The Venus Trap (24 page)

He left the chair behind!

Maybe this is where my luck changes!

Chapter Thirty-Five
Day 5

I
pretend to be asleep when Claudio brings in my
breakfast. I l
isten to him listening to me, trying to establish whether I’m really asleep or not. His presence in my room feels like a giant
vampire
bat, hovering over me with its massive rubbery wings outstretched, and I have to make a huge effort not to shudder. But I am even more excited this morning, so excited I can barely breathe.
Claudio’s
slipped up. He still hasn’t spotted that he left the chair in here. I got up in the night and threw some clothes over it in the hope of disguising it, or at least making it less
obvious
that it’s s
till here.

To my joy, when he leaves, he doesn’t just leave the room,
but the
flat. ‘I’m just popping out to the chemist,’ he says as he closes the door behind him. ‘I’ve got an awful headache and you finished the Nurofen.’ I hear the locks clunking and the bolt shooting. His voice sounds strained and unhappy.

As soon as I hear the front door close and lock, I leap out of bed and switch on the light.

I dash over to my chest of drawers and lean against it, trying with all my strength to push it along the wall until it is positioned directly beneath the loft hatch. But it’s too heavy. I can’t move it. I drag out the bottom drawer, the biggest one, and try again. It budges a couple of inches, sticking reluctantly on the carpet. This won’t do.

I take out the third drawer and throw it on top of the other one, then the top drawer, so I can reach my arm inside and push as well as pulling. It works! The chest begins to judder reluctantly across the carpet. I’m sweating buckets by the time I manage to manoeuvre it underneath the hatch.

Then I lift the chair up and plonk it on the chest’s smooth dark oak top, unable to suppress the thought that my mum would kill me if I got it all scratched up. It’s an antique, this chest; it belonged to my granny.

I feel my grandmother cheering me on from some other world as I climb gingerly up the handy ladder made by the drawers’ casings until the chair and I are both perched awkwardly on top, like two large and very out-of-place ornaments. Now comes the
hard part.

I grasp the flimsy little chair and put one knee on each side of the frame—no way can I put my feet on its wicker seat: they’d go straight through. The wicker is already fraying at the edges—I’m amazed that it coped with Claudio’s big arse on it last night.
Gingerly
, I switch from knees to feet until I’m balancing on the chair seat’s frame. Standing like that reminds me briefly of those awful footpad toilets you get in parts of Europe, which you have to straddle to use.

I struggle to stop myself wobbling too much—fatigue, hunger, and adrenaline are making it difficult to keep my legs steady. But I’m now easily able to push aside the loft hatch. Cool musty air hits me, a welcome change in microclimate. I have to keep my rising excitement in check, as one wobble too far and I’ll fall off the chair, off the chest, and onto the floor. It’s a good seven-foot drop.

Very carefully, I finish pushing across the hatch and pull myself up into the loft, making sure I don’t kick over the chair in the process. It’s not too hard—the loft opening is at chest height from the chair, so I don’t need to employ too much upper body strength to get in.

It’s amazing to be in a different space without Claudio’s oppressive presence. I pull my legs up behind me, briefly tempted to frolic like a lamb in the yellow loft insulation even though I can’t stand up straight. If only this was one of those houses whose roof spaces all run into one another! I could merely pop across and down into someone else’s flat to raise the alarm. But this one is bricked up, and the floor isn’t boarded so I have to use the wooden struts of my bedroom ceiling as stepping stones to cross the sea o
f lagging.

Various items are marooned on top of the lagging—Megan’s car seat, a broken stereo and—there they are! hallelujah!—the things I’d hoped against hope to find: Richard’s old golf clubs. The removal men had mistakenly brought them to my flat even though my stuff had red stickers on it and Richard’s had yellow. I suspect that Megan may have switched some of the stickers, intentionally or otherwise, as I ended up with a few of Richard’s things and he mine. For some reason I had just bunged the golf-clubs in the loft—it had been a short-lived hobby of his some years earlier before he decided it was too middle-class for words and gave up, and we had both forgotten that I had them.

But then disaster strikes. I am so dizzy with euphoria that I miss my footing on the narrow wooden struts and stumble, dislodging the golf bag, which topples over, clubs sliding out of it and through the loft hatch, bouncing off the chest of drawers, knocking the chair off as they go. They all land on my bedroom floor, banging together like a drawerful of giant’s cutlery falling, and I rush over to
the hatch.

