The Venus Trap (11 page)

Chapter Fifteen
Day 3

U
nsurprisingly, last night’s dinner didn’t exactly go with a swing after Claudio’s repeated threat to kill me. I refused to eat another mouthful or speak another word except to demand to be taken back to my bedroom. Now that I am locked up again and lying sleepless
at 3
.00 a.m., I try to rationalize what he said.
Obviously
, it’s
ridiculous
to think that he could convince the police that I was a fantasist and that he really did live here in this flat. One chat with Megan, Donna, Richard, Ania the cleaner—anyone who knows me—would confirm that he doesn’t live here, and hasn’t ever, and therefore is off his head and they’ll arrest him. But the risk is that he will realise this too, and might really carry out his threat to kill me.

Odd thought, that I might be dead in less than a fortnight. There is a desperation in Claudio’s eyes that makes me believe he could actually do it. He strikes me as a man with nothing to lose. His mum is terminally ill, he has no other family. He won’t talk about her. I asked him how often he visits her, but he just ignored me. I get the feeling he can’t face it.

I want to appeal to him that murdering me would not be a very pleasant fact for a dying, loving mother to have to deal with in her final months, but I don’t dare. And anyway, that’s assuming he’d be caught—and he’s arrogant enough to believe he wouldn’t. I don’t know how clever he is. I need to leave clues in here, although it’s tricky, since he’s removed all the pens from my room.

I imagine the aftermath of my murder: the funeral, Richard, Donna and Henry, Steph, Mum and Brian all weeping at the front, the tragic Facebook page that someone—probably Steph—would set up to give people details, a smiling photo of me that everyone comments on . . .

I don’t allow myself to picture Megan as part of all that. The thought of her little woebegone face is in a place that’s far too agonising for me to allow myself to go. But it does give rise to a fresh determination:
This will not happen.
Nobody will be going to my funeral any time soon, because I won’t be having a funeral. For Megan’s sake I resisted the temptation to top myself all through the really dark days of the divorce and then the split with Sean. I’m certainly not going to let some twisted loser do the job for me now, after all that.

Actually, there is a ray of hope. Assuming it’s now Monday—which according to my calculations it must be—then I’m due at Eileen’s at 2.00 p.m. for my counselling. She knows I would call to cancel—I’d never just not turn up. I’m sure she’ll ring me when I don’t show. The question is whether she’ll be concerned enough to do anything about it when I don’t reply. Claudio won’t know about that. It’s not even in the calendar on my phone because I never forget.

Every week when I go to Eileen’s house there are several scrunched-up tissues already in the wastepaper basket next to the sofa. This always makes me wonder who her previous client is, and what is so bad about her life—somehow I’m sure it’s a woman
—that
she needs to get through so many tissues each time. It disturbs me. I find myself thinking about this person at odd hours: in the bath, when I wake up in the middle of the night because Lester’s scratching at the bedroom door trying to get me to let him in, in the condiments aisle of Tesco’s. I have a weird feeling that I’d recognise her if I bumped into her.
By her tissues she shall be known
—that kind of thing. Even though they’re just plain white Kleenex, from the box that Eileen leaves discreetly on the table. But the ones in the bin seem saturated with somebody else’s sadness. They are screwed up small, like a face in pain.

I’d give anything to be in the condiments aisle of Tesco’s
right now.

I feel sorry for Eileen, having to sit opposite an endless stream of needy and doubtless tedious personality disorders day in and day out. I wouldn’t like to do that, and definitely not in my home. Eileen’s own house is always immaculate, and I take tantalising peeks through the open doors I pass on the way up to the back
bedroom
she uses as a consulting room, admiring the chic
Edwardian
decor. Occasionally I think that her house is just an elaborate set, that she doesn’t actually live there but arranges it like a show home in order for her clients to feel comfortable as they make their way up to the Sofa of Emotion, to winkle out and worry at all the narcissistic little hurts and perceived slights inflicted on them over a lifetime of pain.

I do cry there myself, occasionally, but in a controlled sort of a way—I never get through more than one tissue. I don’t like to cry, even though Eileen asks me why I’m holding back, when she sees me staring hard out of the window and biting my lip. I suppose it’s because I’m afraid of really letting rip the way I do at home—if I started, I might not be able to stop. I don’t want to add to the snowballs of tissues already in the bin.

