Valentina

by S. E. Lynes

  “Contact me if there’s any more weirdness, OK?” Jeanie was saying. “In the meantime, I’ll see if I can find anything else on this Georgia psycho bitch.”

  I laughed – for the first time in ages. “Thanks Jeanie. You’re a pal.”

  TWENTY

  By the time Mikey got back, I was in knots. When he called to say his helicopter was delayed due to poor visibility and there was a chance he would not make it home till the next day, I had to bite the back of my hand to suppress a wail. But he got off, thank God. The taxi finally came, its diesel engine rattling. I ran to the window, saw the diffused yellow halos of headlights coming up the lane.

  I waved from the window, ran to the door.

  Kitbag in hand, he crunched over the gravel, through the patches of greying ice slush.

  “Hi,” I said, stepping aside, pulling back the door.

  “Hey.” He grinned, bowled in. He was so male, I thought, compared to Valentina. So dark, so other. “What are you doing standing in the shadows?” he said. “Come here and give me a kiss right now. I demand it.” Without warning, he lunged for me and picked me up, kissed me hard on the mouth. He smelled of coffee, of vanilla – the cab air freshener, maybe. He planted me back on the floor and hugged me to his chest, bent to my ear so he could mutter into it. “God, I’ve missed you. Can we sneak upstairs?”

  “Isla’s watching TV,” I wriggled out of his arms, backed away. “Isla,” I called. “Daddy’s here.”

  “No,” she shouted. “No Dada.”

  I smiled at Mikey. “That’s what we call ‘the terrible twos’ come early.”

  “She’s not even one yet.” He reached for my hand, let his fingers trail through mine.

  “She will be,” I said. “The week after next. You’ll be away.”

  Blink. Here. Blink. Gone.

  It took me until Isla had gone to bed to ask about Georgia Smyth-Banks. And even after two days of careful planning as to how I would broach the subject, I still made a complete mess of it. We had eaten together. We were in the kitchen. I had put on some soft music and I was loading up the dishwasher with our dirty plates. Maybe the job, having something to do, somewhere else to look, helped me to find the words. Pity I didn’t say them calmly – like Valentina doubtless would have done. Pity that, as soon as I opened my mouth to speak, emotion sent my voice wavering out like the strained tones of an old lady trying to sing the high notes of a particularly challenging hymn.

  “Why didn’t you tell me your ex-girlfriend lived in Aberdeen?”

  “What?” He was still at the table. I had topped up his wine, told him to stay put after the meal. I had wanted him to rest after his exhausting fortnight in the North Sea.

  “Georgia Smyth-Banks.” I rinsed the cutlery, dumped it into the holder with a crash. “Ring any bells?”

  I had done precisely what I promised myself I would not do: let the poison of suspicion leak into my words, asked a question designed only to trap him. I barely recognised myself. Neither, it appeared, did he. His eyebrows knitted together in confusion as if to say: who are you?

  “Where is this coming from?”

  I pressed my back to the countertop, and made myself look at him. “Mikey, Georgia lives here. She works for the same company as you. Don’t tell me you didn’t know. Were you ever going to tell me? I only know because of the letter.”

  “What letter?” His eyebrows moved even closer together, his lips pursed.

  “Valentina had a letter addressed to Georgia in her bag. That’s how I found out. Valentina used to teach her. She lives in Fittie.”

  “Fittie?” he said. “As in Footdee? Who lives there? I thought you said Valentina lived in Union Grove?”

  I slid the tray into the dishwasher, pulled up the door and turned to face him once more. “No. Georgia. Georgia lives in Fittie. You must know that.”

  “Shona, stop.” He jumped up, strode the two paces it took to reach me and grabbed my wrist.

  “Let go.” I had not meant to shout. But I had. I saw the hurt in his eyes.

  He let go, as if he, not me, had been burnt, and held up his hands. “OK. Sorry. Look. Sit down. Let’s sit down. Let’s talk about this properly. You’ve gone flying off God knows where. Sit down, come on. I bet you’ve been thinking about nothing else, haven’t you?”

