Valentina: A Hauntingly Intelligent Psychological Thriller (13 page)

“
Struth,” she said. “I can’t believe he wasn’t clear about that with you.” Usually jokey and bright, she sounded sober
–
with shock
–
and I was gratified by that.

“
And he’s taken the car. How am I supposed to get around? I’m stuck, Valentina. All I can see is fields and trees and I’ve got no one to talk to and no way of getting out!”

“
Do you think he deceived you intentionally?”

I hadn’t thought about that
–
but now I did. “I don’t know. Do you think he would do that?”

I heard her sigh, as if she was blowing out smoke from a cigarette. “I think men are capable of anything, Shona. They fix on what they want and they do it and to hell with anyone else.”

“
It’s such a ... such a fait accompli. It’s so ... I feel so ... helpless, you know? It’s not like I can just move back to Glasgow now, is it?”

“
You can do what you want, Shona. Don’t let anyone tell you different. Why not try sending him to Coventry? Men hate that.”

“
Everyone hates that and it’s
–
it’s childish.” I couldn’t shake the thought of Mikey deliberately hiding the facts from me, hoodwinking me into living the life he wanted for no better reason than him wanting it. But his speciality was his power of persuasion, I thought, not his ability to lie.

“
You could go back to your folks’,” Valentina said. “Pack up and go stay with them for a few days. You should let him know you won’t let him walk all over you.”

I sniffed. The shaking sobs died down, my tears were drying, sticky. “I’ve never done anything like that. I usually stand my ground, have a good fight, you know? I don’t run away.”

“
True that.” She laughed. “But this isn’t running away, is it? This is a protest, it’s much more powerful. And I tell you what, if Red tips his reefer butts in the plant pot one more time I’ll be coming with you.”

I laughed. After a moment, I said, “He wouldn’t know what’d hit him, would he?”

“
Think about it. Really. Take action. If you act like a carpet, they will walk all over you. And they won’t bother taking off their shoes. A girl needs bollocks in this life.”

“
You’re right.”

“
I’m calling it the way I see it,” she said. “Tell me to sling my hook if you want but I’m only being honest.”

“
No,” I said. “No, I appreciate it.”

That heavy exhalation again. I wanted to ask if she was smoking. But she couldn’t be. She was a yoga teacher.

“
Listen,” she said. “I’m off today so I could come pick you up and take you to the station.”

“
You’d do that? For me?”

“
Of course. No question.”

“
Thanks,” I said. “You’re a real pal.”

TEN

Fifteen minutes later, I was sitting on the bed with my holdall on my lap. I had been so definite but now I was no longer sure. A horrid, stale feeling had lodged itself inside me, a feeling with its own sour taste, like a hangover. All this fury would make me ill, I knew. I didn’t want it, I didn’t want any of it
–
it was a poison I had to expel. But no matter how I looked at it, the only conclusion I could come up with was that Mikey had brought me here under false pretences. And now he expected me to live alone, a shadow in the darkness while he went about in the light. A housekeeper. A maid. For him, nothing had changed. For me, nothing was the same.

I went downstairs and began to clear away the plates and cups from breakfast. Other things, little things that had irritated me over the time we’d been together, surfaced. I remembered the first time I met him: he’d told me to have whisky when what I’d wanted was wine. When I moved in with him, he had already bought the flat he wanted
–
his parents had paid but he had chosen. I had moved into his choice. Once when he’d left his underwear on the bathroom floor I’d asked him, nicely, to put it in the wash basket.

“
Don’t,” he’d said, so kindly, so softly. “Let’s not become that. Not us.”

And I had not known how to respond. He’d made me feel like something prosaic and sad. I had understood, had thought I understood that for me to ask him to do this was to reduce our relationship to something mediocre, something no better than everyone else had.

“
OK,” I’d said, still doped up on love, on sex. “I’m sorry.”

And later, I’d picked up his dirty underwear and put it in the wash basket
–
since that was the only way to make our relationship special.