In our sessions, Eileen keeps coming back to that couple of years in the mid-Eighties: to the attack, and John, and Dad. I really wasn’t sure that I could see the relevance, not for ages, although as the months have gone by, I can grudgingly admit that yes, Richard was a father figure, and Sean represented the passion that had been missing from my life since I lost John. I suppose, if I get out of here, I ought to take the diary in to show her.

I wonder what Eileen will make of this, of Claudio. If I get out of here alive I’ll be keeping her in business for years to come. But it does make me think that perhaps what she helped me to figure out is not so very far from Claudio’s warped logic: Claudio’s losing his mum, the only other woman (I assume) he’s ever loved, and his only chance of happiness now—he thinks—is to make me love him at any cost. He believes that if he can’t have me, no one else can, either. Likewise, I lost Dad and John, so subconsciously made a mess of the rest of my relationships with men.

There’s no way I’m going to get any sleep tonight.

I switch on the bedside light and slide the diary out from under my pillow again. At least Claudio hasn’t demanded it back yet.

Chapter Sixteen
Day 3

24th December 1986

I
went to visit Dad’s grave today. Haven’t ever done that before but suddenly I really wanted to get out of the house. Mum was sitting in Dad’s old armchair sipping sherry, even though it was only two o’clock. She seemed OK though, engrossed in an afternoon movie with Rock Hudson. I told her I was going to Argos to buy Donna’s present. Instead I walked all the way up the hill to St George’s.

I never thought there was any point in visiting his grave. Dad isn’t there. He is—I sincerely hope—somewhere much better. The idea that I can communicate with him in any meaningful way when he’s just a pile of ashes under the ground is ridiculous. Yet somehow I really wanted to go. Maybe because it’s the first Christmas without him. Maybe because I miss him so much. Or maybe just because I feel like I ought to?

When I got there, I wasn’t sure what to do. I felt a bit self-conscious, even though there was nobody else in the churchyard. Dad’s grave is one of a few dozen small neat squares of slate, surrounded by crumbling and listing tombstones, centuries older, their inscriptions worn smooth. Someone—presumably Mum—had left a bunch of chrysanthemums there some days or weeks earlier. They were long dead now, colourless and crispy, drooping through the holes in the top of a square tin vase. It was a cold, damp day and I could feel the chill of the earth through the soles of my shoes. I felt bad that I hadn’t even brought flowers. The place felt unbearably lonely.

I thought about the last time I had stood in that spot. It had been much warmer then, although I can’t remember if I had worn a coat or not. In fact, there’s hardly anything about the funeral I can remember clearly.

I remember that everyone was staring at me, with concern, sorrow, curiosity, pity. There were loads of people there, considering that neither of my parents come from large families. Friends, Dad’s ex-work colleagues, from before he got made redundant, neighbours, a smattering of cousins, one great-aunt, Donna and her parents. But I felt that Mum and I were the main attraction, the star turn.

By the end of the committal, after the terrible bony splat of earth on the shiny ash-filled wooden urn, Mum’s and my pitiful petals dropped in on top—after all that, I just wanted to wheel around, pull down the skin under my eyes, stretch my mouth sideways with my thumbs, stick out my tongue and scream ‘yaaaah!’ at the lot of them, because they all seemed to
expect
something from me. Perhaps tears would have done, but I couldn’t cry, not then. The grief was buried far too deep inside me for tears to be any sort of relief.

Over and over, I just kept thinking ‘Inside that little box are the remains of the man who laughed till he cried at that scene in
Airplane!
where Roger, Victor, and Clarence have a conversation about landing the plane:

“You have clearance, Clarence.”

“Roger, Roger.”

“What’s our vector, Victor?” ’

Such a trivial thing to think of, on such a life-shattering occasion. I wonder what Dad himself had been thinking, in his last hours. Probably nothing cogent, he was so full of morphine. Almost certainly not that scene in
Airplane!

I remembered the two ducks that appeared above us as we all stood at the graveside. The ducks swooped back and forth overhead, chasing each other through the sky, banking and wheeling and looking as if they were having the most fun it was possible for a living creature to have, oblivious of the sorrow going on a long way beneath their wings. Ducks seemed to have the ability to have such a damn good time. They are the all-round sportsmen of the bird world: swimmers, divers, fast fliers. I would have given anything to be a duck that day.

Ducks, stares, and silly jokes from a silly film—not much in the way of gravitas for funeral memories. I can’t remember the service at all.

