Valentina

by S. E. Lynes

  “What are you going to do, Shone?”

  “Criminal damage will be involved, that’s all. I don’t want a criminal record.”

  His head dropped.

  “Sorry, Davie, I didn’t mean ... I’m a mum now.”

  “It’s OK.”

  I grabbed his hand and squeezed it. “If I get found out, I did this on my own, OK? You cannae tell a soul.”

  “Let me get down the pub,” he said. “See if Dougie’ll let me have his van.”

  “I’ll chum you.” I stood up, took Isla from him. “I need to walk anyway. I need to get you your cash. And I need the hardware store.”

  By the time my mum got home at six I’d prepared everything. I heard her key in the lock and was away to open the door for her, but by the time I reached the lounge she was already inside. One stripy carrier bag in each hand, she leant against the front door and closed her eyes. She only did this because she thought no one was looking. But I was looking, I was watching from the shadows, silently taking in the secrecy of her exhaustion. She looked tired, older. She lowered the carrier bags and let them fall the last centimetre to the floor. The thin striped plastic sagged, a can of baked beans rolled out and onto the carpet. I was flooded with love so deep it felt like shame. Every job she’d had to do to raise me and my brothers, every sacrifice she’d made and this, this crushing fatigue she’d kept hidden year after year. My father too, both of them good people, people who I had only ever trusted and loved all my conscious life. Outside this house I had been a fool to trust, yes I had, but why would I go into the world full of suspicion when I had been brought up by these good people, who had done nothing to disabuse me of trust? What was love if not total, blind, unquestioning trust? If my biggest failing was too much love then I would not apologise for that, not even to myself, since allowing even that small concession would be to let him, let them, change who I had been raised to be.

  I know who I am, I thought. Who I am was never in doubt.

  In this hallway I had whispered like a crook – to save face, to save him from my parents’ poor opinion. Here, with remorse running through me I had said sorry to him for my failure to imagine his hard life out in the wilds of the North Sea, when all the time the nearest he’d got to the ocean was the damn coastline. Just shy of the sands, behind the sea wall, he had sat and laughed and eaten and loved and argued and lived with his other family, his real family. What were Isla and me now? The lover and the bastard, that was all. The toys. He’d claimed himself a man trapped by circumstance, a Mr. Rochester striving to do the honourable thing in a difficult situation, thinking only of his two women who needed and loved him. He’d claimed so many things and I had believed him without question. It had never occurred to me not to trust. And now I was the mad woman, an inconvenience he’d hidden away, out of sight.

  Funny, when you realise the central truth you have believed about someone is a lie, everything else you believed about them falls away too. Every puff of smoke, every rabbit pulled from a hat, every mirror. Charm? Manipulation. An easy smile? An assassin’s grin. You never saw Martin Amis on the bookshelf, never saw your husband read a single book. The past you shared, the present you live, the future you will share with each other? Nothing more than lies set to torment you for the rest of your troubled life.

  With a groan, my mother bent to pull off her shoes while I stood, still watching her from the darkness, wondering how I would find my own lies, since lies were what I needed now to save her from the filth of my life.

  I took a deep breath, thinking that, yes, people really did do this sometimes, people really did take a deep breath, draw back their shoulders and say things like –

  “Hiya! Y’all right? Thought I’d surprise you.”

  At six thirty, Davie got back and gave me the smallest nod. His skin had a sheen to it, he smelled of alcohol and cigarettes but, judging by my parents’ lack of reaction, this was nothing unusual. At seven o’clock we had tea together in the kitchen. Don’t ask me what we ate, I can’t tell you. I can’t even tell you if I ate anything at all. I could think of nothing but the fact I had to get my parents away to their bed before eleven or I’d never make it.

  Once Isla was down, I chatted to my parents about nothing while we watched the telly together. Again, don’t ask me what we watched. Infusing my voice with pride, I told them how well Mikey was doing, how they really must come up and visit soon, now that the cottage was all set up. It was wonderful up there, I said. A real idyll. I told them I’d be staying with them for a few days this time, as Mikey had this dinner and had said he’d have to work late all week. Like mucus the words thickened in my throat but I spat them out all the same.

