The Venus Trap (20 page)

Chapter Twenty-Nine
Day 4

C
laudio switches on the overhead light. He is wearing his horrible old-man dark stripy pyjamas, and holding a bulging Sainsbury’s Bag for Life in front of him. I sit up in bed, the sudden movement making my bruised cheek throb. I want to say ‘What now?’ but I’m
too scared.

In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared in my whole life. It’s as if he’s a ball of wool and someone is pulling at the end. He is unravelling.

‘This isn’t going as well as I’d hoped,’ he says, and I nod in submissive agreement, although I don’t know what he means. But from the aggression in his voice, I can tell he’s really upset about it. I suspect it’s a male pride thing: he’s humiliated that he lost his
erection
last night at the crucial moment.

‘I can tell you aren’t in love with me!’

No shit, Sherlock.

My heart is banging so hard in my chest that I feel breathless. ‘Give me time, Claudio. It’s not easy when I’ve been stuck in here for days, and now you’ve been violent towards me, when you said you wouldn’t be.’

I brace myself in case he hits me again.

‘That was only because you went for me!’ His voice is squeaky with outrage, at the perceived unfairness of my accusation. I’m half-waiting for him to say ‘It’s Not Fair!’ and stamp his foot.

He puts the bag on my bed and I see that it’s full of photograph albums.
My
photograph albums, from the bookcase in the
front room.

‘So, I’m going to do something to help you along a bit.’

Sitting on the edge of my bed, he tips the bag upside down. Along with the albums, several loose enlargements of photos spill out, photos that were until recently in frames either on my wall or displayed on the mantelpiece. There is one of Richard and Megan on Megan’s fourth birthday, one of Richard and me at our wedding (I keep it on display because Megan says hello to it every day), another of the three of us at a wintry bird sanctuary somewhere, Megan happy in fun-fur and mittens between us. I can’t remember who took it.

Claudio has removed each one from its frame, presumably so I don’t take the opportunity to smash the glass and stick a shard into his face. He bloody thinks of everything.

‘I’ll put them away somewhere if you don’t want them out on display,’ I say hastily, looking at Megan’s little face with longing. She is blowing out the candles on the Barbie cake I made her for her fourth birthday. Her cheeks are perfect pink puffs and her mouth a tiny excited rosebud. Richard is standing over her, gazing so fondly down at her that I have to swallow hard to try to shift the pain at the back of my throat.

Claudio shakes his head, as if that made him sad. I hate him.

‘I think it will take more than just putting them out of sight,’ he says. ‘Your ex—both your exes—seem to be something of a barrier, and our future happiness depends on there being no barriers. A clean slate, that’s what we need. So, you’re going to get rid of these. Tear them all up.’

‘What? No!’ Protectively, I gather my precious memories in my arms. ‘I can’t do that, Claudio!’

‘You have to,’ he replies calmly. ‘And I’m going to watch you do it. So get going. I’ll start you off.’

He opens Megan’s baby album, lifts the sheet of clear plastic covering the photographs, and takes out the first one, a shot of me in a hospital bed with a freshly born Megan in my arms, so freshly born that I have a smear of my own blood on my nose. I am beaming from ear to ear.

He tears it in two and drops the halves onto the floor.

This is outrageous. He’s doing it to punish me for what happened last night.

‘No! Claudio, please don’t!’

I reach out my hand to grasp his arm in entreaty, but he shakes me off and rips up the next one, Megan cradled against Richard’s chest. Richard looks so proud, and so young, his face exactly the same as when he was a student.

‘Wait!’ I try, desperately. ‘Listen, please! I accept that you don’t want me to have photos of Richard, that’s fair enough. But please, please, don’t make me get rid of Megan’s baby pictures! After all—’ I take a deep breath to cover my revulsion at the words I’m about to say, ‘—she and I come as a package. You can’t just airbrush her out of the picture. She lives with me, Claudio! You’d be her stepfather. It’s not ideal but if you want to be with me, you have to accept her too. Like I said, these things don’t happen overnight.’

Claudio pauses. I can see that he’s capitulating.

‘She’d be devastated if her baby photos were gone. She looks at them all the time.’

This is true, she does. She’s slightly obsessed with her birth and ‘how she came out’. I plough on. ‘If you want me to love you, you can’t do this. I know you’re a good man really. It’s absolutely crucial to me that you and Megan get on, and you don’t want to get off on the wrong foot with her, do you?’