And then there was Tracy Jackson and her mum Virginia, who was Dad’s secretary for years. Tracy’s a couple of years younger than me, and she was the biggest gawper of them all. She stared at me across the graveside so stupidly, and for so long, that I wanted to march across to her, across the wreaths and bouquets, and the sad little floral letters saying D*A*D, which Mum had insisted on buying on my behalf. I wanted to grind my heels into their useless pastel colours, and shout at Tracy Jackson to piss off and never look at me or speak to me again.

Back here after the service people milled around aimlessly, like they were looking for Dad. It felt all wrong that he wasn’t there, being mein host, keeping glasses topped up and warming vol-au-vents in the oven. Mum couldn’t even pretend to make small talk and look after the guests—she just stood in the front room, drinking steadily and mashing a sausage roll with her thumb into a paper plate, as she accepted condolences with a blank but polite expression. I felt embarrassed for her. I tried to make sure that everyone had a drink, but as soon as I’d asked what someone wanted, I’d immediately forget again. I felt furious that people around me were chatting politely, even laughing. How dare they?

All I could think about was Daddy, sitting on the sofa, smoking his pipe and chuckling at
Morecambe and Wise;
Daddy, tinkering with his carpentry tools in the garage; Daddy, buying me a dress from Laura Ashley and handing it to me so proudly that I couldn’t tell him that I didn’t really like it. Daddy, on holiday in Devon that time when Mum got a fish-hook stuck in her heel on the beach, and he extracted it with such loving tenderness that I almost wished it had pierced my own foot.

I remembered all this as I stood by his grave and it was like a great unstoppering of grief occurred; all the tears I hadn’t been able to cry at the time came out of me now in great harsh sobs, the December air hurting my throat. I sank to my knees in the cold, wet grass, literally unable to bear the weight of it, tracing his name on the stone with my fingers like Braille because my eyes were too blurred to see it.

Nothing could ever hurt as much as this. Nothing.

Chapter Seventeen
Day 3

I
have to stop reading because I’m crying so much I’m worried I’ll wake Claudio up. I slide out of bed and sit in the bathroom
sobbing
as silently as I can into a towel behind the closed door. It’s 5.00 a.m. and I imagine the sky outside streaked with apricot. I miss the sky. I miss fresh air.

Most of all, I miss Megan.

I don’t normally, when she’s away with Richard, because it’s so fantastic to have some time to myself. To be able to have a lie-in, or read a book uninterrupted, to have time to think. The irony is that I can do all these things now, but under these conditions—all I want is to be free and for Megan to be here, bugging me.

I hear my bedroom door open and my heart sinks to the very ends of my toenails. Damn damn damn, he’s heard me.

He comes bowling into the bathroom in his hideous pyjamas and actually tries to put his arm around me. I wriggle away from him and back myself up against the wall.

‘Darling! What’s the matter?’ He’s all peachy sweetness and light, like the dawn I can’t see.

I hesitate, then decide it would be prudent not to further antagonise him.

‘I miss Megan,’ I sob, sliding down the bathroom wall to sit on the cool lino. I’m glad I’m wearing respectable nightwear—knee-length cotton shorts and a vest top. Move along, nothing to
see here . . .

Claudio sits down on the edge of the bath and tilts his head to one side in what he probably imagines is a sympathetic pose, but which just makes him look thick. His bare feet are in my line of vision and they are horrible—hairy, fat-toed Hobbit feet. ‘What would you and Megan be up to on a typical morning like this?’

This is not a typical morning.

I blow my nose on a sheet of loo paper and sigh, averting my eyes from the yellow crusty build-up of skin on his heels.

‘We’re often both in a pretty bad mood first thing during term time. She likes to chat, and sometimes we just don’t have the time before school,’ I tell Claudio, my voice thick. A sudden flash of memory pops into my mind and it actually makes me laugh, just briefly.

‘What?’ asks Claudio eagerly.

I don’t want to tell him, but I suppose I’d better. Part of me wants to paint an awful picture of her so that he doesn’t get any ludicrous idyllic notions about us three becoming a family. I settle for honesty.

‘Living with Megan is like puddle-jumping. She’s so happy one minute, then everything’s a disaster the next. She hates being told what to do. If I ask her to clean her teeth, she’ll say, “What are you, my
mother
?” ’

Claudio bares his teeth in an ‘I don’t get why that’s so
funny’ smile.

‘She was in a right strop last week. She’s always really tired and grumpy by the end of term. I sent her to her room for being rude and she slid a note out under her bedroom door. I thought, “Aah, bless, she’s apologising”—I suppose it was sort of an apology, but when I picked it up the note said
Dear Mum, I’m sorry but you are Really geting
(with one ‘t’)
onto my Nevers.’

