The Venus Trap (3 page)

‘Oh, right—yes,’ I said, even though it was the last thing I wanted to do. I hardly ever even talked about John to Donna, his sister and my best friend, so I certainly didn’t want to do so with some dodgy mate of his that I’d never even liked. I dictated my mobile phone number, but substituted the final 8 for a 3.

‘So, maybe see you around,’ I said, getting up and adding another fiver to the ten-pound note I’d left for Gerald earlier. I put both notes on the little silver tray containing the bill, which the waitress had discreetly slid onto the table as Claudio and I were talking.

‘Definitely!’ Claudio beamed, practically panting.

It was probably just my crushed ego from Gerald’s very public rejection, but I felt oddly touched—if puzzled—that he, Claudio, had been so pleased to see me.

‘And thanks for, you know, rescuing me just then,’ I added. ‘I didn’t know what to do with myself when that awful man shouted at me, so you came over at just the right time.’

‘Well, I would have talked to you anyway. To tell you the truth I was glad to see him go.’

Good grief, he fancies me
, I thought, belatedly. I couldn’t wait to tell Donna. I wondered if she’d even remember him.

‘Bye, then, Claudio,’ I said awkwardly, dying now to leave. The humiliation of Gerald’s words kept repeating on me like a spicy meal, bathing me in fresh waves of embarrassment every time I thought about it. Claudio had at least taken my mind off it for a few minutes.

I am forty-three years old, I thought as I walked back to my car. How naïve was I to even think that I might meet someone nice, normal, and attractive? There were an awful lot of nutters out there . . .

I
lie motionless in the bath for a long time, until my fingers prune and the water cools and stills around me.

‘Jo? Are you all right in there?’

‘Yeah,’ I answer, like a morose teenager. ‘Don’t come in.’

‘I’m just going to pop out for a while. Will you be OK?’

OK? No of course I won’t
. But I’m so glad to hear he’s going out.

‘I won’t be long. See you in a bit.’

I hear him shut my bedroom door, the heavy clunk of the bolt being pulled across, then the sound of the flat’s front door closing. I wait a couple of minutes then haul myself out of the bath, the effort making my head pound afresh. At least my stomach seems to have settled—I’m starting to get hungry. Surely Claudio can’t be intending to keep me prisoner in my own bedroom? Maybe I should offer to cook us dinner or something. He seems to be under the illusion that this is some sort of bonding opportunity, a chance for me to reconsider my rash decision not to continue our burgeoning relationship. To think I’d thought that
Gerald
was the mad one!

I make a decision, the first really clear thought I’ve managed: I will try everything I can to forge a relationship with Claudio. I will attempt to figure out where this has all come from, why he could ever in a million years think it’s a good idea.

As long as I don’t have to have sex with him.

Please God, don’t make me have to have sex with him.

Chapter Four
Day 1

O
nce I’ve dried off and listened at the bathroom door to make sure Claudio isn’t still lurking despite telling me he’s going out, I head back into the artificial light of my bedroom, rubbing my hair with another smaller towel.

I am brought up short by the utter mess he’s left it in. It looks like I’ve been burgled—every drawer of my chest of drawers and bedside tables has been emptied out onto the floor to one side of the room, and my walk-in closet on the other side is ankle deep in not only clothes and shoes, bags and scarves, but also the boxes of stuff I store in there. All my bags have been searched and discarded and it looks as though every garment I own with pockets has been thoroughly rummaged through.

I feel utterly violated. The thought of him rifling through my underwear makes bile rise in my throat again and tears rush back into my swollen eyes. How fucking dare he!

I rush over to the dressing gown that still hangs on the back of the door, hope briefly flaring, only to be instantly dashed when I see that the cord is missing. As are all my belts, all my shoelaces, a large stone heart ornament that Sean gave me, my tennis racquet, my three bottles of perfume, GhD hair straighteners, most of my necklaces—all the leather beaded lariats—my only pair of stilettos, and of course my laptop.

For a moment it feels hopeless. I’m stuck here, with no contact with the outside world, and nothing with which to defend myself. I’m going to have to accept it, at least for the time being.

Then I think, no
way
am I going to lie back and let him intrude unwelcome into my life like this. No way can he go through my stuff, lock me in, keep me here. I will have to work out a way to be clever about it, to protect myself but lull him into a false sense of security . . . although I can’t think how, not yet. But I have to.

