The Venus Trap (16 page)

‘I made a massive mistake,’ I say bleakly. ‘I wish I’d never set eyes on Sean.’

Claudio, still in sympathy mode, strokes my leg with his finger. ‘No you didn’t,’ he says fondly. ‘When one door closes, another one opens. If you had stayed with Richard, we’d never even have had a chance. Now at least we have a chance . . . right, Jo?’

And here it comes. He leans towards me, eyes closed, dog-breath in full force. I grit my teeth and reciprocate the kiss as swiftly as I can, a brush on his dry lips before snatching my head away, dreading the tongue.

‘That’s a good way to look at it,’ I say, as tenderly as I can muster. ‘Always good to think positive.’

‘That’s my girl!’ he says, beaming.

‘Could I have another gin, please?’ I ask, picking up my empty beaker and rattling the almost-dissolved ice cubes.

‘For you, my princess, anything,’ he says, standing up and taking me with him. He seems almost high on that one brief kiss.

I force myself to smile. Make him think it could happen, if he’s patient enough.

‘We will continue the conversation later, then. I’m really enjoying it. This is what I’d hoped for, Jo—us getting to know one another better every day. Growing together.’

Puke.

As we walk down the hallway to the kitchen like conjoined twins, he starts trying to put his arm around me but then twigs that this is a physical impossibility while we’re handcuffed together. Either it would twist my arm behind my back or he’d
have to
step in front of me to hug me and walk backwards, like the idiot he is. He quite often does little things like this that make me realise he doesn’t think things through. Like trying to open a packet of chapattis with a fork. Like kidnapping me. He must have had the Rohypnol and handcuffs already, but what if he hadn’t planned any of this beyond a sudden urge to keep me for himself? I’m pretty sure he rushed out that first morning to buy the wood for the windows, so he hadn’t planned that in advance. He could have chucked his power tools and suitcase into the boot of my car that night he drugged me. Perhaps he had originally only—only!—wanted to drug and rape me, but it all got out of control. It gives me a flicker of hope, that I can somehow use this to my advantage and escape.

‘Isn’t it difficult, though, for you to hear me talk about
other men?’

I am genuinely curious about this. Surely it must feel to
Claudio
like prodding a bruise? Yet he seems happier than I’ve seen him since we’ve been incarcerated here together.

We squeeze through the kitchen door side by side and he opens the fridge for the bottle of tonic.

‘Yes, in a way it is painful. But I feel more sorry for you than for me. There you were, making so many mistakes over the years that caused you so much pain, when you didn’t realise that all you had to do was to be with me. And here we are, so it will all turn out right in the end, I know it will.’

‘Make it a large one,’ I mutter, as he pours the gin.

Chapter Twenty-Four
Day 3

B
ack in the front room with fresh drinks, Claudio pulls out my diary from under a cushion like a magician producing a rabbit from a hat, and my heart sinks.

‘So,’ he says, in therapist mode, ‘there’s one entry that really fascinated me. Did you have it?’

I guess there’s no point reminding him that he said he wouldn’t read it.

‘Did I have what?’

‘The breast reduction operation.’

I can’t help blushing. ‘Yes. Eventually, a couple of years after I first started thinking about it.’

‘I thought you looked different. You shouldn’t have done that, Jo. Your body was perfect the way it was. I loved it.’

‘I didn’t think it was perfect.’

‘BUT I DID!’ he suddenly screams in my face and I flinch
back as
far as the handcuffs will allow. There are actual tears in his eyes and a catch in his voice. ‘I’m sorry for shouting, Jo, but that was a terrible thing to do! Messing with your God-given beauty. How could you have voluntarily allowed yourself to be mutilated like that? You must have terrible scars now!’

‘Not any more,’ I mutter. ‘You can barely see them.’

There doesn’t seem to be any point in explaining how much better the operation made me feel, how after Dad and John and the man in the
alley it was the first thing that made me feel good about myself again.

‘It’s complicated, Claudio. I’m sorry you don’t approve, but it was the right thing for me. I don’t regret it at all.’

‘Well, I don’t approve. And I don’t understand why, although I imagine it is connected with this very poor body image you still seem to have. You were bulimic too. Are you still?’