‘Suppose not,’ Claudio mumbles. I almost want to laugh at the absurdity of the words I’m saying. Absolutely crucial that he and Megan get on? Absolutely crucial that I fucking
kill
him before he ever sullies the air that she breathes, more like.

I don’t usually swear, but knowing that he’s going to make me destroy every single photograph of Richard makes me feel like screaming every obscenity I’ve ever heard.

‘She’s a sweet girl. Very pretty. Looks just like her mother,’ he says, a tone of pride in his voice that makes me want to rip out his throat. He picks up one of the ten by eight prints, Megan’s school portrait from last year, and examines it carefully.

‘So can I keep them? All of them? She’ll be just as upset if the photos of her dad are gone . . .’

I’m pushing my luck, I know. He throws the photo down onto the bed.

‘No.
Those
have to go. Even if Megan’s in them too. Do it.’

Tears well in my eyes. ‘I can’t.’

Claudio stands up. ‘You will.’

I shake my head.

‘If you don’t, then I’m going to dump all the albums, and every single photo in the flat. It’s your choice. OK? And then . . .’

I drop my head, not waiting to hear what the ‘then’ is. I’m trying to think how many of those photos are digital, and in folders on my computer, but when I look up again, I realise that I ought instead to have been thinking about Claudio, his ever-decreasing patience with me, and I see what the ‘then’ was. Because he is standing there, and from somewhere he has produced the missing belt from my towelling dressing gown, which he has wrapped around his hands and pulled taut. And he is bringing it closer to my throat . . .

I squeal in terror and back away as far as I can.

‘You need to start meeting me halfway, Jo. I’ve got the impression lately that you don’t take me seriously,’ he says, his face now so close to mine that I can see the broken veins around his nose and his bloodshot eyes. ‘That’s a mistake, Jo. One thing you’ll learn about me is that I’m utterly loyal to my loved ones. I will be the best thing that ever happened to you. But you have to take me seriously, because if you don’t, I think you’ll find yourself in very deep trouble. After all—’

He presses the belt hard against my throat, pushing my head back against the headboard, confirming what I already suspected.

‘Let’s not forget that I’m a man with nothing left to lose.’

Under Claudio’s watchful eye I rip up every single photograph with Richard in it into four pieces. Once, twice. Rip, rip. Quartered and destroyed. Holidays, birthdays, Christmases, parties, dinners.

All those memories.

My photo albums are desecrated and my heart is broken. But I don’t cry, and I don’t say another word.

Finally, when it’s done, Claudio scoops all the bits back into the Bag for Life. ‘Well done, darling,’ he says softly. ‘That’s a big step forward. It can’t have been easy, but you know it’s for the best. Later today you’re going to call your daughter and tell her that you miss her, and you’re fine, and you hope she’s having a wonderful time. Just so that she doesn’t worry about not having heard from you. She’s left you a couple of voicemails on your phone, so I think it’s important that you get back to her.’

He leaves, locking and bolting the door behind him. I sink back on the pillows, reeling.

They’re only photos
, I repeat inside my head. Only photos. I’m still alive. Later I will hear Megan’s voice, and probably Richard’s too. I have to find some way to communicate that I need help.

The trouble is, I no longer have any trouble believing absolutely that Claudio will kill me if I don’t do what he wants me to.

And I can’t do what he wants me to.

I am fucked. Deeply, seriously
fucked
.

Chapter Thirty
Day 4

I
can’t believe how devastated I am about the photographs. In my mind I see each and every torn-up scrap, trying to piece them back together and take a mental screenshot before the memories are gone forever—although it feels as though they’re already gone. It must be like having Alzheimer’s, that slow, jagged forgetting, then mixed-up flashes of incorrect remembering. Already I’m getting it confused in my head—that one of Megan blowing out the candles on her
birthday
: was that her third birthday, with Richard standing behind her in his Manic Street Preachers t-shirt, or was that from her fourth?

I think he has broken
me
, not just my heart. I feel broken.

The only thing I can think to do is to read my diary again. It’s the closest thing I have to being able to talk to friends and connect with family, to remind myself that as much as I had a past, I have to believe I have a future.

Lester helps, too. He wriggles out from under the bed, where he hid when he sensed all the tension in the room, and curls up on my stomach. He is a blessing.

I force myself to count my other blessings: I have a daughter who needs me and a mum who loves me, even if I hardly ever see her. I have an ex-husband who still cares about me, and I have known love. I am healthy. I have friends.