I rush to the window and tear at the sheets of plywood with my fingernails, trying to prise them off, but there isn’t a loose millimetre. Same in the bathroom. He’s put about four times as many screws into it as are needed, and I have nothing to lever them off with. If only I could get hold of a knife. I don’t know what I’d do first—try to free the window, or sink it into his fleshy belly. Stumbling back into my bedroom, I hammer with my fists on the wood but all it yields are dull muted thuds that nobody would hear. I scream and yell and sob and bang until I’m drenched in sweat again and my head is pounding afresh, but it’s futile.

I sink back on the bed, panting, and look around me. It’ll take hours to put this room straight. At least he’s left the TV and radio. It will give me something to do, I suppose. I’ve been meaning to have a good clear-out for ages . . . not that I would ever have anticipated doing so under these circumstances.

A faded, scruffy A4 exercise book on the floor under my sweatpants catches my eye. I dress quickly in clean knickers, the sweatpants, and a bra and t-shirt, then pick up the book, one of my ancient diaries. I haven’t set eyes on it for years and years—the contents of the box it was in have been lugged around from place to place since I was a teenager. Funny how I’ve never felt the urge to re-read my old diaries, at least not the ones from when I was sixteen. The year my life got turned upside down—the first time.

I open the book at random and read a few lines, in my tiny but careful round teenaged handwriting:

If I can’t even get my own way over the stupid dress—even though Dad bought it for me, it doesn’t mean that I like it—then I might as well give up on asking for anything more ambitious, like security, or stability. That’s what Dad was to us, and now he’s gone, we’re left
floating untethered across a vast sea of doubt and grief.

Does that sound pretentious? I think it would be good in a poem.

I’m going to underline it so I don’t forget.

The entry is dated December 1986. Dad would have been dead for four months. I shudder at the memory of that year, my
annus horribilis
. Not that it seemed to stop me writing pretentious nonsense like ‘
floating untethered across a vast sea of doubt and grief
’, mind you. I think I did actually end up using that in a poem somewhere. It rings a bell.

I hear the front door open again. My heart sinks and my pulse accelerates, making me feel more queasy. I close the diary and slide it under my pillow, then try to decide where to put myself. My bedroom is large—sixteen feet by fifteen feet, one of the reasons I rented this flat—so at least I will have a few seconds’ grace after he opens the door. I try to calm myself down, but can’t seem to quell the sudden violent shaking of my hands and legs. I sit down on the floor, feeling like a beggar child scavenging on top of a rubbish heap in India, adrift and vulnerable, except that I’m surrounded by my own possessions instead of by rubbish. It’s only Claudio, I tell myself. You know him. You’ve met his mum. He says he’s not going to be violent, if I’m not.

He unbolts the door and comes in, unsmiling. Arms folded, he sweeps a glare around the room, checking that nothing untoward has occurred in his absence. I follow his gaze from the still-secure window, to the mess on the floor, to my bed and—
oh
shit!

A small corner of the diary is sticking out of the side of the pillow. I close my eyes.
Please don’t see it. Please don’t see it.

He sees it and pounces.

‘What do we have here, then?’ He holds it up and flicks through the pages, a mean smile curling at the corners of his mouth.

I try to affect nonchalance. ‘It’s nothing, Claudio. You’ve already seen it. It was lying on the floor with the rest of the stuff you dumped there.’

‘I think I’ll take that.’

I start up from the floor. ‘No! Claudio, it’s private! It’s my diary.’

‘I can see that.’

‘Why on earth would you be interested in it? It’s just a load of teenage ramblings. Please, don’t take it.’ I hear the desperation in my voice and try hard to quell it.

He opens the first page. ‘Nineteen eighty-six. Excellent—the year we first met. This will be fascinating.’

‘But it’s private!’ I repeat in a wail. I lunge for it but he snatches it out of reach above his head.

Then he puts it behind his back and restrains me with a heavy hand on my shoulder, keeping me at arm’s length. His fingers grip my collarbone painfully.

‘I don’t think you understand, Jo. This will give us a perfect talking point. I want to know everything about you, everything. We have so many years to catch up on, to find out where we went wrong—and we have all the time in the world to do it.’

I lower myself down onto the edge of the bed, his hand still on me. My flesh is crawling. ‘I’ll tell you, then. Let me tell you, anything you want to know. But please don’t read it—you don’t read someone else’s private diaries. Surely you know that?’