  I nodded, blinking back tears. Damn tears. Why couldn’t I punch a hole in the wall like a man? Shout, slam a door, knock back a whisky and throw the glass to the floor? He was so right – I had thought of nothing else – and for some reason I found that humiliating. Stuck out here, no friends, no job, no one I could trust to talk to, yes, I had nothing else to think about. But now I wanted the truth – not any old truth, but one from his lips, one I could believe enough to stand on, no more shaky ground.

  Mikey was pouring more red wine into my glass. He was ushering me into my chair.

  “Come on. Sit with me,” he said, his voice unchanged. “Let’s talk about this.”

  “I’ve got to finish cleaning up. There’s a laundry load I still haven’t ...”

  “Shona, sit. We’ll do that after. Together. Or I’ll do it. Sit down.”

  I lowered myself into the chair.

  “Right.” He sat down opposite me, laid his hands flat on the table. His nails had grown while he had been offshore, I noticed; they were long and rounded, like a guitarist’s. “So Valentina had a letter – which we’ll get to in a minute.”

  “Why in a minute? Why not now?”

  He threw up his hands. “OK. Now. Whatever you want.”

  I shook my head. “No. I’ve spoken to her. Georgia used to do yoga with her, that’s all.”

  “So how come Valentina had a letter addressed to her then?”

  “It was a bill. For some classes she didn’t pay for.”

  “She told you that?”

  I nodded. I didn’t say that she’d lied at first, told me it was a postal mistake. I didn’t say Valentina had befriended me under false pretences. Mikey already had such a low opinion of her. Nor did I add that I’d driven over to Georgia’s house, like a raving lunatic, that I’d peeped through her windows, fainted on her front step. And I certainly didn’t tell him she kept a photo of him on her fireplace. I don’t know why I kept these things to myself – perhaps I was trying to keep some shred of dignity.

  “So Valentina tells you that she knows Georgia, she used to teach her? And she lives here in Aberdeen,” he said, slowly, as if he was working it out for himself. Then Jeanie phones you and tells you Georgia’s my ex. My God, I can see how ... two plus two, eh? What the hell did you think?”

  “I don’t know. You left out the bit about you and Georgia working together.”

  “And that, of course.” He smiled. “Let me guess. You thought that, because my ex-girlfriend is in the same city, even though you know she’s a geologist and that Aberdeen is probably the only place she could get a job in the UK, the fact she lives here and works for Maple automatically means she and I are having some sort of affair? Is that the gist?”

  “It’s not as defined as that.” I hated my voice. It was still warbling all over the place, frail-sounding, weak. “It’s bad enough that Valentina knew this woman and never told me, then I find out that you knew her too ... more than knew her ... and you didn’t tell me she was here. I guess it’s about realising that there’s something your husband isn’t telling you. It’s – it’s ...” What was it? What was it, exactly? Why now, faced with him, didn’t I know what it was? “I mean, it’s not devastating, I’m not saying that. More like I’m trying to stand up but I feel like I’m going to fall down.”

  He rubbed his hand over his chin and frowned. “I can see that.” His fingers splayed across his mouth. He looked down at his lap, seemed to see some speck of dirt there, brushed it off. “And meanwhile you’ve had days and days on your own with it all going around in your mind. It must’ve driven you mad. It’s enough to drive anyone mad.” His voice was unaltered, compassionate. I was glad – I gues
s because I took his flat calm to be a sign of a man with nothing to hide. There was no politician’s rhetoric here – he had spoken almost as if he saw the whole thing from my point of view.

  The tears came thickly then. Along with the shaky voice, out they rolled, regardless. Before Isla, this would never have happened. Never. I’d been as strong as steel. You could have made a ship out of me. Now I was little more than a leaking bucket.

  “Don’t cry, baby.” He leant forward, brushed my tears away with his thumbs.

  “I’m not.” I sniffed. “I’m tired.”

  The music faded and stopped. Outside, black silence pressed against the windows. The silence out here is like nowhere else.

  “She was here before we moved up, I think,” he said, after a moment. “But I didn’t know she was at Maple when I took the job. We weren’t in touch.”