Lucky Claudio’s gone ou . . .—
Wait, what’s that noise?

I pause, thinking that it’s just my ears ringing from the clatter but no—to my horror, there really is a noise outside the door, the fumbling of a bunch of keys. Shit! Claudio either only pretended to go out, or I’ve been extremely unlucky and he forgot his wallet or something. I hear the key in the door and realise I only have a few precious seconds. I grip each side of the hatch and launch myself feet-first through it, using the chest of drawers like some kind of unyielding trampoline onto the floor. I’m fortunate I don’t break my leg, but by some miracle I’m unhurt, although I fall sideways as I hit the floor, and have to right myself, panting as the wind is knocked out of my lungs.

As the outside bolt on the bedroom door starts shooting open, I just about manage to lunge for one of the clubs, a putter, and shove it under my duvet out of sight, but I can’t do anything else to hide what I’ve been up to.

The door bursts open and he’s standing there looking flabbergasted, hurt, furious—and ill. He’s as white as a sheet. Perhaps that’s why he came back.

‘What’s all this? What are you doing?’ he asks in a dangerously calm voice. The handcuffs are dangling from his right hand—he must keep them right outside my bedroom door for easy access.

‘Trying to escape, of course. What do you think I’m
bloody doing?’

Exhaustion and disappointment make me sarcastic, despite my terror. ‘This has gone far enough, Claudio: you have to let me go, now. Right now. My daughter is only seven. She and her dad will be back tomorrow. Everyone will be worried. You’ll be in terrible trouble with the police. My friends will have called the police, you know. There’ll be a trial, and you’ll get sent to prison. Is that what you really want? Let me go now, this is enough. Enough. Let m
e go!’

My voice is rising with rapidly accelerating hysteria and for the first time in days the sobs come. ‘LET ME GO, LET ME GO! CLAUDIO, PLEASE LET ME GO!’ I launch myself at him, swinging punches and slaps, trying to kick and hurt and kill him. I swear I would have killed him if I’d had a knife in my hand. I go to grab one of the golf clubs but he disarms me as if the heavy club is nothing sturdier than a drinking straw. I notice, though, that the effort makes sweat pop out on his forehead and he’s a nasty greenish colour.

He laughs meanly. ‘Nice try, Jo. They aren’t back tomorrow. You already told me that they were on holiday for ten days. There’s another four to go. One day left for you to tell me you love me. We have
plenty
of time—well,
I
do. Yours is running out, and fast.’

I no longer care about my own safety, and, in fact, deep down I realise that this is what he’s been waiting for: a reaction. We got sucked into this vortex in the spur of the moment and he’s just been waiting for me to make a move of some kind. He must know that I could never love him now. His face even shows a flicker of relief as he fends off my flailing attack.

He grabs my wrists, pushing me away so that my kicks don’t reach him either, and easily throws me on my back on the bed while he deftly handcuffs me to the bedpost. Then he gathers up the spilled golf clubs, wincing with pain each time he bends down, takes them out of the room with the chair so I can’t get back into the loft again. He comes back in, re-locks the door, drops the keys deep into his jeans pocket, and just stands over me, glaring at me. The expression on his face is like no other I’ve ever seen, far worse than when I went for him with the saucepan. I can’t read it, but now I am beyond scared. This is it, then. This time I’m definitely going to be raped and possibly killed. My instincts are to fight—but hey, when have my instincts ever done me any favours? Besides, if you’re going to be raped, isn’t it meant to be better to be passive and still and let them get it over with as soon as possible? My only hope is that he won’t be able to get an erection again, like last time.

I wait to feel his weight on top of me, and him fumbling with my clothes—but instead he turns even whiter and visibly wobbles, clutching his head. Hope and joy gush in dual torrents into my chest, flooding my veins and arteries like an amphetamine. He really is ill.

I sit up. ‘Are you OK, Claudio?’

‘Shut up,’ he says, grimacing with pain. It must be a migraine or something—excellent. He half-lies, half-flops down next to me, pulling me onto my side, so that we are facing one another. His breath stinks. I feel the hidden golf club knock against my ankle and discreetly work it further down the bed, away from Claudio’s feet.

