Valentina Read online

  And then I remembered ‘dry your eyes’. It’s something my mum always used to say. I’m not sure if it’s Scottish or what, but it’s for when someone’s feeling sorry for themselves when they’ve got nothing really to be sorry about. I had a loving partner, a beautiful baby daughter and a fairy tale cottage – more, much more, than I’d ever dreamed of. Self-pity, that’s what this crying at the sink business was all about and I knew it. What was going on here was not death, not divorce, not anything I’d even bother writing about for the paper, it was no more than nae pals, pal.

  So I walked into the hall where I’d hung the mirror and I looked at my silly, red, swollen face.

  “Dry your eyes, Shona,” I said. “Get a life.”

  I had to act. If I was going to find work once the dust settled, I needed childcare. I’d have to get Isla used to someone other than me sooner rather than later and, besides, at this rate I was going to end up in a special ambulance. I needed friends too. And I certainly couldn’t make any of those by sitting at home waiting for a neighbour to come and borrow a cup of sugar, could I?

  We had no neighbours. And I didn’t have any sugar.

  ***

  There’s still not enough light to make out the trees at the back of the cottage. But she doesn’t need to see them to know they are there: the leylandii and the pines, the beeches and the oaks, bunched like criminals at the limit of the land. There was a time when she didn’t know their names – they were simply trees. What she can see from here is the grey front door, the dense leaves and frilled velvet petals of the briar rose, the thorns that prick and draw blood. See how the tendrils reach around the windows. See how they grip on, claim ownership. Maybe the rose knows, as she does, that possession is nine-tenths of the law.

  ***

  TWO

  By the time Mikey called from the rig that evening, I was brightness itself.

  “Guess what?” I said. “I’m going to see a nursery on Monday. The Blue Moon, it’s called.”

  “Doesn’t sound like a nursery.” How lovely he sounded. I could have eaten that Scouse accent, that voice. “The Blue Moon, did you say? Sounds like a nightclub. Do they have strippers?”

  “I’ll let you know,” I said, laughing.

  “What time do you have to be there?”

  “Two o’clock.”

  “Two o’clock, right. And that’s this Monday coming? Sure you’ll find it OK?”

  “Cheeky sod. Of course I will.”

  “Shouldn’t cost too much, should it?” he asked.

  “Not too much. I mean, I don’t know. I didn’t ask. But it’s OK, isn’t it?”

  I heard him hesitate. Not heard, sensed, and wished he could come home right away so I could chat to him in person. I pressed my fingertips to the mirror. Around my nails, the skin whitened. Mikey couldn’t come home. He was in the middle of the North Sea.

  “Mikey, listen,” I said. “You’re not here. You don’t know what it’s like. If you expect me to carry on like this with no one to talk to day after day ...”

  “I wasn’t saying that ...”

  “I was only thinking a few hours,” I rushed in. “Give me a chance to meet people. And once Isla’s settled I could maybe think about picking up some freelance stuff, set up some meetings.”

  “Shona, stop. It’s fine. Honestly.”

  I didn’t say anything for a moment. All I could think of was that I’d never before had to ask permission to spend money, not since I was a kid. I’d always worked, since I was fourteen – a paper round, Saturday jobs, waitressing, babysitting. So I’d always had my own cash, always spent it how the hell I liked. But now, the work I did was important, yes, but it was not paid. I supposed I’d have to ask or at least discuss things like this in future.

  Maybe I’d been oversensitive. Mikey had never mentioned a budget in all the time we’d been together. He was the extravagant one, not least of all because his parents always seemed to have lump sums to give to their precious only child, cheques that took my breath away flung out over restaurant dinners whenever they were back from the villa. Always on my best behaviour on these occasions, I would eat carefully while slowly his mother’s mouth slackened, the Mersey swelling her vowels, hissing against her consonants, her tanned eyelids thickening, drooping. She got so very drunk, drunker than any of the neds I knew from back home. So I sat and smiled and ate my strawberry parfait, his mother slurring wetly at my shoulder: of course Michael’s twice the man his father ever was. Opportunist, he calls himself! Her spit wet in my ear. Cheating bastard, I call it.