I cringe, utterly mortified now. I feel laid bare, stripped down to muscle and sinew, pinned open like a frog for dissection. ‘God, Claudio . . . .’

‘We have no secrets!’ he declaims, his anger gone again in a flash. ‘Don’t be ashamed. I can help.’

Interesting form of therapy. I wouldn’t recommend it to
anyone else.

‘No, I’m not bul—’ I can’t even say the word. ‘No, I’m not. I haven’t been since I got married. Can I see which diary entry you’re talking about?’

Lips pursed as though he thoroughly disapproves of my (private) insecurities, despite his protestations of sympathy, he hands over my diary open at the relevant page. I take my time reading it, mostly so I don’t have to speak to him for a while:

30th
December 1986

I’ve just pierced Donna’s ear. Hope it doesn’t go septic. We’re in our PJs and I’m writing this lying on her bed. She keeps twisting the earring in her new TCP-drenched piercing, wincing as it burns and throbs. I’ll feel so responsible if it does get all pus-y.

We’ve just been talking about my operation, and I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t told her about it at all. She can’t even bring herself to say the words ‘breast reduction’—she goes: ‘You won’t be able to go swimming for ages, will you, if you have the . . . you know?’

‘So what? Why do you keep going on about it?’

‘Because it’s a big deal; major surgery. I mean, just this one little hole in my ear hurts like mad. I can’t imagine what it would feel like to . . . . well, you know. And what would you tell Sluggage? He’d go ape if you just stopped turning up. The B team would be rubbish if you weren’t in it: they rely on you. ’Specially for the butterfly. And you couldn’t tell him the real reason, could you?’

‘I won’t tell him anything. In fact, I’ll probably give it up soon anyway. I’m getting a bit bored with it, to be honest.’

‘Oh Jo! Don’t! You can’t leave me with all those hideous boys, and Slug shouting at me, without you there to have a laugh with. And if you’re not there, Daddy will just nag me to join the Pony Club instead. He thinks that I mix with the wrong sort at the swimming club. I’m sure he only lets me come because he’s got such a soft spot for you.’

Hmm, well, tough titties, Don. I like swimming and all, but it’s so horrible, seeing all the boys staring at my enormous chest. In my Speedo I look like I’ve got a uniboob. And a hunchback too—I know I hunch my shoulders forwards to try to minimise the mounds of flesh oozing round under my bloody armpits and covering my whole ribcage. It would be worth never going swimming again just to have neat little 34Cs and to be able to proudly push my shoulders back. I wouldn’t want to go back after the op anyway—they’d be bound to notice the difference.

Donna tries again. ‘Boys like girls with big boobs. John told me.’

She obviously hadn’t heard what Nigel Weston said about me at that gala in Guildford, then. It was so embarrassing. He nudged Simon Brown and said, ‘Look at the state of that . . . you’d need a Sherpa to find your way round those tits, wouldn’t you?’

I reluctantly told Donna that, but she dismissed it and said Nigel Weston had said far worse things about her. Apparently he told her that she looked like Bobby Sands three weeks into his hunger strike.

‘One comment by Nigel Weston is no reason to have major surgery!’

I can’t tell her what’s finally made me book the operation—the memory of the man with the balaclava and what he did to me in the alley.

Instead, I jumped out of bed, ran over to Donna’s knicker drawer and pulled out one of her tiny little lacy bras—pink, with half an inch of mooring at the back and wisps of silk for straps. Then I found my own bra in the pile of my clothes on the floor: a great, thick, scaffolded garment with rows and rows of reinforced hooks and eyes, and straps like seatbelts that leave deep red weals on both my shoulders.

I held up the two garments, one hooked over each thumb.

‘Compare and contrast.’

‘Yeah . . .’ said Donna pensively. ‘I suppose I do see your problem.’

You don’t know the half of my problem, I thought.

She still had one more go at trying to talk me out of it though, saying she’d be there for me if I did it, but to make sure I had really thought it through . . . Duh.

‘Obviously! I’ve read about it, and talked to the doctor. I’ll probably look like I’ve been attacked by a shark afterwards, but the scars will fade. It’ll be worth it.’

