by S. E. Lynes
Silence. Another heavy exhalation.
“Valentina cares for me, that’s all,” I said. “Tell you what, I’ll invite her and Red over for dinner when I get back. That way you can meet her properly and get to know her a bit, OK?”
“OK.”
“You’ll like her, I promise”.
After the call, I stood in the dark with my fingers pressed against the wall, listening to the low mumbling of the television, the peaks and troughs of TV presenter speak. I wanted to feel at peace but I didn’t. I didn’t know why, but I felt worried – but in a general way I could not have named. It did not occur to me that it was me, after all, who had said sorry, not Mikey. If any conscious thought came to me at all it was that, in the evenings, Mikey always listened to music. He only ever listened to talk radio at the weekends if there was a big match on. But you never know anyone as well as you think, do you?
ELEVEN
Davie drove me back to the station in Mum and Dad’s car. He parked up and came all the way to the train, helped me on board with Isla and the tripper and my bag.
“Right then,” I said. “Better see if I can find a seat.” I blew him a kiss but as I threw out my hand he caught it in his.
“Anything you need, Shone,” he said, holding my gaze. “I mean it.”
I had no idea what he meant. I pulled my hand away but not without giving his fingers a wee squeeze. “Sure thing, Davie.”
I reached Aberdeen at nine. Mikey came to pick me up at the station: red-eyed, unshaven. He’d been up late, I thought, fretful, not sleeping. And now he looked like hell. Because of me.
We said little on the way home, as if the car did not afford us the privacy we needed to finish our recovery. By the time I’d got out of the car, Mikey had taken my bag and the buggy from the boot. He waited until I’d lifted Isla safely out before walking us both to the cottage. He pushed open the front door and ushered us in first.
He’d left the heating on, and the soft electric lamp in the kitchen. There were flowers in a vase on the table and a card. Beneath the perfume of the flowers, another smell. I couldn’t say exactly, couldn’t separate out the components of that smell but I knew it was us, our family, our home.
“Welcome back,” he said softly.
I put Isla in her car seat on the floor and let him lift me up. I wrapped my legs around his waist and sank my face into his neck.
“Don’t ever, ever leave me again,” he said.
“I won’t.”
He lowered me down, kissed me softly on the mouth and handed me the envelope. Inside was a plain piece of card upon which he’d written:
I could not go, not anywhere, not even for a moment,
if you were not here when I got back.
I love you, Shona, always will.
M.
I was crying – of course I was. The whole episode, the shock, the anger, the strain of hiding all sign of trouble from my parents, and of course the guilt over my selfishness, had left me raw.
Mikey held my face in his hands and pushed my tears aside with his thumbs. He kissed me again – harder this time, slower, before leaning back.
“This is what I love about you,” he said. “It’s all here, all written on your face.”
“I wish I was mysterious.”
“Don’t even think about becoming mysterious.”
I pulled back from him and looked him in the eye. “I’m going to look for a job. Soon.”
He smiled and rubbed the tops of my arms as if to warm me. “You’ve had a shock. You’ve got yourself into a state.” He took my hand and led me to the chair, eased me down into it. He crouched down in front of me and took both my hands in his. “I think, for what it’s worth, you need to stop putting pressure on yourself. I can look after us financially but I’ll be away a lot over the next year or two. You’re not sleeping properly yet. If it were me, which I know it isn’t, I would take it easy. You’re Isla’s only point of stability here. Two weeks in four, you’re all she’s got. I would wait for, say, a year, wait until you’re properly settled, and then think with a clear head about what you want to do next. Make the decision for the right reason.”
I sniffed, nodded.
“Maybe we should try for another?”
“Maybe – not right away.”
“No, but soon. No point hanging about, eh?” He let go of my hands, slid his warm hands up the inside of my thighs and back again. Tiny electrical pulses ran down to my toes. “Besides, we’ll have a great time trying.” He knelt up, brought his face close and kissed first one eye then the other.
“Don’t leave me,” he whispered. “And don’t listen to that Valerie woman again.”