  Special Brew or vintage Malbec, drunk is drunk.

  “Shona?” Mikey broke the silence. “Come on, I didn’t mean anything by it. Besides, if they do have strippers, I’ll drop her off for you myself.”

  Once we’d said our goodbyes, I stood for a moment staring at the five misty oval rings my fingertips had made on the mirror. Slowly, they vanished, a fading imprint of where I had been.

  I got to The Blue Moon at five to two on the Monday. The sunny promise of the morning had given way to cold sky, heavy, graphite clouds. I’d caught the forecast in the car on the way in: rain, they’d said, possible thundery showers.

  And there on the step, baby clinging koala-like to her hip, was Valentina.

  She struck me the way women can strike other women – because she was pretty, I suppose, and dressed in a pink cheesecloth maxi skirt. At her waist, she’d knotted a plain white t-shirt, thrown a green woollen shawl over the top. I remember thinking she was one of those women who get away with throwing on any old thing and, running in luscious waves down her back, she had this magnificent auburn hair. Titian, I think it’s called, not the classic redhead you see more commonly up here.

  “Hey, I like your haircut,” she said – before either of us had even said hello. She seemed to have an accent: Australian, possibly New Zealand. “It’s cute, what is it, a pixie cut?”

  “Thanks,” I said, rubbing my head in embarrassment.

  “Suits you. Very gamine. This is Zac by the way.” She swung the baby closer to me. I noticed, couldn’t help but notice, her wedding band, the glint of diamond in her engagement ring. Incongruous somehow, given her hippy style.

  “Hello, Zac,” I said, smiling at the baby who said “ahwa” before burying his face in his mother’s arm.

  She rolled her eyes and stuck out her hand. “Ignore him, he talks bollocks. I’m Valentina by the way. We’re here for a trial if anyone ever answers the frickin’ door.”

  I managed to introduce Isla and myself but I was still laughing at her saying bollocks, especially in front of a child.

  “Don’t laugh,” she said, laughing herself now. “I’m afraid of what his first word’s gonna be. His seat belt doesn’t work and every time I try to fasten the bloody thing I end up dropping the F-bomb right in his face. My ma’s coming to stay in a few months for Christ’s sakes and I know the moment he sees her he’s gonna come out and say it: f-u-c-k.” She sighed, a little theatrically, and fixed me with an emerald green stare. “I need to clean up my act.”

  We laughed. After so long cooped up alone, the release of it felt good.

  As no one had yet come to the door, I reached up and pressed the bell. The first ding dong repeated itself three times and when it finished we looked at one another and smiled, expecting perhaps to continue our conversation. But the melody, such as it was, repeated itself and, while we stood there waiting for the interminable ding dongs to end, unsure of where to look, I examined her red shoes, which were flat and looked hand-stitched. I thought the bells had ended and opened my mouth to speak, but they hit yet another repetition. Our eyes met again and we raised our eyebrows at each other and smirked. At last the chimes stopped, but not before rounding off with two prolonged dongs.

  Valentina was rolling her eyes.

  “For whom the bell tolls,” she drawled. “Christ, I thought it would never end.”

  “Doorbell with delusions of grandeur,” I said. “I like your shoe
s by the way.”

  “These things?” She stuck out her foot, pointed her toe. “They’re really old actually. But thanks.”

  “Did you buy them here?”

  “God, no, you’re joking. Got them in ... back home, actually.”

  “Back home?”

  “Australia.” A shark smile, two great white rows of teeth, a jagged canine snagged on her bottom lip. Her skin was pale, but creamy pale not pasty like mine, creamy and uniform, apart from a spray of tiny freckles across the bridge of her nose.

  “Australia,” I said, “whereabouts?”