I’d laughed for the first time in weeks, the first belly laugh probably for months. I laugh again now, a thick, hiccupy laugh—but Claudio still doesn’t get it.

‘She’s not always grumpy in the mornings, though,’ I continue wistfully. ‘The other morning she was totally sweet to me. She wanted to interview me.’

I close my eyes and transport myself back to that moment.

She had come into my bed, twined her arms around my neck, and murmured into my hair: ‘I love you so much, Mummy. You’re a lovely mummy, and a wonderful writer, even though your breath smells a bit phewy in the mornings. Can I interview you?’

‘Thank you, angel. Those are very nice things to say. Apart from the breath bit. Interview me? What about?’

‘Your job.’

‘OK then. Fire away.’

She held an imaginary microphone in front of her mouth. ‘So, Mrs Atkins. You’re a writer?’

‘That’s correct.’

She pretended to scribble into a pad. ‘Interesting. And what do you write about?’

‘I write about medicine and hospital equipment. It’s not usually very exciting,’ I told her solemnly, thinking that if I could just hold onto this feeling, I’d be OK. I could survive, and perhaps even be able to believe that everything really was going to be all right again, some day. That feeling, of Megan’s warm skin and adoration, the tiny soft hairs on her shins rubbing against my legs, and her head nuzzling into the space between my neck and shoulder. The cat was mewing from the kitchen. In a minute I would get up and let him out so we could play with him. We felt like a family.

‘Time to get up for school,’ I said, climbing over Megan and hooking my bathrobe off the back of the door. Lester was mewing more loudly now, hurling himself against the closed kitchen door.

‘Can I watch TV in bed for a bit?’

‘Not on a school day.’

‘Oh, MUM! You are just so mean and unreasonable!’ Megan slammed her fists into the pillows on either side of her, and the spell was broken. ‘I’m NOT going to school.’

Oh well. I didn’t mind. I could cope with the flashes of stroppiness when they were preceded by such sweetness.

‘There’s only two more days of school before summer. So you are,’ I replied, doing up the robe. It reminded me of how Richard used to do up his dressing gown, in a brisk tight knot at his right hip.

Perhaps Megan had the same thought, because tears suddenly sprang into her eyes. ‘I miss Daddy,’ she wailed. ‘Why did you have to get a divorce?’

I sat down on the side of the bed again, ignoring the cat’s pleas. I reached out and held Megan’s hand.

‘You’ll see him next weekend, and then you’re going on your holiday to Italy and remember, another month after that you’re going on your big adventure with Daddy, your even more special holiday! Aren’t you excited? Disneyland, where Mickey Mouse lives? You’re so lucky to have all these holidays!’

‘But I want to see him now. And Mickey Mouse isn’t real. Don’t talk to me like I’m a baby.’

‘Sorry. But you are my baby. Dad’s working away this week, in Germany. Even if we were still together, you wouldn’t see him until the weekend.’

‘Huh,’ she said, the seven-year-old cynic. ‘I don’t believe you. You’re just saying that. Can you bring Lester here, please? I need cheering up. But don’t feed him, because I want to.’

I was relieved that we seemed to be off the subject again. ‘You’d better get up, then. He’s hungry—listen to him.’

‘Let me play with him first, just for a minute?’

‘Oh, all right. I’ll let him in.’

The truth was, I wanted him to come in too. It was part of our routine. Insane as it sounded, Lester goes quite a long way to filling the gap left by Richard and then, for me, Sean.

I plodded down the hall and opened the kitchen door, on
auto
-pilot. Same thing every morning: switch on the radio, fill the kettle, pour crunchies into the cat’s bowl, make Megan’s sandwiches. That part of our lives at least had been unchanged by the divorce—
Richard
was always up and out before either of us girls surfaced.

I miss it so much. Particularly now, when I can’t plod anywhere except in here to the bathroom, four paces away. I think longingly of the simple pleasure of making tea and feeding the cat.

‘Interview you?’ Claudio repeats, breaking my reverie. I can’t be bothered to explain, though. Fortunately, Lester joins Claudio and me now, climbing into his litter tray and starting to rake and shuffle enthusiastically. He’s been a fellow hostage with me since Claudio gave in to my pleas to bring his bowls and tray into my bathroom yesterday. He—Lester—is delighted. He rarely uses the cat-flaps I installed in the flat door and the downstairs back door and has become a house cat anyway.