“Valentina.” I laughed, wiped his cheek where my tears had wetted his skin. “She was only trying to help.”
She was only trying to help. These were the words I said.
Three days later, Valentina invited herself over for lunch. I was still trying to make it up to Mikey – small attentions – more effort on my appearance before he came home, to be better company, maybe put a little more thought into what was for tea, that kind of thing. We called each other two or three times a day. Oh, and he’d decided to cycle to work and, Mikey being Mikey, had bought himself all the clobber. When winter set in, we hoped to be able to afford a small second-hand car.
Shaky as I still was, I looked forward to seeing my friend. Her intention had been only to help strengthen me or at least remind me of my strength and I was still grateful for that. An evening back in Govan with my family, or with some of them anyway, a night in my childhood bed, had given me time to think and to compare the Shona I was now with the old one, the one who had slept every night under that low ceiling in a room no bigger than a store cupboard. That girl had got into all sorts of scrapes growing up. That girl was strong – would never have stood for injustice or cruelty, not on her turf. But where I grew up, cruelty took the form of punch-ups in the playground, at the bus stop and in the battered play-park, bruises paraded like trophies. Where I grew up, cruelty lay on the surface, where you could see it.
At around midday, Valentina arrived. I was washing up when I heard her come in and so, wiping my hands on the tea towel, turned to see her striding in with Zac fast asleep in his car seat. She set him down on the floor tiles, brushed her hands together and smiled.
“Hey, you.” Her patchwork skirt reached down to her ankles. She was rummaging around in her cloth hippy bag and after a moment produced a bottle of white wine and a long hand-rolled cigarette with the end twisted shut. Both she held out to me. “Presents.”
“Is that what I think it is?”
“It’s wine, yes,” she said, kissing me on the cheek, pulling me into an embrace and holding me tight.
“Very funny. You know I don’t mean that. The other thing.”
“If you think it’s a doobie then yes it is, Sister.”
“You’re kidding?” I took both from her, sniffed the joint along its length.
“What are you, some hokey cigar connoisseur now? Do you need to put it in the humidor?”
I laughed. “I haven’t had this stuff for years.”
“Thought you could use it.” She took off her coat and went to hang it up. I noticed her scarf was still there on the hook. I thought I’d given it back but I must have forgotten – yet another thing that had slipped my mind.
Valentina was back in the kitchen, already pulling two glasses from the cupboard. She picked up the bottle, held it up and sighed. “Fuck,” she said, and began rifling through my cutlery drawer. “It’s got one of those synthetic corks. Where’s your corkscrew, babe?”
“Should be in there,” I said.
“I tell you what,” she replied, her back straightening. “I’ll do this in a sec. I’m actually dying for a pee. Won’t be a tick.” She ran up the stairs. Her footsteps sounded on the ceiling above me, the closing of the bathroom door, the clank of the loo lid hitting the cistern. A minute or two later, the flush, her footsteps again. But t
hey didn’t come down, not immediately. They fell softer, slower, in the direction of mine and Mikey’s room. I stood motionless, ears pricked, unsure of what to think. A second later, the footsteps padded back along the landing, the creak of the top stair, another second and Valentina reappeared, hands deep in the pockets of her swishing maxi skirt.
“Phew. Needed that.” She crossed the room and began searching once again in the cutlery drawer, clearly desperate for a drink. I wanted to ask her why she’d been creeping about upstairs in my house but I couldn’t find the words. I was too embarrassed, I suppose.
“Do me a favour, would you, babe? Take Zac’s hat off for me? He’s going to overheat in here.”
“Sure.” I squatted down to the baby, unfastened his chin strap and pulled off the funny wee deerstalker hat he was wearing. He woke up and moaned a little, so I picked him up and kissed his head. “Hey wee man, that better?” He stopped grizzling straight away. “That’s right, it’s all OK. Your Aunty Shona’s got you now, darling.”
“Eureka,” came Valentina’s voice behind me. “Found it.”
I stood, Zac on my hip, to find her working the corkscrew.
