Valentina Read online

  “The nearest dwelling is away half a mile up the road,” the estate agent said, waving her hand over to where the lane continued into murky tree shadow. “There’s a new development being built a few miles south and there’s a chapel up over the other side of the fields.”

  I thought about electricity, heating. I thought about plumbing, telephone lines. What did it all connect to? But I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to appear stupid.

  I’d seen the countryside before, of course I had, I’m not saying I hadn’t. I’d even asked for walking boots for my twenty-first birthday. OK, they were still in the box but I was always determined to embrace things that hadn’t necessarily been part of my own childhood: long walks, Sunday lunch out, country living. Not in a snobbish way, I’m proud of where I’m from. Just to be open, you know? Not let myself be limited. So no, the countryside wasn’t new to me, it was more that I hadn’t thought in any depth about the practicalities. But here it was, this house, standing there like it was already mine.

  I linked my arm through Mikey’s and we followed her up the driveway.

  “This is the one,” I said.

  “You’ve not seen inside yet.”

  “I don’t need to.”

  “Don’t you now?” He stole a quick kiss and we followed the estate agent through the gate. The front garden has this white picket fence around the perimeter of the lawn. What a silly little boundary line, I thought, in such a vast space. What on earth would we need a fence for, out here?

  “So this is Burns Cottage,” said the estate agent, unlocking the front door. She stopped on the front step. “As in the poet. And this area, everything you can see, is all Royal Deeside.” She had this air of importance, with her as in the poet and her three-sixty swooping hand gestures. “Not too far from Balmoral, where the Queen has her holiday residence and of course you have Lochnagar about an hour away, if you like hill walking.”

  Mikey raised his eyebrows at me. I made a silly face at him. Were we egging each other on? I don’t know. Maybe after twenty-eight years surrounded by nothing but noise I thought the peace and quiet would be good. Maybe, deep down, I thought this was better.

  ***

  Fire will send them flying from their bed. They will cover their mouths, choking on the noxious fumes of burning upholstery, wood, carpet. But why, frankly, should either of them sleep soundly when she will never again be at peace? Why should they be allowed to dream when her dreams are dead in the ground? Who gave them the right to the life that should be hers?

  ***

  SIX

  In Scotland, there’s no better time of year than May. If you don’t count the mood swings and the spooky haar up here, the weather can be warm, even hot sometimes and the midges aren’t yet out in full force. That’s when we finally moved. The last month was tough because Mikey was pretty much up in Aberdeen all the time, except for weekends, finishing his training, starting on the work he would have to do. He had to show commitment, he said, in those all-important first six months. It was tough but I was proud of him and at least I knew we were doing the right thing by moving.

  The cottage looked different again in the sunshine; the walls whiter than ever, the dormer windows in the roof expressive as inquisitive eyebrows. We parked a little away from the removal van and I threw open the jeep door.

  “No problem parking,” I shouted, running ahead, in through the wee front porch, leaving Mikey to bring Isla.

  Under our new low ceilings, the furniture looked as if it had been inflated in the van. In Glasgow we’d had two bedrooms not four, but the proportions of the cottage were so much smaller than the flat. I ran out into the garden, back in through the house and out front to see Mikey sitting on the blue sofa outside on the driveway.

  “Mikey, we should have measured up. Everything’s too big.”

  But he was talking to someone on the phone. “Only room for one bloody couch,” he was saying, chuckling. “We’ll have to put it into storage.” He turned to me and waved but continued his conversation. “We’ve kept the leather one and the two armchairs but they’ll have to knock a wall down to get the blue one in as well.” He laid his hand over the phone and mouthed that it was his mum.

  I was sure she’d be telling him that it was all the cottage’s fault, not his. Judging by what I’d seen of her doting ways in the few times I’d met her, I was surprised she hadn’t arrived already to make tea and hand it to her golden boy on a tray with biscuits, maybe get down on all fours so she could be the coffee table for him to rest his feet on. I was surprised she hadn’t come flying in, knocked the wall down, built an extension, hired a forklift and driven the damn sofa in herself. That might sound harsh. But love for humankind is not my strong suit just now.