  At quarter to ten, I yawned. “You guys not going away to your bed? You’re usually in bed by ten, aren’t you?”

  “In a bit, aye,” said my mother. “Seems a shame to go when you’re here.”

  I yawned again, for emphasis. “Aye well, I’ll be turning in just now. But I’ll let you guys use the bathroom.”

  A quarter of an hour went by.

  “It’s after ten,” I said. “Go on, you guys go first ...” But they didn’t move. Time slowed, each second a minute, each minute an hour.

  Eventually my mum glanced at my dad who said, “Aye, it’s nearly half past right enough.”

  “You go, love,” said my mother. “You’ll be tired.”

  “I’m fine. You go. Go on.”

  At half past they finally went upstairs. I felt like I’d been through the shredder and I hadn’t even got started. Davie and me sat in the living room in silence, listening to the scrub of their toothbrushes, the splash of water hitting the sink, the flush of the toilet. The bass notes of muffled conversation.

  When all was quiet, I stood. Davie nodded, and stood up too. A surge of nerves rose up inside me.

  “You get what you needed?” he asked.

  “Aye. I got cash too.” I handed him the fifty pounds.

  He took it without a word, leant back to stuff the notes in the front pocket of his jeans. “I can do this for you, you know. Whatever it is.”

  “I need you here,” I said. “If Isla cries, you’ll have to get her quick. You’ll have to keep her quiet. Above all else, I was here all night.”

  “I’ll get her. I won’t sleep till you get back anyway.”

  A little before eleven, I went upstairs and kissed Isla on her forehead. I took out my phone and switched it on, turned it to mute and laid it on my bedside table. I didn’t know much about phones, but I thought maybe it might prove some sort of alibi. Then, I took some old coats that were stored in my wardrobe and arranged them in my bed along with my spare pillow. I pulled the duvet cover over them, pushed and shaped the mass until it looked vaguely like a body. I stood back to inspect my efforts, wondering how long it had been since I’d sneaked out at night. I went into the bathroom, did a wee, flushed the loo and washed my hands. My own hooded eyes staring back at me from the bathroom mirror, I cleaned my teeth with the door open so my parents would hear. Once I’d finished my for-show bathroom routine, I walked back into my room, sat heavily on the bed and was gratified to hear it creak. My hands tightened into fists. I stood slowly, silently. I switched off my bedside light, crept out and pulled the door to.

  Davie was waiting in the kitchen. He handed me a flask and silver Thermos cup.

  “What’s in the cup?”

  “Tea,” he whispered. “Extra sweet.”

  We locked eyes. Then we did something we never do. We held each other tight; he swayed me from side to side and kissed my cheek. I knew he would taste tears and when I heard him sniff I knew he was crying too.

  “I won’t do anything too bad,” I said. “I’ll do enough.”

  “Just don’t get caught, all right?”

  “I won’t.”

  When he let go we stood back a little from one another, wet-eyed, wet-faced in the dark.

  “I’d better get going,” I said.

  He nodded and the two of us mov
ed towards the hall.

  “If you’re not back by half seven,” he whispered, “I’ll take Isla out for a walk or something, tell them she wouldn’t sleep, tell them you’ve gone on into town. I dunno, I’ll think of something but don’t be late, eh?”

  “I won’t. But if I am, tell them I’ve gone for teething gel.”

  We stepped out into the street. Davie walked me to the van, tapped the roof once I was inside. “Don’t break the speed limit.”

  “I’m not that stupid.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  After Shona flounced out all high and mighty, Michael and I left everything as it was and went to bed without exchanging so much as a glance. We did not touch. We did not speak, other than to ask if the doors were locked. You could say it was shock – if you don’t count the fact that the merest glimpse of him made me want to throw up.

  In the morning, Michael woke with eyelids like pillows.

  “I haven’t slept a wink,” he said, his bottom lip pushed out and glistening revoltingly.