I am fortunate. I am fortunate. I am fortunate.

1st January 1987

I thought Mum would pick up the telephone immediately. I visualised her, drink in hand, the gas fire spitting on all three bars, Big Ben and fireworks on the television. But it rang for a long time before there was an answer. I congratulated myself on my restraint at allowing more than four rings, when John was waiting for me—ME!—in the bar. I just hoped Mum wouldn’t start rambling on and on about previous New Year’s Eves with Dad. John might get bored of waiting and go back to the party—that would be a disaster.

‘Come on, come on,’ I muttered into the receiver, my breath hot and wet against the cold mouthpiece. Perhaps Mum had been invited round to one of the neighbours’ houses. But eventually she picked up, and I pushed in my ten pence.

‘Hello?’ She sounded out of breath.

‘Happy New Year, Mum!’

‘Oh! Jo—Happy New Year, darling. Are you having a nice time?’

‘Lovely thanks, I—’

But Mum wasn’t listening. ‘I’ll see you in the morning, sweetheart, all right? Give me a ring and I’ll come and pick you up, if
Mr Barrington-Brow
n can’t give you a lift home. Night night!’

And she was gone! I gaped at the receiver in surprise. Mum usually had to be prised off the telephone—she’d talk for hours given half a chance. Something seemed odd. Could she have had company? She’s never mentioned a boyfriend. But, now that I think of it, Mum had been a bit brighter of late, and she’d started to spray perfume behind her ears before going out like she used to in the old days when Dad was still alive.

I decided I’d ask her soon (although I’m writing this a week later, and I still haven’t! I don’t know why it’s so hard, but it is. It’s impossible to imagine another man sitting at the head of the table; another man in Dad’s bed—but I want Mum to be happy). No need to worry about it at that moment; I needed to go to the loo, comb my hair, get more lipstick on, and then—John! What a perfect way to start a new year. My mind raced ahead: I was meant to be staying the night with Donna anyway, so that would mean I’d get a lift there with all the Barrington-Browns, and maybe John would whisper for me to sneak out at night and over to his bedroom in the stable block, and we could listen to records and cuddle until the sun came up . . . What if he hated my big breasts, though? What if he found them repulsive, with their large pale nipples, and my plump tummy underneath? No—there was no way he could ever see my boobs; I’d only risk taking my clothes off if it was pitch, pitch dark. Maybe I’d have the op first, before I let him anywhere near me. But I’d have to explain why I was in hospital if I was going out with him . . . and, either way, he’d expect to see everything, surely. Gill and he had gone all the way, Donna told me they had. She’d apparently heard them at it, by listening underneath John’s window one night. I really wish she hadn’t told me that.

At that point I almost lost my nerve completely and ran away, thinking I could just lurk at the back of the function room waiting for Donna and Gareth to stop snogging. I couldn’t go through with this. John was way out of my league. How could I go out with someone that experienced when I hadn’t even kissed a boy properly before? I pushed my way through the heavy fire doors and back out into the freezing car park, moving from one leg to the other, taking one step back towards John in the hotel bar and then another one forward towards the safety of the heat and noise and crush of people in the function room.

This might be your only chance, said a voice in my head. If you don’t go now, you might always regret it. Dad would want you to go. Go. Go now.

I went—as, deep down, I always knew I would.

Thirty seconds later, I was in a warm, quiet, badly decorated bar with paintings of hunting scenes around the walls and fake tapestry benches and chairs. There was a strong smell of furniture polish and cigarette ash, which emphasised the fact that John and I were the only people in there, apart from a tired, overweight barman with great puffy bags under his eyes. The hotel’s residents had seemingly vanished off to bed at the last chime of midnight.

All I could focus on were John’s amber eyes, boring into me. When he handed me the rum and black I’d asked for (no ice, because I was still freezing), our fingers brushed. His felt hot. His skin was dark like Donna’s mother’s and his hair was black and shiny—he and Donna look so different, not like brother and sister at all. The backs of his hands and his wrists were covered with downy soft black hairs too, and I wanted to stroke them gently with one finger, like you stroke a kitten.

I didn’t know what to say to him.

‘Are you upset about Gill?’ I blurted eventually, thinking I’d prefer to get it over with, if all he wanted was a shoulder to cry on. I waited for a look of grief to pass over his features, but he merely shrugged.

‘Not really. To be honest, I’d been thinking of chucking her for a while. She was, you know, kind of nagging me a lot.’