‘I have something to say to you,’ he begins, his eyes closed. ‘Just let me lie here for a minute.’

Chapter Thirty-Six
Day 5

C
laudio lies down very close—too close—to me. For a
few minutes
he’s completely still and I long to lunge for the golf club, but I can’t, not while I’m handcuffed to the bedpost. I need him to fall asleep. Then he rolls over and grips my already-restrained wrist.

‘Tell me you love me,’ he says, his eyes screwed up in pain. ‘Tell me you want to stay here with me.’

I can’t believe it, but even through the misery in his voice he actually sounds faintly hopeful, as if he thinks I might seriously ponder the question and then say, Yes, on balance, Claudio, I’d absolutely flaming well love to stay here locked in my flat for the rest of my life, with you flattening me on my fetid horrible rumpled bed, breathing your fetid horrible rumpled breath into my face . . . How could I not love such a charmer?
You stupid fetid bastard
.

‘I do love you, Claudio, I swear, I do, and it will grow and grow and we could move in together and get old together and cultivate roses or keep chickens or whatever you like. I mean it! But you have to see that this is not helping. Like you said, we need a clean slate. Let me help you—you’re ill. We have to be nice to each other. Please let go of my wrist. You’re hurting me. If you want us to go out with each other, you have to back right off now. I mean it.’

As if! He could back off as far as the moon and he’d still never be in with a chance. But Claudio obediently lets go of my still-handcuffed wrist. I don’t think he believes me, though.

I turn back to face him. Up until now, I’ve kind of felt as though I’ve been moving underwater in the twilight of this flat; nothing has seemed real. But now it is brought into sharp focus. I’ve broken the surface and I’m wide awake, teetering on the edge of either disaster or redemption. For the first time, I feel almost in control.

‘Let me get you a cold cloth to put on your forehead. Then you can tell me what you want to tell me.’

Miraculously he lets go, takes out the bunch of keys, and unlocks my handcuffs. I think about grabbing them and whacking him round the head with them, but he locks them onto one of his belt loops. I sit up, rubbing my wrist and wondering what he suddenly needs to tell me, after all these days. I hope it isn’t a confession that there are several other women underneath his floorboards back in his flat.

‘I don’t want you to leave me,’ he says again. ‘Everyone leaves me.’ He has rolled onto his back and is lying with his forearms folded across his forehead, trying to press the pain away. His socked feet are dangerously close to the golf club. They smell as bad as his breath.

‘Clean slate,’ he mumbles. ‘I’ve never told anyone this, Jo, never, but I can tell you because we have no secrets, do we? I know all yours. And when you know mine, you will be flattered that I confided in you, and then you won’t be able to leave me, ever.’

His voice hardens, even through his evident pain. Scared of what I’m about to learn, I get off the bed and go into the bathroom. Taking a facecloth off the towel rail, I run it under the cold tap, wring it out, and take it back in to him, all the time frantically calculating whether I can make a grab for the golf club now and hit him before he notices. But it’s under the duvet, and even with his headache I’m pretty sure he’ll go for me if I make any sudden moves.

‘You look . . . dirty,’ he mumbles, taking in my grimy sweat-stained Cath Kidston short pyjamas and matted hair.

‘I am. I haven’t had a shower for three days. I stink. It reeks
in here.’

He ignores this—since it clearly doesn’t mean anything to him. I’m reminded again, with a despairing lurch, about his lack of sense of smell. All my efforts have been for nothing. Suddenly I am desperate, absolutely desperate for the sensation of clean water on my filthy, sweaty body.

He groans. ‘I need Co-codamol. Is there any left in here?’

‘No. You know there isn’t. You took out all my painkillers. You’d better go out and get some.’

‘You think I’m leaving you alone now, after what you just did? No way. Talk to me, Jo? My mother used to talk to me when I was ill.’ His voice sounds blurred and unsteady and I know this is my best chance. It’s the first time he’s voluntarily mentioned his mum, too, so he must be feeling vulnerable.

‘Richard used to talk to me when I was ill, too. And to get me to sleep at nights. Stories, memories. I do it for my daughter too.’

‘Don’t talk to me about him. I’m sick of hearing about him. Do it for me. Please? What do you remember?’