  I waited for him to look at me, which he did, with a cool, level gaze.

  “Are you in touch with her now?” I asked. “Do you see her?”

  “Where would I see her?” He scratched with his thumbnail at the leg of his jeans. “I spend half my life offshore.”

  “But you do go into the office?”

  “The office is massive, Shone. There are hundreds of people working there, it’s not as if she’s in my team. I’ve never seen that guy we met at the pub that time, remember the one with the snobby wife? Never seen him and I don’t see her. And even if I did, I’d keep away.” He puffed out air and shook his head. “She’s a bit nuts.”

  I knew this to be true and my heart seized upon it. I had seen the photo on the mantelpiece. Valentina had said she was crazy, obsessive. I had said neither thing to him and I suppose that means I still at that point held the smallest residue of doubt, enough to test him.

  “In what way?” I asked instead.

  He shrugged. “Oh, you know. She did sort of stalk me for a bit. After we split up.”

  “She’s only human.” I smiled – not at him but at the fact I knew he wasn’t lying.

  “This is it.” He smiled too. “What woman wouldn’t go mad for me, eh?” He lunged for me, tickled my belly.

  I shrieked, pushed him away. We both laughed. And sighed. The silence leaked back into the cottage.

  “Actually, I had to tell her to sling it in the end,” he said. “It got a bit nasty. She couldn’t cope with me moving on. I actually ended up telling her I’d call the police.” He reached out and squeezed my knee. “Hey. Are you OK?”

  I knew all this to be true.

  “I think so.” I took a deep breath, stretched my neck, tried to ease the stiffness in my body.

  “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to upset you,” he said. “And then she stopped bothering me and then I – I forgot. I forgot because she means nothing to me, Shone. You and Isla. You’re everything. You’re my family, my home. You’re absolutely everything.” He grinned. “Besides, when would I have the time for anyone else, let alone the energy? Half the time I’m on a piece of Meccano in the middle of the bollock-freezing ocean.” He laughed again, took my hand, kissed the back of it. “Bloody hell, Shona. The last thing I need is another bloody woman to keep up with.”

  Later, we sat top to tail on the sofa listening to King Creosote, talking sometimes, sometimes not, lost to the peace, the pulsing fire, our home. Later still, I followed him upstairs, changed into my nightshirt and climbed into bed next to his warm body. I bent my knees into the backs of his and wrapped my arm around his solid man’s torso. His hand came back to find me, running over my hip, sliding down my leg.

  “I can’t,” I said.

  “Of course.”

  “I’m still a bit all over the place, you know?”

  He turned over, pushed me onto my back and kissed me on the mouth – not a sexual kiss, but still one a lover would give: tender, his lips soft and unrushed. “I love you, Shone. You’re my home, you know that don’t you?”

  My eyes brimmed, overflowed – more tears, for God’s sake, pooling inside my ears.

  “You’re my home too,” I said. “You’re the only place I feel safe.”

  Waking on Sunday morning I felt as if someone had lifted a heavy weight from my back. The catharsis of the night before had brought this lightness and, as if in sympathy, the sky treated us to a bright winter sun. In bed, with the sky still dark blue, we had turned to each other, still sleepy. We had kissed, he had pushed his hand onto my breast, when Isla woke up and shouted “Mamma!”

  Mikey groaned, let his forehead drop on my chest.

  “We have two whole weeks ahead of us.” I said, taking a fistful of his hair, scratching his scalp with my fingernails. “Plenty of time for that sort o’ thing.” I left him there and went to fetch our wee baby.

  “We need to think about a party for Isla,” I said as I came back into the bedroom with her, nappy changed, all fresh. “We should have it this week or next. I know that’s not on her actual birthday but you’ll be offshore and I think we should celebrate while you’re here.” I put Isla next to Mikey and stood back to look at them both sat propped up against the white pillows. There is something so tender about the sight of your life partner and the baby child you have made together sitting in a big white double bed. Her in her pink Babygro, thin infant’s hair rubbed into soft fuzzy knots at the back of her head, him bare-chested, dark, both swathed in white cotton. It was something more than precious, it was holy, almost, something that must not, must never, be desecrated. I guess you’d call it a moment of clarity: these two human beings, there on the bed, were all and everything I wanted. They – this – was home.