Outside, a car horn toot-tooted. Valentina. I ran to the living room window. The roof of her beaten up Toyota was drawn back and her red hair shone in the rare Aberdeen sun. She was wearing white-rimmed fifties style sunglasses, a cream mack and a bright blue silk scarf. My kookie, hippy friend.

Waving, I made my way with Isla to the car. On the back seat, the upholstery was solid, cracked with dried food. I had to wrestle with the clip on the seatbelt. The bloody thing wouldn’t fasten. Valentina was already making her way back with the rest of my stuff.

“
I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t get this to clip in.”

“
I told you, it’s a total bastard. Wait, let me throw this in the trunk.”

And then it occurred to me: Zac wasn’t there.

“
Where’s Zac?” I asked her.

“
Red’s got him.”

“
Isn’t he at work?”

“
He’s in retail, remember? He’s got to work this weekend so he gets today in lieu.”

“
Oh no. I’ve spoiled your family day.”

“
Not at all.” She fastened the clip, gave me a kiss on the cheek then made her way back round to the driver’s seat.

I got in next to her and pushed my face into my hands. “What am I doing?”

“
The right thing.” She started the engine. “It might seem dramatic but it’ll make him think twice about steamrollering you again. When I left Zac, did I tell Red where I was going, when I’d be back? No. None of his goddamn business. I told him I needed him to look after his son, end of. I’m going into town for a coffee after I’ve dropped you. On my own.”

I drew my hands down my face and looked at her. She’d pushed her sunglasses onto her head and was smiling at me. I knew how drawn and stressed I must look. She, however, looked radiant.

“
Trust me,” she said, shaking her head. “The more you give, the more they’ll take, without ever volunteering anything in return. They’re not like us, Shona. They’re not like women.”

“
I think maybe I should stay and hear what he has to say before I go raving off like this.”

“
You will hear what he has to say.” She reversed the car at high speed around the edge of the picket fence and, with a spray of gravel, revved forward into the lane. “But you’ll hear it from a position of power.”

It was weird being back in Glasgow
–
like seeing it for the first time. My city seemed so built up, which of course it is, but living in the open space of the country had given me a new perspective. The sandstone was, I have to say, a welcome break from all that granite, the matt terracotta tenements flattened to card by an overcast sky. We crossed the Clyde, over into Govan. No granite here either, no glittering rock. Here, nothing would’ve glittered, even if the sun had come out. Nothing was claiming to be gold.

I got the taxi to drop me on the Govan Road. I didn’t want my mum to see me pulling up in a cab. With Isla’s car seat clipped into in the buggy base, I walked the rest of the way to Southcroft Street.

Davie let me in at the main door, barefoot, scant black hair sticking up all over the place. He wore only a thin white t-shirt and scruffy jogging bottoms over his skinny white frame. He was grinning as if he found the sight of me funny. “What are you doing here?”

I tipped up the buggy to negotiate the front step. “Great to see you too, brother dear.”

He stepped back and held open the door asking how long I planned to stay.

“
Hold on a second,” I said. “Can I no’ get in the door first?”

The hallway for the flats seemed smaller, awkward with the buggy
–
the faint whiff of weeks’ old sick covered with something floral lingered in the stairwell. Someone needed to take that carpet outside and set it alight.

I followed Davie into my parents’ ground-floor flat, into the kitchen. “Why aren’t you at work?”

“
Ach.” He waved his hand over his head as if he were swatting a fly.

Once he’d made tea, we went and sat in the lounge. My parents have a white leather three-piece suite and a hideous pink leaf design accent wall where the gas fire is
–
for which I blame those nineties home design shows
–
my ma and pa were mad for those. The suite, the wall, all of it had embarrassed me the two times I’d brought Mikey here. I’m ashamed to say that now, but there it is.

“
So how come you’re here?” Davie asked.

I smiled at him, taking him in, his pinkish scalp visible through his tufty hair. “Are you going bald?”