He considers this, thrusting out his fat lower lip and tipping his head from one side to the other. ‘Hmm. We’ll see. I tell you what—I won’t read all of it if you promise to talk to me. I’ve been out and bought enough groceries to last us at least a week, so we’ll have plenty of time to chat. I’ll take this for now, but I’m going to cook us a meal and we can chat over dinner, OK?’

Not OK.
His grip loosens very slightly, and I twist away, leaping up to try to make another grab for it. This time he actually laughs at me as he shoves me hard back onto the bed.

‘See you later, gorgeous. Shout if you need me. I’ll be in
the kitchen.’

And he’s gone, with my diary, the clunk of the bolt shooting home behind him. I curl up into a foetal position on the bed,
sobbing
again.

How could I possibly not have had more of an inkling that Claudio was a total nutter? My instincts are
screwed
. I just don’t listen to them, that’s my problem. I mean, I gave him the wrong mobile number in Pizza Express so perhaps deep down I did think he was dodgy. Desperation and loneliness clearly over-wrote that sense of caution—I’d been so bloody impressed that he managed to track me down, even after not getting the correct number for me, that I chose to forget my qualms and instead started to really look forward to going out with him, actually tingling with excitement at the thought of our date. What an idiot.

H
e first rang me a couple of weeks ago. I’d been in Megan’s room checking on her before I went to bed. Even if I’d been feeling sociable I’d have ignored it anyway—my night-time ritual of checking on Megan was sacrosanct. It was only about nine thirty but I’d been miserable and tired that day, ready for bed. My skin was shiny with moisturiser and I was already in my nightclothes.

I close my eyes and run through the routine in my head,
wishing
with all my heart that I could be doing it right now. Straighten Megan’s bunched-up duvet, retrieve Betty Bunny, who always slips—or gets pushed—down the slide. Richard bought Megan this high treehouse of a bed, reached by a vertical ladder and with a built-in slide for fast descent, but I don’t like it because I can’t reach Megan to kiss her when she’s sleeping, and it’s a nuisance to climb up to read her bedtime story. Megan loves it, because she feels like a princess in an ivory tower. Tuck Betty Bunny in next to Megan, who is often to be found thumbing her nose in her sleep, her tongue
poking
out and her fingers waggling weakly. I always wonder who she dreams about. She looks like her two-year-old self, and it never fails to make me smile. When she’s a teenager, and then an adult, will I still get these flashes of her as a baby?

Will I ever see her again?

That particular night, I remember peeling a warm, reluctant Lester off the foot of her bed, lifting him up under the armpits like a child, his back legs paddling crossly at the interruption to his nap, when I heard a deep baritone voice on the answerphone.

It wasn’t Richard’s voice—and besides, he only ever called my mobile. Curious, I continued into the living room, more
slowly, with Lester padding drowsily behind me, and pressed Play on the answerphone. Megan had forgotten to put away her little
trampoline
—it’s one of those exercise trampette things—and as the answerphone tape spooled backwards, I stepped onto the trampoline and bounced gently, the open sides of my dressing gown
flapping
like giant wings. Lester looked at me as if I’d gone mad.

The machine clicked, and I held my breath.

‘Er, hi, Jo, I hope this is the right number for you . . .’

I didn’t recognise the voice. Who was it?

‘. . . This is Claudio Cavelli. We met recently in Pizza Express—well, met
again
, I should say. You gave me your mobile number but I must have written it down wrong, because it didn’t work. I have been trying to find out your home number but you are ex-directory, and it has been very difficult. I had almost given up, but then I paid to use 192.com, not the free service but the subscription one, and they have details from the electoral register. I found you that way. Anyway, I will call you again tomorrow, and maybe we can arrange that drink. It would be lovely to see you. Goodnight.’

I stopped bouncing. He’d paid money just to find my phone number? He was a reasonably handsome bloke—he couldn’t be that short of potential dates. If I saw him on a dating website, I’d
probably
bookmark him, small eyes, lumpy head, and big ears
notwithstanding
. He had a nice smile.

I so clearly remember that moment, thinking
Maybe I should go out with him
. What was the harm? Just a drink. Just because I’d disliked him when we were teenagers didn’t mean I would dislike him now. People changed so much. And he seemed so keen. It was flattering, especially after my recent disasters in the dating arena.

I decided that if Claudio was going to ring back, I would accept an invitation to go out for a drink with him.