  I found I could neither move nor speak.

  After a moment, I turned away, went over to the bedroom window and pulled the curtain across enough to see out. I looked onto the vast green, the regiment of leylandii at the far end. I had stood in the dark against those scratchy branches, lost in a nightmarish storm of doubt. Now the sun had come up and nothing looked scary any more. Beyond the trees, braids of churned soil lay fallow for the winter and beyond that again, though I could not see it from here, the back road out to Stonehaven, where the dual carriageway headed south.

  “What do you think?” I said, turning to face them. “I could ask a couple of babies from the nursery over – might be a way to meet some other mums. And I know Zac’s birthday is near Isla’s so maybe I’ll ask Valentina if she wants to do a joint party.”

  He nodded, though he was taken up entirely by Isla. Happy to be invisible to them both, I slipped away to make tea, leaving them to their love-in.

  When I came back upstairs, Mikey had put Isla on his knee. He was nuzzling her nose with his, making a funny buzzing noise, making her laugh. When he pulled back, she grabbed his nose with her tiny fingers and he gave a loud ow!

  “Her nails are sharp, right enough.” I set his Lord mug on his bedside table and took mine around to my side. I climbed in and kissed Isla’s head. She wriggled, threw herself down into the duvet and laughed. She pulled herself up and giggled again before pausing, her body set in the tension of expectation. I pushed gently on the side of her head. She threw herself down again onto the bedding, this time hysterical. Two seconds later, she hauled herself up again. I pushed her down. More giggling.

  “This could go on for an hour,” I said to Mikey.

  She rolled, pushed herself back up. “Dada,” she said.

  I nudged his elbow with mine. “She wants you to do it.”

  He barely had to connect with her – in fact, I bet he never did – before she collapsed once again, beside herself with laughter at her own talent for physical comedy, but still managing to pull herself up for one more go.

  Mikey pushed her down again.

  “I think it’d be better if we had a party just for Isla,” he said. “Just us, I mean.” He brought his tea to his lips, seemed to reconsider, lowered the mug. “I think we should maybe keep our distance from Valentina. She’s a bit, I don’t know, intense.”

  “But you guys got on really w
ell when she came,” I said. “So well, in fact, that it was me that went to bed and you two that burnt the midnight oil.” As I said the words something inside me shifted. The lightness I had felt on waking was replaced by a cloudy, heavy feeling.

  “I think Isla’s party should be just us,” he said. “The three of us. That’s all.”

  “Can I at least invite wee Zac?” I said. “They’re so close, that’s all.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t if that’s OK.” He reached for my hand and held it. “I understand what you’re thinking, and I know it’s hard for you to understand this but when I’m offshore I miss you two so much. You’re all I think about when I’m in that bunk. Even in the day, even when I’m busy, I catch myself looking out towards the land, and I want to come home so badly.” He pulled my hand up to his mouth and kissed it. “I want it to be the three of us. She’s only one after all.”

  He looked into my eyes. The cloudy feeling left me as quickly as it had come. That’s what happens when what you see in your husband’s kind brown eyes is love. I had not thought about, knew nothing about, what life was like on the rig, apart from what Mikey told me. I could only imagine how grim it must be to be woken in the middle of the night by the grunt of a stranger shitting, wanking or snoring, to be out for hours on the cold oily deck, the North Sea wind whipping your face, staring back to shore. But I felt the melancholy of it then, as if I myself had been there with him. If he and Isla together in the white bed represented something pure for me, I thought, then that must count doubly so for him.

  “Ignore me,” he said. “If you want to have a big party for her, that’s fine. Honestly. I’m being selfish.”

  “No, you’re right,” I said. “Of course it’s OK just the three of us. I was being selfish.”

  He closed my head in his hands and kissed me on the nose. “You’re amazing. You get it, don’t you?” With a comic old man groan, he turned away and got up. Rearranging his boxer shorts, as he always did, he wandered towards the bedroom door. He was whistling happy birthday.