I didn’t tell Donna what else I’ve learned: that the surgeon might remove as much as two or three pounds of boob fat from each side and, more gross, that he will cut off my nipples, trimming them down to half their previous size (like a frowny-faced child
cutting
circles out of coloured paper with round-ended scissors), leaving them sitting in a kidney bowl in the operation theatre while he gouges around in my chest, and then sews them back on again
afterwards
. . . . Imagine having your own nipples lying on a table next to you! I feel sick.

Across the room, Donna shudders telepathically. ‘Ugh. Well. You gotta do what you gotta do, I suppose. But don’t give up swimming. You love swimming.’

‘I know. But . . .’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You said the scars would fade. So, come on—what?’

When I finally spoke, it was a tiny sound, almost a squeak. ‘I’ve got to walk past that alley every time I go to training.’

‘Sorry, Jo. I hope they catch the bastard. But I really don’t mind walking you home, it’s not a problem.’

‘Thanks, Don.’

I did wonder at that point whether having smaller boobs really would help me feel any differently about anything.

31st December 1986

After Donna went to sleep last night I climbed out of bed. I went next door to the attic bathroom and threw up quietly, before spraying air-freshener and flushing the toilet twice. The pipes in the wall outside Donna’s bedroom clanked as I ran the tap and cleaned my teeth, my whole body tensed in fear that the noise might wake her up.

I crept back into the bedroom, smelling of mint and fake lavender, avoiding all the creaky floorboards with a practised foot, climbed back into bed again, and closed my eyes. I hate myself.

Chapter Twenty-Five
Day 3

I
am humiliated to think that Claudio read that; utterly mortified. Suddenly it occurs to me that
this
is why he is doing it. Not to ‘get to know me better’ but to exert control over me. The thought makes me shiver so I try to dismiss it. The gins are going straight to my head, and I’ve not eaten much today. Claudio has mentioned dinner a
couple
of times but made no move towards cooking anything—he seems to be enjoying our talk too much. Either he thinks we’re bonding, or he’s relishing watching me squirm. I’m not sure which is worse.

‘Can we talk about Sunday’s date?’ he asks. ‘It was such a lovely evening, just what I needed. But you women are so unpredictable! There was me, thinking it was all going so well . . .’

Actually I don’t mind talking about this with him, but not for the reasons he thinks. Partly because it gets him off the subject of my body dysmorphia, and partly because I need to try to get it straight in my head anyway. Because if—when—I get out of here, I’ll need to be able to tell the police what happened, coherently, in a way that won’t make me sound like the fantasist or deluded rejected lover Claudio claims he’ll make me out to be. What he said before is haunting me—if I’m unharmed, it’s my word against his.

‘Can you undo these?’ I rattle our wrists. ‘It would be much easier to talk if I felt a bit more relaxed. I promise I won’t do something silly—I swear, on Lester’s life.’

‘Swear on Megan’s.’

I roll my eyes. ‘I swear on Megan’s life.’

I suppose it would depend on your definition of ‘something silly’. He unlocks and separates us, and relief sweeps over me. As I rub my wrists, I decide to play the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ card.

‘It’s not that I thought it went badly, Claudio. I had a nice time with you. But I’m a mess, honestly. I’m still not over my marriage, or my relationship with Sean. I feel terrible for messing you around—I really thought I was ready for a new romance but then I got cold feet. That was all.’

‘Had you planned in advance to finish with me that night?’

‘No! I promise I hadn’t.’

This at least was true. I hadn’t originally planned to go to his place that night either, but that afternoon he rang and left a message on my machine telling me he’d booked his favourite restaurant, near his flat in town, and asking if I liked Greek food. His voice sounded different, a little subdued, as if he’d got a cold, and I remember thinking, I hope he doesn’t give it to me. Did that mean I was assuming we were going to get up close and personal enough for me to catch
his cold? Yes, I have to admit it did. And when I took the decision to
drive to Twickenham instead of coming on the train, I thought to myself that if I wanted to drink, I could stay at his flat. He’d said he had a spare room. To my shame, though, I hadn’t been intending to sleep in the spare room. Normally I would have baulked at the idea of coming into London for a night out, but Richard was picking up Megan for their holiday at noon, so I didn’t have to worry about getting home for the babysitter. The gods seemed to be smiling on me.