  “Oh,” I replied. Had I been awake at any point during the night, I guess I would have known that. But I’m a very deep sleeper and frankly, I was glad to have slept through the wailing and the hand wringing.

  We ate breakfast. I put on Radio 1 to drown out the slop and crunch of him chewing. His eyelids had deflated; his beard had grown in ugly patches on his rather too large chin.

  “We should clean up,” he said.

  “All right.”

  The rabbit was a blackened, dried out mess: a husk. I left Michael to prise it from the rotary pole while I sniffed the various bowls, wondering if they’d made it through the night. In the end, we threw away everything, every scrap. Michael lugged it out to the bin in a black plastic refuse bag.

  By midday, Shona had not reappeared. Michael could not leave his phone alone.

  “I can’t even track her,” he whined. “She must have turned it off. Oh God, she hates me, she really hates me.”

  “Actually,” I said, “have you seen my iPhone? I haven’t seen it since last night.” I grabbed my bag from the kitchen floor and rummaged through it. No phone.

  He appeared not to hear, too lost in his own phone, which he kept sliding unlocked, his face set in this wretched, angst-ridden expression so deep I wondered whether it would ever change.

  “Oh, never mind,” I said.

  I searched through my coat pockets but it wasn’t there either. Fuck. I must have left it ... I’d had it with me in the bathroom ... I must have left it on the side of the bath when Zac started whining. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  “Why won’t she text?” He wailed.

  Erm, maybe because her phone is switched off? “I really don’t know, Michael.”

  “Maybe if I send her a message ...”

  “Don’t,” I said, crossing the kitchen to him so I could physically stop him if I had to. “She was very clear. If you text her now after she expressly asked you not to, you could lose her forever.”

  He’d already lost her forever, I knew that. We both had, which was a shame. But, my God, I wanted him to leave his fucking phone alone. And I needed to get hold of mine. It was OK, though. She didn’t know the passcode.

  Unable to bear Michael’s expression any longer, I turned away. I made lunch, made myself sit opposite him and composed my face into the very picture of sympathy. But there was something else in his eyes now, besides the misery, something worse. Hope. He had not let go of the hope that, if he bombarded her for long enough with messages of love and contrition, she would crumble and come back and all would be well. But last night from the garden I had watched her leave. She would not, I knew, crumble and come back. Michael could talk, God knows, he could charm the proverbial birds out of the trees, but there would be no talking now. I couldn’t say this to him of course. It was tragic enough being around him as it was. My main concern, frankly, was the mad woman currently in residence in my other house and what she might be doing.

  “If you’re going to sit waiting for a reply,” I said. “We may as well go and see her. She must have calmed down by now. Maybe we can talk to her.”

  The door to the Fittie house swung open at the lightest touch of my finger. As soon as I stepped into the tiny kitchen I knew something was not right. The floor and countertop were spotless. Everything had been put away in the cupboard, apart from Michael’s favourite mug, which was on the draining board, right way up. But You May Call Me Lord. That, I’ll admit, gave me the shivers.

  I wandered into the living room. Same: vacuumed, immaculate. Eerie.

  “See?” Michael’s voice came through from the kitchen. “I told you she wouldn’t trash the place.”

  From the mantelpiece I picked up the photo of Michael. “You’re right. She hasn’t.”

  No, she hadn’t wrecked my house. But why the hell had she cleaned it? Another shiver passed through me. I rolled my shoulders and shook my head against an inchoate case of the heebie-jeebies.

  Michael came into the living room, holding Zac and smiling like an idiot. “She just needed somewhere to stay,” he said.

  “But where is she?”

  He looked around, as if he expected to find her standing by the window, ready to play happy families. “She’s probably gone for food. Maybe taken Isla for a walk.”

  “You think?”

  “Yes. Along the beach.” The hopeful set of his eyebrows made me want to scream. This man, this face, would murder me by stealth.