  “No, it’s all right, Mum,” I heard him say. “No, no, tell Dad not to do that, we’re fine, I can sort it. Honestly.”

  See? What did I tell you?

  I went back into the cottage, thinking it was a miracle Mikey could do anything for himself. Inside, the desk – barely noticeable in the corner of the living room in our Glasgow place – now filled half the kitchen. I got one of the movers to dismantle it for me and we carried it out to the stable. There was plenty of room there for anything that wouldn’t fit into the house, at least for now.

  “Takeaway, Madam?” Mikey asked when the removal men had gone, when we’d popped the cork on our bottle of champagne and I’d bathed Isla and put her to bed. It was after nine by then but still, I noticed, perfectly light.

  “Good idea.”

  There was no WiFi at all and the 3G was patchy to say the least, so we looked in the dog-eared Yellow Pages the previous occupants had left. The Hong Kong Palace didn’t deliver this far out. Neither did the Taj Mahal.

  “That’s it,” I cried. “Put this heap o’ shite back on the market.”

  “Don’t worry,” he replied, spreading his hands. “I will go in search.”

  I threw my arms around his neck and kissed him. “My big man. My hunter-gatherer.”

  Mikey jumped in the car, wound down the window and gave me that grin. He was all gee’d up, wanting everything to be great. We both wanted everything to be great. We wanted, I thought, not to be wrong.

  “Put a couple of chairs in the garden, do,” he said, in his treacly posh Captain Hook voice. “We shall dine out on our land, don’t you know.” He honked the horn three times.

  “Sure you’ll find me all right?” I called after him in an equally fake cut-glass accent. “Get the butler to show you through.”

  My God, we were high as kites. And you laugh at anything, don’t you, when you’re happy? You’d laugh at a joke you’d heard a hundred times. I wandered into the gigantic garden and, with a blanket round my shoulders, sat alone, trying not to drink the rest of the champagne. I sat alone and stared at the flat green grass, at the trees whose names I did not yet know. There’s a wee patio at the back of the house, with a pond. Between the lily pads and the beady eyeball clusters of frogspawn, the carp darted about, their scales flashing at times under the surface.

  I poured myself another cheeky glass, saw that I was halfway down the bottle. I checked my phone to see if there was a text from Mikey. There wasn’t, only one from Jeanie:

  Hope you’re settling in. Good luck. J.

  I replied:

  It’s amazing. Can’t wait for you to visit. xxx

  I texted Mikey then, too:

  Get ketchup. And make sure they put on loads of

  salt and vinegar! Love you xxxxxxx

  Four, five, six, seven kisses.

  It grew cold, too cold to sit out so I went inside. I figured he must be trailing round town, trying to find food, poor devil. I hunted about for the emergency candles. They were nowhere to be found so I dug about in the bedroom boxes and found a bedside light instead. I rigged that up by the front window in the lounge – a homecoming beacon in the darkness – and grabbed cutlery and plates from another box in the kitchen. Two of the bigger boxes became a makeshift table
in the lounge, an old sheet we’d used to cover the dresser a tablecloth. I sat on the leather sofa, clapped my hands and blew out a long satisfied breath. But I couldn’t settle so that’s when I laid the fire. They’d left sticks and logs and there was loads of newspaper from the unpacking – easy peasy. I was about to light it when I heard the front door bang.

  A second later, Mikey was in the doorway, holding up two white paper bags. “Cod and chips deluxe for her ladyship. Might be a bit cold ...”

  “I was away to send a search party. Did you have to go catch the fish yourself?”

  He plonked the bags on a packing box and took off his jacket. He looked like he’d been running round all over town. His face shone with sweat, poor thing. “You’ve laid a fire, I see.”

  “Lady Firebird at your service. I don’t have to light it though. You look a bit hot.”

  “I’m boiling actually. Maybe light it later?”