I stopped myself telling Claudio this, though. I probably should, in my bid to convince him, but I just can’t in case it gives him ideas. Instead I say, ‘I knew I wasn’t ready for anything
physical
—I’m still not—but I was really looking forward to the date.’

Megan and Richard had gone and my cheek was peppered with the imprints of Megan’s kisses, my ear rustling with her whispers of love, and I felt happier than I’d felt for months. It was such a treat even to have a whole afternoon to myself to prepare for the date—the thought that, if it went well, we could potentially have the whole week ahead together made me heady with excitement.

That’s
ironic.

I called Claudio and asked him about parking near the restaurant, and he told me I could use the residents’ car park at the back of his place, and that we could have a drink together in his flat first. Excellent, I thought then, not realizing that I was sealing my own fate.

‘So what went wrong? Why did you change your mind?’

I can’t tell him the truth. I can’t tell him that it happened as soon as he buzzed me into his flat, and I saw him on his home territory: my heart sank just a tiny, tiny bit, and I knew then—at least, I thought—that it was all over. I was so disappointed that I could hardly summon up the energy to kiss him hello. In fact, I wanted to run away, in the opposite direction: home to Lester’s warm fur and the safe anticipation of thousands more fish in the sea. Fish that I didn’t actually have to meet just yet.

Claudio was standing in his hallway, holding out a long-stemmed red rose wrapped in a perfect shiny cone of cellophane, and his white shirt was immaculately pressed. He looked exactly the same as he had the week before and I even felt a faint stab of lust at the memory of our almost-kiss—but no. I didn’t then know why, but I knew I would never want it to go any further than that date. It wasn’t just the fact that his flat looked really depressing, either; I’m sure that if I’d met him at the restaurant and not seen the flat, I’d have still felt the same.

I felt sorry for him, as he leaned forward to kiss me. I politely proffered my cheek and accepted the rose. He was beaming at me, and I saw that he had a faint tideline of red, flaky skin on his forehead at the hairline, perhaps an ebbing bout of eczema or psoriasis. I hadn’t noticed it before.

‘Come in, come in. What would you like to drink? I’ve got red wine, or gin and tonic, or juice. Here, let me take your jacket.’

He ushered me into a very bachelorish living room and towards a horrible, saggy, pink-and-grey floral sofa that looked as if it might have been inherited from an elderly great-aunt.

There was patterned wallpaper on the walls, and three large
montages
of photos in clip-frames of Claudio at different ages, engaged in different activities—bungee jumping, white-water rafting, hiking, surfing. There was nobody else at all featured in the pictures, no friends or family. Some of the photographs were clearly quite old; he was a lot skinnier and much more gauche-looking. They were badly arranged in the clip-frame—some had slipped sideways, others had fallen down to reveal the cheap hardboard
backing
. One shot in particular caught my eye: a very youthful Claudio, standing outside somewhere that I think was the Brockhurst library, with its pillars like fat legs, and the narrow steps on which I used to sit and wait for John sometimes. I didn’t like seeing those steps with Claudio on them, so I looked away.

Worst of all, there was this . . . this . . .
thing
in the fireplace, just to the right of the gas fire. It was a life-size fawn, sitting curled up, with big plastic fawny eyes and little budding antlers (‘amplers’, as Megan calls them). It was lavishly upholstered in something akin to Fuzzy Felt. It was monstrously tacky. I wanted to shout at Claudio, ‘What the hell is THAT?’ although of course it was obvious what it was. What was less obvious was why. It was the most bizarre ornamental touch I’ve ever seen, outside of Santa’s grotto. There was no way I could date a man with a plastic Bambi in his fireplace.

The air in the room smelled a little musty, as if it needed a good airing. I felt uncomfortable there and even more sure that this relationship was over before it had begun.

‘Wine would be lovely, thanks,’ I said, and he vanished. I perched on the edge of the sofa—which needed a good clean—and thought about how much a person’s habitat said about them. The scruffiness and decor of his flat undermined the smartness of his own appearance—in fact, invalidated it. Bambi and I tried to outstare each other. Bambi won, hooves down.

