I didn’t connect with them like I did with Val. She and I shared the same dark sense of humour, and we were both outsiders, incomers. That’s what I would have said at the time.

  Valentina reappeared and told me I should put Isla into her cot, where she could rest properly.

  “OK. Yes, I suppose you’re right.” I fetched Isla and carried her upstairs. She didn’t stir. I laid her in her cot, placed a thin blanket over her and stayed a moment so I could look at her. Her skin had a soft pink blush now that the storm in her had passed. Her eyelashes curled upwards, tiny blonde spokes, her hands closed into two miniature fists. I sighed and, for the first time that day, relaxed. I stroked her cheek with my finger and whispered to her. “I love you so much, little one.”

  I stayed there a moment, composing myself, before returning downstairs. Valentina had laid the table, poured the soup into bowls and was waiting for me.

  “Are you OK?” She took a big, almost bestial bite of the fresh bread. “Do you want a drink?”

  “Not just now.” I sat down and looked her in the eye. She smiled, her lips touching, her canine tooth catching on her bottom lip in that way it did. The closeness between us seemed to return. Maybe I had only imagined a degree of separation, because of what I knew or thought I knew about her.

  “Who were you with that day at the supermarket?” I said.

  “When?” She held my gaze with her intense green eyes and for a moment I thought I would falter.

  “At Markies.” I had to look at my knees. Her stare was too intense. “When I saw you. You said you were with Red but, I don’t know, you were so strange with me and you wouldn’t let me meet him and then I – I know I haven’t said anything about it, I didn’t want to ... what I mean is, I saw you. Going out of the car park with ... well, it wasn’t Red, was it?”

  When I looked up I knew I had been right. Her cheeks had flushed a little and she was staring into her soup.

  “I’m not judging,” I added, keeping my voice gentle. “But I don’t want us not to be able to talk about things.”

  She thrust herself backwards, her chair scraped across the stone tiles. “You want to talk about it?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Don’t you? Otherwise we’ve got this whole ‘thing’ between us. I don’t want it to drive a wedge into our friendship. And, as I said, I’m not judging.”

  She was looking at me, unblinking, as if I was mad.

  I reached across the table, tried to beckon her forward, to take my hand, but she didn’t move.

  “You’re not out of your mind?” she said. “You’re not going to strangle me with your bare hands?”

  I shook my head. “Why would I do that? We’re friends. We’re not here to punish each other, are we? Whatever’s going on, I’m supposed to help you bury the body!”

  She gripped the edge of the table with both hands, as if to stand or, perhaps, as if to stop herself from sliding off her chair.

  “You can tell me, you know.”

  She screwed up her eyes, seemed incredulous, suspicious even. “Are you fucking with me?”

  “No!” I was panicking. I had pushed her too hard. I smiled, to show her I meant it kindly. “Is it the policeman?”

  She shook her head a fraction, as if in hesitation. Her right eye twitched. I was watching her so closely, trying to gauge her reaction – I was afraid of scaring her, and yes, to my eternal shame, I was thinking of myself. I didn’t want her to up and leave and never come back. Without her, my world, reduced as it was, would disintegrate.

  “The policeman from outside Markies ... Marks and Spencer’s, you know? The one who tried to give you a parking ticket. I thought it might be him. The guy who pulled you up fo
r waiting on the double yellows. John. Douglas, was it? Duggan? He gave you his number?” I laughed. “I thought you were joking, but I remember finding it in the footwell – so when I saw you I thought maybe you’d held onto his number after all and, oh, I don’t know ...”

  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.