“I thought they were all screw tops now,” I said.
“Not this one. This is special. Montrachet, ooh la la.” The wine splashed into the glasses, the palest liquid honey, pure-looking, clear. The glasses broke out in perspiration. I still got a thrill from us drinking like this so early in the day. In Govan, you’d have to be a wino or a homeless person or both to drink at this time, but here in the cottage it was decadent – classy, even. Two educated women sipping cold white wine.
“Hold on a second,” I said. I carried Zac into the living room and put him in the playpen with Isla. They loved lying in there together, the two of them. I went back into the kitchen where Valentina was waiting with my glass held out in front of her.
“Bottoms up,” she said. “I thought we should celebrate you growing a pair of bollocks.”
Glass to my lips, I took in her lovely white teeth, her lovely long salon hair. What had been her upbringing, I wondered, to afford herself, on a part-time yoga teacher’s wages, such teeth, such hair, such assumptions about me and my status – bollock-wise? What did she know, what could she possibly know, about me? My fist, quite involuntarily, clenched.
“You’d be surprised,” I said, carefully. “When I was at school, this lassie, Marjory McMasters, threatened to beat up my wee brother, Davie.”
“Oh yeah?”
The two of us took our seats at the kitchen table and drank wine so delicious it almost made me lose my thread.
“Yeah,” I said. “Happened a lot where I grew up. We walked the same way home anyway, me and this girl. So one day, I caught up with her and I grabbed hold of her and I pushed her to the ground.” I smiled at the memory, my school friends’ faces appearing in my mind’s eye – go on Shona, kill her. “I got on top of her and pinned her arms down with my knees. I didn’t shout or anything like that, but I went in really close, you know? Like this ...” I stood, put my face to Valentina’s, our noses almost touching “... and I said, ‘if you go near our Davie again, I’ll finish you, you scabby old dog.’” I pulled away, sat back in my chair and took a good long drink of the special Montrachet. Ooh. La. La.
Valentina gave a hollow laugh. “You sound like you’ve got a real temper.”
“When enough’s enough,” I said, “yes, yes I have.”
It must have been about half past two in the afternoon by the time we ate but the more we drank, the less I cared. I’d made crusty rolls with brie, bacon and cranberry – I needed them to soak up the alcohol. I hoped she didn’t expect me to share the joint. I’d be sick.
Over lunch, I explained about Mikey and what he’d said, how we’d made our peace.
“It’s tough on both of us,” I told her. “Not just me. It was selfish of me not to see that. And if anything, it’s galvanised me into looking for work sooner rather than later. I was thinking about calling the Press and Journal and seeing if I could set up a meeting and I’ll maybe give the BBC a call too.”
“Good idea.”
“Enough about me, anyway,” I said. “How’s Red? Have you got a picture of him by the way? I don’t even know what he looks like.”
“Sure.” She rummaged in her bag and pulled out her phone. She thumbed the screen for a few moments. “Where is it ... ah, here it is,” and handed the phone to me. “Hardly heart-throb material, I’m afraid.”
He didn’t look like I’d expected him to, not that I’d expected anything specific. Red was a proper carrot-top, like Jeanie, with pale skin and eyes screwed up against the low Aberdeen sun. His checked shirt hung from his shoulders almost as it would from a coat hanger and he was holding Zac in his arms and smiling – laughing possibly. He looked happy. He looked proud of his wee boy. I guess I’d thought she’d go for someone seriously good-looking, maybe I thought he’d have a trendy hairdo or something, with him being a musician. I swiped the screen and another photo came up: Valentina, him and Zac – a selfie.
Valentina had stood up and was holding out her hand. I realised I was being rude, flipping through her photos like that.
“He looks like a nice guy,” I said, handing back the phone. “Genuine, you know?”
She sat down again, finished her wine and poured herself some more. She offered me some but I shook my head, wondering how the hell she was going to drive home.
“Things are ... they’re not good actually.” She sniffed and covered her eyes with her hand.