Claudio returned with a large glass of red wine. His fingers were shaking as he passed it over to me and he appeared flustered and self-conscious. He probably thinks he’s getting laid tonight, I thought guiltily. I accepted the wine and took a sip. It wasn’t very nice, vinegary and far too cold, so I cradled the glass in my palms to try to warm it up. They were all tiny things—cheap wine, cheap furniture, too many photos of himself, Bambi—but they were adding up into a cumulative crescendo of negativity where before I had felt so positive. I wish I wasn’t so fussy. It was depressing. I really wanted this one to work.

But surely, I thought, if Claudio were right for me, these things wouldn’t matter?

I felt nervous, too. Coming to Claudio’s flat had seemed fine when I thought we were about to embark on a relationship, but now that I knew that we weren’t, it seemed risky and unwise. There had been no indication that he was about to pounce on me, but I’m sure there was a definite tension in the air.

‘What time did you book the table for?’ I began, at the same time as he said, ‘Did you find it all right?’ We laughed mirthlessly.

‘Eight o’clock.’

‘Yes, thanks. I had to get out of the car to push the buzzer to raise the barrier into your car park—my arms weren’t long enough to reach out of the window for it.’

I cringed at the inanity of my wittering, relieved to see on the nasty carriage clock on the mantelpiece that it was already quarter to. I took a large gulp of wine. ‘Should we go, then?’

‘I was going to put on some music,’ Claudio said very slightly petulantly. There was definitely something a little odd about him that night, although perhaps I just think that in hindsight. I wonder now if he’d been hoping to play me that song he wrote for me. He seemed subdued and was very pale.

‘Oh. OK then.’

‘But if you would prefer to go, that’s fine. Are you hungry?’

‘Starving!’ I said brightly, although I wasn’t. I just wanted to get out of there.

I hadn’t realised how much tension was in my body from being in Claudio’s flat until I was safely outside on the pavement again and my shoulders slumped with relief. I thought then that I was just over-reacting, and now I could start to relax and hopefully enjoy the date.

I remember being quiet as we went into the restaurant and a waiter smiled and took my jacket. I shouldn’t have gone through with that meal—but what could I have done? I could hardly have turned tail and left. That would have been plain rude, especially when we kind of had history. I owed him this much, I thought—he wasn’t nearly as bad as that awful Gerald and his Whore of Babylon outburst. Nothing could be that bad, I thought then.

How I wish I had just been plain rude.

‘Your cold has gone,’ I said, as we sat down. ‘But you still look a little peaky. Are you taking lots of Echinacea and vitamin C?’

‘Cold? I haven’t had a cold,’ he replied, mystified.

‘Oh! I thought you sounded like you were suffering when you left that message on my machine—you were all bunged up.’

‘Suffering . . . Yes, I was. But I did not have a cold,’ he said enigmatically, before changing the subject. ‘So how has your day been?’

‘Fine, thank you,’ I replied politely. ‘Enjoying my first day of freedom now that Megan’s away on holiday with her dad.’ If I’d still fancied him, I might have confessed that I’d had my nails done, hair blow-dried, and had a bikini wax in anticipation of tonight. But I no longer fancied him. It was as if the bulb in the light of my attraction to him had suddenly blown and no amount of tugging on the string of the switch was going to be able to illuminate that particular room again. Until the bulb was changed—which was why I wanted to rush home and find another one on the internet, to see if maybe, just maybe, I would find someone with whom a spark was mutual.

I got the distinct feeling that Claudio was waiting for me to ask what caused him to sound as if he was suffering on my answerphone, and I really wished I hadn’t used such a literal turn of phrase. I realised guiltily that I didn’t want to know, I didn’t want to hear about his problems. If I’d liked him more, I would have done. But I didn’t.

‘Sorry, what did you say? I was just—er—looking at the menu.’

‘I said it’s lovely to see you. You look beautiful.’

I gave an instinctive self-deprecating snort, then hastily added, ‘Thank you.’ Eileen had been working with me on trying to accept compliments more graciously.