  The nursery door opened and I felt a twinge of disappointment that our chat had been interrupted. A spotty lass of no more than sixteen gave us a dreary hello and led us up the dark stairs. Inside, babies sat around on the floor and the whole place held the whiff of off milk, biscuits and, I have to say it, deodorised poo. A stick-thin woman of about fifty with a millipede of grey at the roots of her dull brown hair introduced herself as the manager and ticked off Isla’s name in the diary. There was a fuss then over Zac – they had no record of him ever being booked to come in.

  Valentina leant over the countertop and ran her finger down the diary. “I spoke to a girl last week. She must’ve forgotten to write it down.” She straightened up, stood quite still and said nothing more, simply continued to look in the most incredibly direct way at the manager, as if performing some ancient Eastern mind trick.

  “I suppose we can fit him in,” the manager said, shrinking, turning her attention back to me and prising Isla from my grasp as you’d remove scissors from a small child. “It’s good to leave them early while they barely notice.”

  I didn’t want Isla to barely notice. I couldn’t have said how I wanted her to react, to be honest. But as the manager carried her away, my wee girl didn’t cry at all and I was troubled by the sight of her in a stranger’s arms – so placid, so trusting.

  We were shooed out then, Valentina and I, as if the two of us were already friends. The heavy wooden door closed behind us. The sound of children that had lingered in the hallway died.

  “It’ll get easier, don’t worry,” Valentina said, her bouncing voice summery and light. “It’s hard for you, not her. Zac’s always had childcare and I’ve heard really good things about this place.”

  “How old’s Zac?”

  “Four months.”

  “Same as Isla.”

  “Cool!” Her eyes really were a peculiar shade of green. Like wet parsley – verdant but dark.

  “I just want to go back and get her.” Heat rose in my face. I looked away, blinking hard. “I’ve never left her before and it’s … I don’t have family here and my partner goes away with his work, you know, and we live out in the country, I mean, I’m not saying ... the cottage is beautiful and everything but it’s ... it’s remote, you know, and if I’m honest I’m finding it harder than I thought I would and I thought Isla might ... but now I’m not so sure ...”

  Valentina laid her hand on my arm. “Listen, do you want to grab a coffee?”

  I met her gaze. “I would love that.”

  Meeting Valentina that day reminded me a lot of the first time I met Mikey. There was the same flirtatious energy spreading like peacock feathers at our backs, the same good humoured testing each other out. Since the night before last, when my life ended, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. I’ve done nothing but think, to be honest, about all sorts of things and meeting Mikey is one of them.

  I’d gone to a panto with my pal, Jean, whom I was renting a room off at the time. Jeanie’s about ten years older than me. A senior journalist, she’d been my mentor when I’d first joined The Tribune. She’s funny and kind and has the sharpest nose for a story I’ve ever known. She’s the type of person people cross the room for, just so they can tell her their craic, or a new joke, and have the pleasure of making her laugh. That’s how much everyone loves Jeanie.

  She had come over to my desk earlier that day and said her big brother, Robbie, was in an amateur production of Peter Pan at St. Matthew’s Church in Bishopriggs, did I want to go along. At the time I was newly single after a six-month relationship that was never going to be anything had deflated like a tyre with a slow puncture.

  “Ach, no thanks Jeanie,” I said. “I’m all right.”

  “Don’t be a fanny,” she said, picking up my pen and drawing a silly face on my notepad. “We can grab a drink after.”

  “Who’s Robbie playing?”

  “Mr. Smee. The fat bastard, you know? Come on, Shona. It might be a load of shite but it’s better than moping at home on your own.”

  Typical Jeanie. She always did look out for me.

  “Go on then,” I said.

  So off we went to see Mr. Smee. But it was Captain Hook I was watching – tall, thick black hair, ridiculous fake beard right enough and the poshest English accent you ever heard. In Scotland a posh English accent’s all you need to be the baddie but he had the strong features too, the longish nose and chin, the booming singing voice, the swagger. I could not take my eyes off him. And that’s not merely a figure of speech.

  “Who’s that?” I whispered to Jeanie, leaning against her on the dark pew.