  “Ach, we can light it tomorrow, it’s no biggie.” I folded out the white wrappers, the smell of fat and salt and fish and – oh, there’s nothing like a fish supper when you’re starving. I poured him a glass, poured myself one for the road. The bottle emptied its last drop.

  “What happened to the blue sofa by the way?” I asked him.

  “The men took it. It’s in storage but I might sell it on eBay, because, trust me, we will not be moving any time soon.” He drank his glass down in one and gasped.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said after a few mouthfuls. “We should make that pond into a sandpit.”

  “Right you are.”

  “I’ll do it tomorrow morning.”

  “Steady on. We’ve got ages.”

  “No, we’ll be busy, we’ll get sidetracked.” His words were muffled by chips. “I should do it.”

  “But she’s not even walking yet.”

  “She will be soon. And when you’re too busy looking the other way, that’s when bad things happen.”

  “I suppose.” The thought made me feel suddenly low.

  “Cheers anyway,” he said, perhaps sensing he’d killed the mood. “This is great, isn’t it?”

  “It is. It’s magic.” My throat tightened. “I can’t believe it’s ours.”

  “Are you crying?”

  “No.” I said. “I can’t quite take it in.”

  “God, you’re sweet.” He leant over, pushed away my tears with his thumbs and kissed me on the mouth. His lips were oily, seasoned with salt and vinegar. He leant back, then in again for another, longer, deeper kiss. We hadn’t kissed that way since Isla was born.

  “We should test the bed after,” he said. “See if the springs still work after the move.”

  “Aye,” I said. “See if we still work.”

  Shame the seagulls don’t make it that far inland. They would have had a rare treat that night, feasting on the cold chips we threw – like the idiot city folk we were – into the garden, not wanting to stink the house out. Something must have eaten them because, in the morning, they were gone.

  We tried to make the few days we had before he went offshore a bit of a holiday by going on a few trips. There was no rush to unpack, after all – we had the rest of our lives together. Mikey took me to Dunnottar Castle on the coast – stunning as it was to walk around the ruins out there on the clifftop, it was too cold for our picnic so we ate it in the jeep.

  “Look at us,” I said, laughing. “Eating our dinner in the car like old folk.”

  He was laughing too. “You should see your face. It’s bright red.”

  “Aye, with cold. In May!”

  Another day he took me to Balmedie Beach, where he told me he’d been on one of his training exercises. He was desperate to show me, full of it. It was like a film set – not a soul in sight, acres of virgin sand, dunes twenty feet high. We took turns holding Isla while the other rolled down the dunes, ending up in a bruised, hysterical heap at the bottom. Mikey produced a kite from his rucksack – he’d bought it as a surprise – a jumble of primary colours that once airborne became a rainbow.

  “Isn’t this beautiful?” he shouted, the wind carrying his words out to sea. “Isn’t this great?”

  Everything was new, everything was exciting. We were playing house, it seemed, playing at being grownups. When you’re in love, I suppose everything feels like a game.

  By the Thursday before his Saturday departure, we’d arranged all the furniture, organised most of the crockery, pans and all of that. We’d set up the little table in the open hallway and decided to use that space as part of the kitchen. At around five, Mikey came in through the back door.

  “I’ve organised the stable a bit better,” he said, pulling off his jacket. “The travel cot’s at the front so you can grab it when you need it for Isla.”

  “OK. Upstairs we’re still up to our eyes in boxes but I can go through that when ... I’ll do that.”

  “Great.” He picked Isla up off the furry rug where she’d been having a kick, looking up at her mirror mobile. He brought her close and nuzzled her face with his. “Now then, who’s Daddy’s little girl then, eh?”

  It was a lovely sight – him so big and dark and rough against her, so small and blonde and soft, his voice deep and near against her high, distant-sounding gabble.

  “She’ll be saying Daddy soon.”

  “Because she’s Daddy’s girl,” he said to her (no one was talking to me any more), rubbing his nose against hers. “Say Daddy. Say Da. Dee. Da. Dee ...”