Slowly I start to feel powerful, finally beginning to gather up a skirt of control. I start thinking about my unfinished diary, what happened next, what has remained unwritten and unspoken for almost twenty-five years. The last entry I read—the last one in the notebook—was my second trip ice-skating with John, and that had finished abruptly, nothing but blank pages following. I had obviously changed my mind about wanting to write it all down. Or I simply hadn’t been able to. I’ve never even talked to Richard about it.

‘I remember the last time I saw John,’ I say, slowly.

He knows immediately what I am talking about. ‘At the ice rink. Yes. I was there too.’

For a moment, I feel as though I’m back on that rink again, sliding out of control. I freeze.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I was there that day.’

This throws me so much I almost jump off the bed and run back into the bathroom. I can’t process it. He must have been the nameless friend that John said hi to. I don’t remember him
being there.

I need to maintain composure at all costs, though, so I make a colossal effort to keep my voice steady and low, forcing myself back to that day. Even just in my memory, John’s presence soothes and encourages me. I miss him so much.

‘I couldn’t write about it—I didn’t want to, because I knew every time I read it back it would rip my heart open again—but I’m going to try to remember. I remember us getting there, John reversing the Lancia into a tight space in the car park . . . His arm was draped over the back of my seat as he twisted around to steer his way in. I can remember his face, the olive skin and the black
eyelashes
. He was frowning with concentration . . . I told him I loved him.’

Claudio frowns too, but I’m not going to spare him the details.

‘John said, “I love you too, Sweetlips,” and he kissed me. He always called me Sweetlips—soppy I know, but I loved it. I breathed in the smell of him; half man, half boy, sweet sweat and cheap aftershave. I felt perfect happiness in that moment. It was the summer holidays, I was going ice-skating with my gorgeous boyfriend, exams were over, and Swing Out Sister was playing on the car radio.

‘ “Come on, then,” he said, “Let’s go and tear up that ice rink.” ’

I glance at Claudio and he’s scowling. I can tell he doesn’t like hearing this any more than he likes hearing about Richard but he still thinks he needs to. Hopefully he’s feeling too ill to be able to concentrate. I make my voice stay low and soothing, willing him
to relax
and let it become white noise, a backdrop to oblivion.

‘That second visit was much easier, technically. I got up enough confidence to really work my body into a rhythm and after only three circuits I let go of John’s hand. I could swing my arms and it widened my strides. When I felt really brave, I moved in towards the faster-flowing inside of the circles of skaters. I was panting and out of breath, beaming and waving at John, who caught up with me, laughing at my enthusiasm. He dodged around an unsteady middle-aged couple in matching sweaters. I remember them because he nudged me and pointed and said, “That’ll be us in a few years.”

‘ “Good,” I said. I reached out to take his hand again. “I can’t wait. In fact, I might even start knitting now. That way, our jumpers might be finished in about twenty years’ time.”

‘We skated for ages—forty minutes or so—but the rink had filled up and we had to go slower. I spotted a few people I recognised—a couple of girls from the Fifth Form, and John waved at a mate of his as he whizzed past us.’

‘That was me,’ Claudio mumbles.

‘It might have been,’ I say, reluctantly. ‘I don’t remember.’

‘Go on.’

‘John asked if I’d had enough, because I was skating more and more slowly. My feet were hurting and it felt like someone was clutching my thighs. “Let’s go and have a hot chocolate,” he said, squeezing my hand. “Once more round the block first?”

‘I remember sighing—I’d like to have come off the ice then, that minute, could already see myself clumping back to get my shoes, leaning on John for support, trying to take the weight off my blisters—but one more circuit wouldn’t hurt, not if John wanted to. That’s what I thought. I told him to go on ahead and I’d meet him by the exit. He called me a lightweight and swung me around with both hands round my waist. “See you in a minute,” he said as he skated off, calling back over his shoulder, already picking up speed.

‘Those were the last words he ever said to me. I was so busy trying to keep his red sweatshirt in sight for as long as possible that I almost got swept off my feet by three teenagers who raced past me. I wobbled and lunged for the bar at the side of the rink, and
when I looked
up again, John was out of sight.’

I grit my teeth with the effort of keeping my voice steady.

‘I waited for him, on the ice, by the exit.’