  “Mark or Mike ... something like that. Have a look in the programme.”

  I lit the programme with my phone and read through the cast list. I didn’t have to read far.

  Captain Hook ...... Michael Quinn.

  Jeanie nudged me in the ribs. “Will I ask him to come on for a drink with our Robbie after, aye, I will.”

  “Not on my account.”

  “’Course not.”

  When the panto finished, before I could stop her, Jeanie texted her brother to say she and I were going ahead to The Crow, did he fancy coming along and did he want to bring his pal, Hookie? About ten minutes later Robbie arrived at the pub saying Mikey was on his way, that he’d stopped to get some cash. I wondered how much longer he’d be, what he’d look like up close.

  The bar was five deep. It was so hot in there, with that hanging, too-much-information smell of bodies there always is now that you can’t smoke inside. While I tried not to watch the door, Jeanie fussed Robbie, told him he was great.

  “Ah, get to fuck,” he said, waving her away. “Make yourselves useful will you and find somewhere to stand. I’ll get these.”

  We were about to do that when in walks Mikey, all teeth, elbowing through the crowd. He was wearing a black leather motor racing style jacket with what looked like a falcon logo on the chest and I was surprised to see he still had the silly beard on. And there were wisps of black acrylic in his eyebrows too, making fuzzy muppet eyebrows which he wiggled as he made his way over. I laughed. He joined us in the stramash, still grinning. Close up, turned out he had a rim of orange foundation at his hairline where he hadn’t washed his stage make-up off properly. Normally that would have put me off. But this wasn’t normally.

  Robbie by this point was three back from the bar but still managed to introduce us over the heads, pointing, shouting. “Jeanie, Shona, this is Michael Quinn. Mikey, this is my sister, Jeanie and her pal Shona McGilvery from The Tribune.”

  Subtle as a breeze block, Jeanie said, “I’d better help our Robbie with the swallies. What’s yours Mikey, pint?”

  “Callie Eighty.” He gave her the thumbs up. “Cheers.”

  Off she went, leaving us to it. I didn’t know where to look, what to say. But I guess I must’ve been wanting to make an impression because in the end I closed one eye, pulled on his beard and said in a silly pirate voice, “Can’t be bothered to take your beard off, then, Cap’ain? A-hargh.”

  “Ow,” he shouted – and grabbed both my hands.

  “I – I –” I slipped my hands from his, mortified. “I ... sorry ... thought it was fake.”

  “No.” He held onto his chin. To contain the pain, I imagined. “No, it’s real.”

  “Oh God, I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’ve never met a pirate before. Need to dust up my pirate eti
quette ... Jim lad, pieces of eight, shiver me timbers ... what are timbers anyway, did you even wonder that? Oh God, seriously, are you all right?”

  “I’ll live.” He was laughing, thank God. “You’re all right.”

  All right. The hissing T of a Liverpool accent. The River Mersey ran in his veins like the Clyde ran in mine. Shipyards. Docklands haunted by ghosts. I’d always had this notion that Glasgow and Liverpool were linked because of that heritage, in their souls or something. Twinned like they do with French towns. I don’t know, I’d always thought of Scousers as being like us Weegies – blowing their wages on a Friday night, looking a million dollars on a pittance, generous, sensitive, sometimes to the point of chippy. Murderous when crossed.

  “Which bit of you is real then?” I said. “That your real voice for a start? Here’s me thinking you were ever so posh.”

  “Well now, you shouldn’t always believe what you hear.” He looked down his nose at me in the cocky way he has. “I am ever so posh, I’ll have you know. My parents’ve got a bay window.”

  “A bay window? Didn’t realise you came from aristocracy.”

  In the dense heat of the pub my cheeks burned. We had to shout to talk, push ourselves into an alcove by the door and it was wrong of me, I know, especially as Robbie hadn’t even got back from the bar yet, but I kind of wanted him and Jeanie to clear off. Terrible, but I felt that straight away and you can’t help how you feel can you? Valentina was always saying that. She was a great one for that.