‘That’s something else that Megan and I do in the mornings. We hang out with the cat,’ I tell Claudio as Lester squats, pointedly avoiding our gaze. ‘He must be almost out of dry food by now. Please could you go out and buy some more?’

He looks at me suspiciously. ‘I’ll check,’ he says. ‘Bloody hell, it’s getting it everywhere.’

Lester’s post-poo paw raking has indeed become even more enthusiastic, and cat litter sprays around the floor. ‘That’s my cue to leave,’ Claudio says, standing up. I could kiss Lester.

‘If you bring me some more plastic bags, I’ll scoop his tray out.’

‘Yes, dear.’

I can’t tell if he’s saying it sarcastically or not.

In a self-pitying sort of way it occurs to me that Claudio is like a hideous fairytale mutation of a husband: I went to sleep one night with a lovely husband and daughter and awoke to find them gone and in their place an ogre with bad breath and nylon shirts who keeps me captive in the bedroom. But I can’t even blame Claudio. He didn’t wreck my marriage: I did that all by myself.

‘Before I go, though, I want your diary back.’

I have to make a colossal effort not to let my eyes fill up
again. ‘Why?’

‘You said you’d talk to me, but you hardly say anything. I’m going to have to find it out for myself.’

‘I
am
talking to you, Claudio! I’ve just told you about Megan! Ask me whatever you want. But I need it. I’ve not had time to read more yet. Let’s talk later—you were in the swimming club with me, weren’t you? We could talk about that?’

I hope I don’t sound too desperate. It’s so hard to get the balance right of how I speak to him.

‘Doug the trainer. Going to galas in a coach. I remember all that,’ Claudio says nostalgically. ‘Do you still swim? I haven’t been swimming for years.’

I nod. ‘Yes. Donna and I go every week.’

He laughs. ‘You still see Donna Barrington-Brown?
How funny.’

Why
? I think.

‘She’s still my best friend. Although she’s now Donna Hayden. She married a guy called Henry Hayden—he’s a
policeman
.’ I say this pointedly, but Claudio doesn’t react.

‘Well, I suppose you can keep the diary again for today,’ he magnanimously agrees.

Big of you, arsehole.

He yawns. ‘It’s still really early. I’m going to go back to bed for a bit.’ He looks pointedly through the open bathroom door at my rumpled bed. ‘Unless I could . . . ?’

‘No!’

‘OK then,’ he says sulkily. ‘See you later. Glad you’re
feeling better.’

I manage not to snort. But at least he’s still asking permission for intimacy, and accepting my refusals. I wonder how long that will last before he loses patience.

When he’s gone, I climb back into bed and try to get back to sleep, but I can’t. Megan fills my thoughts like a lost lover, and my yearning for her becomes almost physical.

It occurs to me that the morning Megan interviewed me was the same day as my second date with Claudio. It seems like ages ago but it was only last week. After I picked her up from school I asked her opinion on the outfit I’d chosen for the date, the tight red dress that Richard had bought me, high wedge red espadrilles, with a big clashy bracelet with lots of fat coloured glass beads on it. The look I was going for was smart, but slightly funky.

She came into my room, not even noticing what I was wearing but away like a greyhound out of the traps on a train of thought: ‘Mummy, so, will you test me on money? We’re doing that at school, I need to learn about my change, I can do it using sticks and blobs, go on, give me one, but nothing too difficult just something that I can probably do like maybe say if I had one pound of pocket money then I bought something in Poundland, some glitter pens or something for another certain amount then how much would I have left? That sort of thing.’

‘Say you went into Poundland and bought some glitter pens that cost 79p, and paid for them with your one pound pocket money. How much change would you get?’ I asked obediently, twisting round to check how my backside looked.

‘Mummy. They wouldn’t be 79p because everything in
Poundland
is ONE POUND.’ She grinned, delighted at catching me out.

‘Oh yeah. So it would. OK, Tesco’s then.’

‘OK, right, so I give the lady on the till my one pound which is ten sticks, and it costs 79 pence which is seven sticks and nine blobs or sometimes we call them chocolate bars and sweeties, so it’s seven chocolate bars and nine sweeties but not Licorice Allsorts cos I don’t like them, maybe Maltesers or something instead . . . ? No, not Maltesers cos that’s chocolate so it might get confusing. Jelly babies. Seven chocolate bars and nine jelly babies. One makes ten which adds up to eight sticks . . . . nine . . . ten . . . that equals a pound . . . So that’s—um—three sticks and one blob—31p?’