Valentina: A Hauntingly Intelligent Psychological Thriller Read Free

quivering lips. I thought of Gulliver’s Travels , which I’d read when I was about thirteen, of how the Houyhnhnms had blown my teenage mind. I’d always wished I’d known how to pronounce the damn word, even to myself. Whiminims? Hooeyhunhums? Whatever, what I remember most is that those magical horses had to say the thing which is not because, in their world, there was no word for lie.
    After tea, I put extra locks on three of the downstairs windows with the battery-powered screwdriver my dad had bought me for my twenty-first birthday. While Isla kicked about under her mobile, I even managed to screw the bolt onto the front door and still have time to stand back and admire my handiwork.
    “ No one,” I said to Isla, “not even the Big Bad Wolf could get through that.”
    I never did put the bolt on the back door. Which is a blessing, now I think about it.
    The hour came for Mikey to return home from work, to kiss my neck and reach into the fridge for a beer. Hey Shone, what’s for dinner?
    “ Three jumps at the cupboard door for you, pal,” I answered aloud, watchedhim laugh in my mind’s eye.
    I switched on the radio, twiddled the tuner until Adele came crackling through like some spooky chanteuse from the afterlife. I sang along at the top of my lungs but when the song finished, I felt even more bereft. I wanted so badly to call my mum or Jeanie but I didn’t want to sound sorry for myself. This was the life I’d chosen. This was the dream.
    At 7:30pm I was about to try Isla in her cot when the landline rang.
    I lunged for it. “Hello?”
    “ That was quick.” It was Mikey. “How’s it going?”
    “ Ach, we’re fine.” I jiggled Isla about to stop her from whining. “I’ve got my wee pal, haven’t I? How’s the rig?”
    There was a pause. I listened for the sea.
    “ So,” he said. “Seen anyone today?”
    “ I spoke to the cashier in the supermarket. She was nice.”
    He never asked if I was lonely. Probably afraid of what I’d say. Maybe I was afraid. If he’d asked, I might have said, maybe should have said yes, I am lonely. I’m going off my head here . But I kept it in when I spoke to him and saved the tears for when I was on my own. Nothing major, just eyes filling here and there, the odd shoe thrown across the room.
    There was one time I really went for it though – shaking, snotters, the works. It was that very first trip. I was washing up the breakfast things, staring through the low, square back window out over the lawn to the leylandii at the far end. Hands in the suds, I was giving myself another sink-side pep talk: It’ll get easier, Shone. Early days are always tough. If anyone can make this work, it’s you. But no sooner had I said the words when I burst into tears. Funny, how one minute you’ve got your colleagues in hysterics with some joke you’re telling by the coffee machine and the next you’re in a cottage in the middle of nowhere talking rubbish to yourself.
    And then I remembered ‘dry your eyes’. It’s something my mum always used to say. I’m not sure if it’s Scottish or what, but it’s for when someone’s feeling sorry for themselves when they’ve got nothing really to be sorry about. I had a loving partner, a beautiful baby daughter and a fairy tale cottage – more, much more, than I’d ever dreamed of. Self-pity, that’s what this crying at the sink business was all about and I knew it. What was going on here was not death, not divorce, not anything I’d even bother writing about for the paper, it was no more than nae pals, pal .
    So I walked into the hall where I’d hung the mirror and I looked at my silly, red, swollen face.
    “ Dry your eyes, Shona,” I said. “Get a life.”
    I had to act. If I was going to find work once the dust settled, I needed childcare. I’d have to get Isla used to someone other than me sooner rather than later and, besides, at this rate I was going to end up in a special ambulance. I needed friends too. And I