Valentina: A Hauntingly Intelligent Psychological Thriller Read Free Page A

certainly couldn’t make any of those by sitting at home waiting for a neighbour to come and borrow a cup of sugar, could I?
    We had no neighbours. And I didn’t have any sugar.

 
     

     
     
    ***
     
    There’s still not enough light to make out the trees at the back of the cottage. But she doesn’t need to see them to know they are there: the leylandii and the pines, the beeches and the oaks, bunched like criminals at the limit of the land. There was a time when she didn’t know their names – they were simply trees. What she can see from here is the grey front door, the dense leaves and frilled velvet petals of the briar rose, the thorns that prick and draw blood. See how the tendrils reach around the windows. See how they grip on, claim ownership. Maybe the rose knows, as she does, that possession is nine-tenths of the law.
     
    ***

 
     
    TWO
     
    By the time Mikey called from the rig that evening, I was brightness itself.
    “ Guess what?” I said. “I’m going to see a nursery on Monday. The Blue Moon, it’s called.”
    “ Doesn’t sound like a nursery.” How lovely he sounded. I could have eaten that Scouse accent, that voice. “The Blue Moon, did you say? Sounds like a nightclub. Do they have strippers?”
    “ I’ll let you know,” I said, laughing.
    “ What time do you have to be there?”
    “ Two o’clock.”
    “ Two o’clock, right. And that’s this Monday coming? Sure you’ll find it OK?”
    “ Cheeky sod. Of course I will.”
    “ Shouldn’t cost too much, should it?” he asked.
    “ Not too much. I mean, I don’t know. I didn’t ask. But it’s OK, isn’t it?”
    I heard him hesitate. Not heard, sensed, and wished he could come home right away so I could chat to him in person. I pressed my fingertips to the mirror. Around my nails, the skin whitened. Mikey couldn’t come home. He was in the middle of the North Sea.
    “ Mikey, listen,” I said. “You’re not here. You don’t know what it’s like. If you expect me to carry on like this with no one to talk to day after day ...”
    “ I wasn’t saying that ...”
    “ I was only thinking a few hours,” I rushed in. “Give me a chance to meet people. And once Isla’s settled I could maybe think about picking up some freelance stuff, set up some meetings.”
    “ Shona, stop. It’s fine. Honestly.”
    I didn’t say anything for a moment. All I could think of was that I’d never before had to ask permission to spend money, not since I was a kid. I’d always worked, since I was fourteen – a paper round, Saturday jobs, waitressing, babysitting. So I’d always had my own cash, always spent it how the hell I liked. But now, the work I did was important, yes, but it was not paid. I supposed I’d have to ask or at least discuss things like this in future.
    Maybe I’d been oversensitive. Mikey had never mentioned a budget in all the time we’d been together. He was the extravagant one, not least of all because his parents always seemed to have lump sums to give to their precious only child, cheques that took my breath away flung out over restaurant dinners whenever they were back from the villa. Always on my best behaviour on these occasions, I would eat carefully while slowly his mother’s mouth slackened, the Mersey swelling her vowels, hissing against her consonants, her tanned eyelids thickening, drooping. She got so very drunk, drunker than any of the neds I knew from back home. So I sat and smiled and ate my strawberry parfait, his mother slurring wetly at my shoulder: of course Michael’s twice the man his father ever was. Opportunist, he calls himself! Her spit wet in my ear. Cheating bastard, I call it.
    Special Brew or vintage Malbec, drunk is drunk.
    “ Shona?” Mikey broke the silence. “Come on, I didn’t mean anything by it. Besides, if they do have strippers, I’ll drop her off for you myself.”
    Once we’d said our goodbyes, I stood for a moment staring at the five misty oval rings my fingertips