  I watched them, the countertop at my back, not wanting to move nearer, afraid to break the spell.

  “I thought I’d hang the silk screen print by the front door,” I said, half to myself. “And I was thinking maybe the dresser could go in the hallway to extend the kitchen, you know?”

  He didn’t respond. He put Isla back on her rug and pulled out a bottle of red from the kitchen cupboard. Isla squealed, stuck out her arms, started to twirl her hands.

  “You can’t leave her like that,” I said. “She doesn’t know what’s going on.” I picked her up, held her facing outwards and swayed from side to side. She quietened immediately.

  Mikey swigged at his wine and came over to hand me mine. Apology wrote itself into the lines on his brow. “So. Saturday’s the day after tomorrow.”

  “Aye, I know.” I kissed Isla’s head.

  “You won’t be able to call me once I’m on the rig.”

  “You’ve told me that.”

  He looked around the room before settling his gaze on me. “You could go and stay at your mum and dad’s.”

  “Ach, I’m not going to run to my mammy’s every time you go offshore. Sooner I get used to it the better.” I turned away, concentrated hard on making up the formula with the boiled water I’d kept from the kettle. I’d started substituting the five o’clock feed to try to get her to sleep better. I simply had to get more sleep. I was becoming tearful, incoherent sometimes. Like now.

  He laid his hand on my neck, his soft, thick, warm fingers dipping beneath the rim of my t-shirt.

  “I’ve got you a present.”

  As I turned to him he took a step back. He was holding a box-shaped parcel and smiling sheepishly.

  “I thought you were a long time in that stable,” I said.

  “Ah yes. By stable I meant shops.”

  “You drove into town? You’re kidding? My God, I didn’t even hear the car.” I handed the baby and the bottle to him and he swapped them for the present.

  “Go on, open it.” He went to sit with Isla in the crook of his arm and tipped the bottle to her mouth.

  “You don’t have to do that, you know. I don’t need presents. What is it, choccies?” I tore off the paper. Not chocolate. Not chocolate at all. An iPhone.

  “Mikey!” I gasped. “You – you can’t. These cost a fortune and we’ve only just moved.”

  He grinned. “I know you miss your old one. I’ve set it all up for you. The camera’s really good. I’ve taken a photo of my knob so you can look at it while I’m
away.”

  I laughed and hit him on the arm, threw my arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. I’d dropped my old phone down the loo in Glasgow when I was changing Isla one time. I’d been making do with my old Nokia brick ever since. “Thank you.”

  “I’ve put my number in there, under Mikey Offshore.” He pushed me away a little, took the phone, went into contacts and pulled up his number. “See? I can’t take my mobile out there but that’s the number for the rig. For emergencies only. But I’ll call you. Every day.” He looked into my eyes. “Are you sure you’ll be all right?”

  “You sound so Scouse when you say ‘all right’. You sound like Ringo Starr.”

  “Shona?”

  I waved my new phone at him. “Bring me some oil back, will you?”

  We got back to the nursery twenty minutes late. I’m never late so I was panicking. But Valentina seemed to take it all in her stride. I don’t give a flying fuck, is exactly how she put it.

  Once we got inside, the lass gave me a detailed rundown on the last two and a half hours. But I was distracted by Valentina talking to the manager.

  “I won’t book him in right this second,” she was saying. “But I’ll give you a call once I’ve spoken with my husband ...”

  “We dinna give them vegetables,” the lass had moved on to nutritional policy, which sounded less than promising. “Kiddies dinna like vegetables, ken?”

  I opened my mouth and closed it again. No vegetables? Childcare costs more than money, I thought. No childcare at all and you pay with your mental health. Fabulous choice.

  We made our way out and onto the Great Western Road.

  “So you’re taking Zac back there?” I asked Valentina.

  “Nah,” she said. “Truth be told, Zac already goes to Little Beans up in Rosemount.”

  I stood up, shifted Isla up and onto my hip. “So how come you brought him for a trial?”