He put his hand on his head. “Get to fuck, Shone. Yeah, I am. Twenty-four.”

“
Too much self-abuse. It’ll make you blind too, you know.”

He shook his head and smiled. Youngest of four. Never stood a chance with us lot.

“
I’m here for a wee visit is all,” I said. Lied. “Thought I’d surprise Mum. How is she by the way?”

“
I’ve told her she should retire.”

“
She won the lottery and not told anyone?”

“
Aye, right.”

We gossiped, ran through our Gus, Craigie, my dad. Annie next door and her lot. Her oldest boy was inside for possession
–
it had put years on her.

“
Aye, well, it does,” I said.

“
Yup.” Davie looked away and I kicked myself. He’d seen the inside of a cell himself a few years back
–
the
last thing he needed was me reminding him what it had done to our mum and dad.

“
What about you anyway?” I asked.

He shrugged and looked at me once again. “Nae work just now.”

“
Mum never said.”

“
Aye, well.” He sniffed, bit at this thumbnail.

“
Do you want me to ask Mikey, see if he can get you something on the rig?”

“
Nah. I’ll be OK.”

Davie didn’t like Mikey. He’d never said as much. Never had to.

“
Say the word,” I insisted. “It’s nae bother. The work’s tough right enough but the money’s good and you’ve only got half the time to spend it. Davie. Think about it.”

He picked up Isla and sat her on his knee, let her pull his nose, poke him in the eye. I took a couple of photos of the two of them with my phone. We had a second cup of tea and I felt my insides thaw, felt the softness of my mum and dad’s sofa under my backside. I yawned.

“
I said I’d get something in for tea,” Davie said. “Will I take Isla out with me, show her the sights? You look like you could use a nap.”

“
Thanks,” I said. “Baldy man.”

He rolled his eyes. “Your bedroom’s still a museum piece by the way.”

I went down the hall and pushed open the door to my room. My pink Hello Kitty jewellery box still stood on my rickety white dressing table, my cuddly toys lined up and staring at me from the top of my old pine wardrobe. My duvet cover with the lilac and pink hearts was still on the bed, my framed poster of
Casablanca
I’d thought so sophisticated when I was eighteen still on the wall. I hadn’t lived here for ten years yet my cheap childish knick-knacks were, as Davie had said, preserved like precious antiques. Fully clothed, I got into bed. But it was weird being without Isla. The silence, the empty space had a shape to it and that shape was her. I breathed in the familiar smell of my mum’s fabric conditioner, closed my eyes and tried not to think about Mikey getting home and finding me gone, finding the note I had left. At the thought of that note, I got a pit in my stomach, as if I’d done something very wrong. Valentina had said I had every right to make a stand but now that I was here, I felt less sure.

I woke to the sound of the key in the door. “Hello?” My mum’s voice. “Anyone in?”

“
I’m here,” I called out.

“
Is that you, Shona?”

“
No, it’s Elvis Presley, ma, who do you think?”

“
Well, what d’you know? That is a nice surprise.”

The bang and rustle as she made her way inside. Obviously carrying bags
–
she always was. Davie must still be out with Isla, I thought. Had probably taken her to Brechin’s to show her off to his feckless ned mates. The crackle of the furred-up kettle drifted out from the kitchen; I knew my mum would call out in one, two, three ...

“
Can I get you a cup of tea, doll?”

I was home.

We ate together in the living room, plates on our knees, in front of the news. Davie made chicken curry, which was all right, actually, and when I told him so he blushed so much his ears went red. Mum and Dad were full of questions about the cottage, about Mikey. I told them he rang me almost every night from the platform, told them about the electricity failing, how I’d had to bum shuffle down the stairs to find the fuse box. Basically, I made out that everything was peachy, that any problems were silly things, nothing more than a funny story to tell.

“
D’you no get awful lonely out there?” my mum asked.

“
Nah. It’s beautiful, Mum. I’m always out and about. And I’ve made a pal. She’s great
–
she gave me a lift to the station, actually.”