Valentina: A Hauntingly Intelligent Psychological Thriller by S. E. Lynes

whatever it’s called when your partner comes home, picks up your baby girl and says, “We should move to Aberdeen.”
    Actually, I’m not being fair here. I’d known a move north was on the cards when I moved in with him – before that, even. Aberdeen is the oil capital, so it wasn’t as big a shock as I’m making it out to be, especially in view of the offshore job. But I was shocked all the same.
    “ Up North?” I said. “What do you want to live there for all of a sudden?”
    “ I’ve been thinking. It’s where the heliport is, obviously. I’ll get more time at home. But mostly I thought we could get ourselves a nice little place in the countryside somewhere. It’s beautiful up there, you should see it.” He moved Isla to his shoulder. She curled into it, in her pink Babygro, like a brooch made of blancmange. “With what we could get for this place, we could buy a converted steading or an old church or a gamekeeper’s cottage, whatever, as long as it’s not too big. But something special, a dream place for a family. Think of all that fresh air.”
    “ Sounds like you’ve got it all worked out.”
    “ I have.” He knelt down on the floor in front of me. “I want this for us, Shone. It’ll be an adventure. We can buy a jeep, find somewhere incredible, a real fairy tale place in the woods.” He took my hand, eyes full of excitement, and kissed my knuckles.
    “ There’s countryside outside Glasgow, you know.” But even as I said it, I knew it was a non-starter. Once he came off the rotation, and he would eventually, his job would always be Aberdeen-based. What would we do then? Not like he could commute from Ayrshire, was it? Fly from Loch Lomond, catch the red-eye from Bute or Argyll. No, I was the journalist, I was the one whose job was flexible. And the sooner we moved, the sooner I could take steps to set up something for myself, professionally and personally.
    “ We can have big parties,” he said, squeezing my fingers till they hurt. “Hell, we’ll have ceilidhs! ‘Where?’ I hear you cry. ‘In the barn, silly. The barn next to the farmhouse.’”
    “ Aye, right.” I giggled, caught up in his dream for us all.
    “ It’ll be brilliant.” He kissed me hard on the mouth. “Swear to God. It’ll be amazing.”
    Mikey could probably sell soup to Baxter’s, ice cream to old Farmer Mackie, teacakes to Tunnock’s. And I guessed he was playing the big man, the big pater familias , and that the role was still new to him. I suppose, looking back, I was playing the little woman. If I’m guilty of something, maybe it’s that.

 
     
    FIVE
     
    If he’d told me before I got pregnant that we were moving away from my family, my job and all my friends, I’d have told him to get lost and I’d have used stronger language than that. I’d never have left Glasgow. No way. I’d heard Aberdonians turned off the grill while they flipped the bacon over, dried out their teabags on the washing line so they could use them again.
    But as pregnancy had changed Mikey, something had grown in me too, right there in the bump, alongside Isla. A new set of priorities had been incubated, all previous imperatives cut off and tossed away with the umbilical cord. I’d wanted him, us, home at night – every night – once the baby was born. But you can’t always have what you want, can you? And here he was, offering me something different, OK, but the best he had. Where we lived was, if not immaterial, then a hell of a lot less important than love. Mikey and Isla, they were my home now.
    “ We won’t do this if you don’t want to, Shone,” he said, when we were clearing up the kitchen that evening. “The two on, two off, everything. I can go in there tomorrow and say no.”
    I flapped the dishcloth at him, put my face in his and treated him to my thickest Govan. “Dinna haver, Big Man,” I said. “Takes more than a move up the road to worry me, pal.”
    He laughed and kissed me on the nose.
    “