She was mad, I thought. Imagine having John as your boyfriend, and not appreciating him? I just about managed not to say ‘I wouldn’t nag you.’

‘Nice girl and everything,’ he added hastily. I thought about Gill, with her haughty face and customised pencil-skirts, and decided that ‘nice’ wasn’t the word I’d have used. ‘Stuck-up’ was more like it. Then I started fretting that John only went for that sort.

‘Yes, she seems very nice,’ I said obediently.

John laughed into his beer, his teeth clashing on the edge of the glass. I was pleased to notice that despite what Donna had said, his teeth didn’t look remotely mossy.

‘Mind you, she had a right strop with me just now. Threw a pint glass against the wall. I’m surprised you didn’t hear her screaming
at me.’

What did you do to her, I wanted to ask, that she would do that? But I also sort of didn’t really want to know. I didn’t know what to say. I changed the subject instead.

‘So—Donna and Gareth? Do you reckon it’ll last?’

John laughed again. He’s got quite an evil sort of laugh. ‘Gareth? Nah. He’s never had a relationship for longer than a month.’

I saved this nugget of information up to tell Donna. Poor Don.

‘She really likes him.’

‘Shall I tell you something?’ John said, leaning in close to me. At first I thought he was drunk and slipping and instinctively reached out my hands to push him upright again. The scent and proximity of him was so heady; he had a beautiful, mellow, musky smell. Then I realised that he was actually leaning his head on my shoulder, intentionally!!

‘What?’

‘I really like you.’ He looked up at me playfully, and I felt heat sweep through my cold body, from feet to head and back again.

He really likes me, he really likes me, he really likes me, I couldn’t believe it . . . ! I couldn’t prevent a huge grin from pushing my cheeks into apples, and had to put my hand over my mouth to hide my
Dracula
fangs. It was the best moment of my life.

‘Do you?’ was all I could manage. I dared to meet his gaze back again. He is, without doubt, the most gorgeous person I’ve ever seen; better looking than David Essex or Harrison Ford or anyone. I could feel the side of his arm leaning against my bare one, and it felt hard and sinewy and male, more man than boy.

He glanced from side to side, as if he was about to tell me a dark secret, then very slowly moved his face towards mine, so near that I could see a cluster of blackheads around the creases of his nose and between his eyebrows, and the faint greasy sheen of his nose. For some reason the fact that he wasn’t completely perfect endeared him to me even more. Then he kissed me, so softly, on the lips. I just sort of froze, my drink clutched so tightly in my hand that it might have shattered if I hadn’t forced myself to put it back on the table.

‘Do you mind me doing that?’ John asked, a smile curving his mouth and in his eyes.

I shook my head, hardly daring to look at him. I was half-
expecting
him to recoil with horror at any moment and cry ‘Oh my god, it’s you—Jo! What a nightmare—I thought you were Sandra/Tracy/Helen/Lisa . . . .’ But instead he brought his hand up to the side of my face and cupped my cheek with it. Then his other hand, which was chilled and damp from holding his pint, came up to my other cheek, and I swear I will never forget the strangeness of one hot and one cold palm against my skin. I closed my eyes as he kissed me again, more firmly this time, holding his lips against mine, licking them gently until it seemed the most natural thing in the world for me to part them slightly, allowing that warm tongue to slip and flutter inside, joining mine
with a shock which felt electric in its intensity
. His arms slid round me and in a moment we were pressed together, my boobs against his chest. He moaned faintly and pushed me against the tall back of the bench. It was uncomfortable, but I couldn’t have cared less.

‘Jo, you are so lovely . . . .’

I can’t believe what I said then. I just can’t believe it. I said: ‘I’m a dirty little cow.’ It took us both aback. I went bright red and John’s eyebrows shot up almost to his hairline.

Damn, damn, why did I say that? I thought I’d ruined everything.

But he was so kind. He said, ‘No you aren’t. Or if you are, you’re a lovely dirty little cow . . .’

‘You were snogging Gill less than two hours ago,’ I said. I didn’t want to sound accusatory, but it sort of came out that way.

‘She was kissing me, as it happens. But like I said, it’s over now. I was wondering—well—would you like to come ice-skating with me sometime?’

‘Yes. Please.’ I immediately wondered what I could wear to go ice-skating. Perhaps black leggings with my long purple jumper? That came down almost to my knees; that would do . . . .

Then John kissed me again and for once in my life the perennial debate about what to wear seemed to fade into insignificance.