  I headed for the bedroom. Maybe Shona had cut the sleeves from my suits. I hoped so. Something, anything, other than this ... this weird perfection. In the bedroom, the bed looked strange. And then I realised. The duvet had been folded and tucked at the corners to make a kind of pleat. The cushions sat in a row, points down. They were completely central, as if she’d measured their position with a ruler. My jaw clenched. My breath quickened. I opened the wardrobe door. Surely ... but no. Nothing had been ripped or damaged in any way. I closed the door. Even the bedroom floor was spotless. Before leaving the house last night I had thrown some underwear down, two changes of clothes – they were in the wash basket. The curtains had been tied back, something I never bothered doing. The bureau was closed – had I left the key in the lock?

  I headed for the bathroom. The shower bore no ghostly rings of dried droplets, no soap slime, no stray hairs. I looked around and shrieked.

  “Michael!”

  He appeared in the doorway. “What?”

  “The mirror.”

  He came to stand beside me, the two of us fractured as a cubist painting: eyes doubled, random noses and ears repeated between the cracks. We were all wrong. We were freakish.

  “I told you,” I said.

  “No,” he said. “It will have been an accident.”

  “An accident? So, tell me, did a heavy object accidentally throw itself from the floor, across the room perhaps, and land smash in the centre of the mirror? Don’t be ridiculous.”

  But he only shrugged and left the room. “Well, maybe she did do it on purpose. But it’s only a cheap mirror. You’re not superstitious, are you?”

  No. But even so. Unable to look at my reflection, I stared down at sink. It gleamed, the scab of dried toothpaste I knew had been there when I left was gone. And my phone was no longer on the side of the bath.

  “Michael, have you seen my iPhone?”

  “Nah,” he called from the other room. “It’ll be at the cottage.”

  “I don’t think so. I thought I’d left it in here.” I bit my nail, tore a strip from it with my teeth and spat it out. “Don’t you think it’s a bit weird, how clean it all is?”

  “She’s proud, that’s all. I think we should head back. She’ll probably be waiting at the cottage.”

  I felt myself blanch. “The cottage,” I said, joining him and Zachary in the living room. “What if she’s there? What if she’s trashing the place?”

  “Now you’re being ridiculous. She’s solid gold, is Shona, she’d never do anything to the c
ottage. She loves it.”

  I could look only at Michael’s feet, the white trainers I always hated.

  “I need time to think.” I said.

  Oh, but he wasn’t going to give me time to think, I knew it even as I said it. He wasn’t going to give me space either. These were two things I would never have again. He was going to wait there with his fool’s grin and believe that Shona wasn’t as angry as all that. I had no idea what this pristine house, the smashed mirror or my missing phone meant, other than her possibly flipping out as I had predicted. And she had obviously, also as I had predicted, scuttled back to Glasgow.

  “I think, actually, I’ll get changed,” I said, forcing myself to look into his hopeless, hopeful face. His designer hooded top screamed discount village. He actually believed style could be purchased in a brand name aimed at teenagers. How had I not seen him for what he was? I had thought him such a breath of air compared to the boarding school boys of my teenage years but now I saw he was nothing but vain, vain and more than a little stupid. I met his eye and smiled. “Darling, would you mind taking Zachary along the beach, give him a walk while I take a shower?”

  “OK,” he said, bewildered. “So, hang on, you don’t think she’ll do anything to the cottage then?”

  “No, you’re right, she wouldn’t. It’s like you said. Shona’s solid gold.”

  Once the two of them were out of my sight, I sat on the sofa and wept with relief. Yes, wept. I made coffee and sat and sipped and plotted. They would be back soon. I had to think fast. I had to devise a plan.

  They got back an hour later, Michael still wearing that pathetic, deluded optimism, the gurning, lobotomised half-smile of a mentally challenged game show contestant. I kissed him full on the mouth, stroked his chin. He smiled, a horrid, hoi polloi Saturday night is sex night smile. I smiled right back. Now that I knew what my next move was, I felt so much better.

  On the way back to the cottage, Michael’s energy slid away. He called Shona twice between Fittie and Sainsbury’s but did not leave a message. He became morose once again, slid low in the passenger seat like a truculent spoilt schoolboy.