I force myself to stroke the back of Claudio’s hand, gently, like a lover would. His body is definitely starting to sink very slowly into the mattress. We are suspended in time like insects in amber. I have been inching backwards away from him across the mattress as far as I can without him noticing.

‘I waited for ages. At first I thought he was playing a trick on me. Maybe even that he’d gone without me, or at least pretended to. I was getting cold, and I had cramp in one foot. I stared so hard at all the people skating towards me that my eyes went funny. I was pissed off. He’d said he was only going round one more time. But I still couldn’t see him.’

It’s all coming back to me, as though it happened last month. Turns out I didn’t need to write it in my diary. It’s been saved in a file in my head for all these years.

‘There was some sort of commotion going on at the other end of the rink, but I didn’t notice for quite a while, because I was too busy looking the other way, looking out for John. Then I remember the face of this woman, skating past. She looked white, and shocked. She was saying to her friend, “That poor chap! Hope he’ll be all right. He came down with such a bang, didn’t he?”

‘It was then that I started to get worried. I turned round and saw that an area at the other end of the rink had been cordoned off. I was just in time to see someone being stretchered off the ice and outside the windows I could see the blue flashing lights of an ambulance. “Oh no,” I thought, “what if he’s had an accident? Lucky the hospital’s so nearby.” I didn’t know what to do at first; I was sort of dithering about whether to skate down there, against the tide of everyone coming towards me—it didn’t occur to me to go round anti-clockwise—or to take off my skates and run down the side in my socks. After all, I didn’t even know that it was him. People have accidents on ice rinks all the time. They should issue helmets with the skates, I really think they should. I had visions of me running out after the ambulance, and then seeing John’s face pressed up against the ice rink window from the inside, laughing at me. He was always trying to wind me up. I wouldn’t have put it past him.

‘Eventually I decided I had to get off the ice. I sat down and pulled off my skates, which took ages without John to help me. It was like chipping my feet out of breeze blocks and I just left the skates there, on the bench at the side of the rink—there was far too much of a queue for shoes. I remember thinking, I’ll never get my shoes back, but not caring. I didn’t exactly run, but I sort of hurried in the direction I’d seen the stretcher come off. There was a double door there, which said “Private”, but I pushed it open and went in. It led into a concrete corridor, which was empty, apart from two girls who obviously worked there. They were about my age and they were both crying, which I thought was a bit odd—it’s not unusual to see one girl crying and her friend comforting her, but you don’t often see two, unless they’re at a funeral or something.’

I stop for a moment, to make sure I can maintain my even tone of voice.

Claudio’s eyes are two slits in his grey face under the facecloth on his head, but he’s blinking quite a lot. He looks like a little boy again, struggling to stay awake.
He’s a kidnapping murdering psychopath
, I remind myself, just in case I start feeling even remotely sorry for him. There’s a welcome draught coming from the open loft hatch and it revives me. I take a deep breath.

‘I asked the two girls if they were OK, and they wiped their faces with the backs of their hands. One of them said, “You shouldn’t be in here,” and I said, “I’ve lost my boyfriend. He told me to wait for him while he went round one more time, but that was ages ago.” The girls looked at each other, and something about their faces made my heart sink. They were so young, probably a bit younger than me—in their first jobs, I expect. One was quite Goth-looking; pink eye shadow, dyed black hair, too much eyeliner. They were both wearing some sort of uniform but the Goth one had pink and black stripy tights and Doc Martens on underneath.

‘ “What did he look like?” said the Goth one, and I thought, No, what
does
he look like?
Does
. Not
did
. Suddenly I was having trouble getting words out, even though I couldn’t believe anything really bad could have happened. They’re just crying because their boyfriends have dumped them, I thought. “He’s tall. Black hair. Really good-looking. Nineteen. His name’s John. He’s wearing a red sweatshirt and jeans.” And then—this was the worst bit—they both just burst out sobbing again.

‘ “You need to come with us,” the Goth one said. Her friend was crying too much to speak. I wasn’t crying, although I can remember my heart was beating really fast and I felt sick. I asked where John was, and if he was the one I’d seen being stretchered off the ice, and she said yes, she thought it might have been him. It was sort of echoey in that corridor, and my feet were getting really cold in my socks, even though they were my thickest woolly ones. I wanted a cup of tea. I wanted John. I wanted my dad.