“Hey.” I reached over, covered her other hand with mine. “Don’t cry.”
“I’m not,” she said, though her voice was high-pitched. “He’s ... I don’t think I can take it much longer.”
I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t like her. I wasn’t full of advice.
“I’m so sorry, Val,” I said after a moment, laying my hand on her arm. “I’d had no idea things were so bad. Can you talk about it?”
She shook her head. I was about to ask if she needed to stay the night when the key sounded in the front door and who should step in but Mikey.
“Mikey!” I jumped up, felt the colour rise to my cheeks. Obviously, it was a surprise to see him at home in the middle of the day, but it wasn’t surprise that had sent me springing to attention. Here I was, tipsy with my friend in the middle of the day while he was out working hard, earning our living. I had been rumbled.
Valentina too had shot out of her seat. Partners in crime, I thought, not without a twinge of childish excitement. What a pair of naughty schoolgirls we were. But the colour drained from Mikey’s face. He began to cough, his hand shot to his chest.
“Oh my God, Mikey, what’s the matter?” I rushed over to him but he fell to his knees, still coughing, still holding his chest. My throat tightened. I sank to the floor beside him, tried to loosen his tie. “He’s choking,” I shouted, turning to Valentina, who was already carrying a chair from the kitchen over to the front door. She set the chair down beside him.
“I want you to sit on this chair for me,” she said.
“Mikey, talk to me,” I cried out. “Are you having a heart attack or something?”
He raised his hand, sputtering horribly like the victim of tear gas.
“Shona, calm down,” said Valentina. “He is not having a heart attack, don’t be ridiculous. Now help me get him into the chair.” Chastened, I took one of Mikey’s arms and together we eased him up and onto the chair. “I want you to focus on breathing in and out,” she said to him. “Can you do that for me? Breathe.” I was aware of myself kneeling on the floor, of her moving around, coming and going in my peripheral vision. “Shona, do you have a paper bag?”
“Yes,” I said. “In the drawer next to the cutlery. I keep them back from the bread.”
“Right.” She caught my eye, held my gaze.
“I’ll get it,” I said. “Sorry.” I rubbed Mikey’s leg, told him it was going to be OK. I ran to the kitchen, grabb
ed the paper bag, ran back and handed the bag to Valentina. Mikey’s breath came in rasps – staggered, terrifying.
“Here.” Valentina held the opening of the bag tight and placed it to Mikey’s lips. “I want you to blow into this bag for me.” She handed me some water and, having freed her hand, placed it at the back of Mikey’s head. Slowly the bag inflated. “That’s good. And again. Keep going.”
The bag ballooned and deflated, ballooned and deflated. Once he was breathing regularly, Valentina took the bag away.
“Drink this.” She took the glass from me and put it to his lips. “Sip.”
He made to take the glass from her but his hand was too unsteady. Valentina held it still: one hand on the glass, the other on the back of his head. Of course, I thought. She’s a yoga teacher. She’s done this before.
“There you go,” she said. “Nice bit of H2O. You’ll be right.”
Feeling useless, I knelt down again, on the floor by his feet. “Mikey, what happened?”
Valentina pressed the glass again gently to his lower lip. He drank a little more, waved it away. He leant back in this chair and sighed.
“I took ill at work,” he said. “I thought I’d be OK to drive but ...” He coughed again, into his hand. “It’s nothing, just some fluey thing. It’s going round the office.”
I reached up, pressed my hand to his forehead – it was clammy and a little cold. “We need to get you to bed.”
He nodded. He could walk, just about. I helped him upstairs. Thankfully, Valentina did not follow. I wanted to do at least one useful thing for my own partner. Once we got into the bedroom, I sat him down on the bed. I pulled off his shoes, his trousers, his tie, unbuttoned his shirt, eased the cuffs from his wrists. His breathing had regulated but he still looked clammy. “I should call a doctor,” I said.
“Don’t,” he whispered and lay on his side, unable apparently to get under the duvet. I ran and fetched blankets from the cupboard in Isla’s room and threw them over him.