The Venus Trap (19 page)

‘Hey, Jo, it’s only me.’

John—
John
!!—appeared from round the back of the function room. He looked dishevelled and tired and was holding a glass of
champagne
in one hand and an unlit cigarette in the other. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. Are you all right?’

He walked up to me and wiped a tear off my face with his thumb, putting down his glass so he could hold my cold hand in his warm one. It was the first time he’d ever touched me. My knees were shaking, from shock and anticipation, and I was aware of being mortified that he’d seen me crying. I tried to collect myself.

‘I’m fine. You gave me a fright, that’s all. I was just going to go into the hotel and ring my mum.’

‘Well, as long as you’re OK. Hey, fancy having a drink with me in the hotel bar when you’ve finished? I’m a bit sick of the party now.’

‘Where’s Gill?’ My fear was forgotten. I could hardly breathe with excitement.

‘Oh, she went home ages ago; stormed out. We’re finished.’

My voice was a squeak. ‘Really?’ I tried not to sound so elated, and went for the mature, understanding approach. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

John nudged me, a little shove with his elbow in the direction of the hotel. ‘Yeah. Well, maybe. Let’s have a drink, anyway. Go on, make your phone call. I’ll meet you in the bar.’

I think that ended up being the best night of my whole life.

Chapter Twenty-Seven
Day 3

T
he spirit of entente continues for a while over dinner. I ask
Claudio
about his friendship with John when we are once more sitting at the kitchen table and he has untied my hands. Is it my imagination or does he gently brush the tender skin of my wrists with his finger? I dismiss the thought, and greedily gulp in the brick wall view through the kitchen window with its sliver of blue
evening
sky above. My thoughts are still with my diary, with the look on John’s face when he invited me for a drink.

I have to try hard not to let the knowledge that John and
Claudio
were friends sully my own memories of John.

‘We were at primary school together—not in the same class, but we made friends in about the Third Year, I think. He stood up for me when some bigger kids were chucking stones at a window and blamed me. He told the head it wasn’t me. After that we started hanging around together.’

Claudio has such an affectionate expression on his face that for a tiny moment I thaw and think better of him for having loved John too.

‘And you stayed friends once you went up to St Edmunds?’

He nods, and busies himself getting plastic plates down. There’s no music tonight, no sign of the iPad. Damn. My only hope of contact with anyone. Although he’s so careful, I doubt he’d leave me on my own with it for a second, even if he got caught short and had to rush to the loo. Wishful thinking.

He serves up a pasta dish, something with bacon and, bizarrely, carrots in it. I suppose it’s meant to be a sort of carbonara. I try a bit on the end of my fork and it’s completely tasteless. Perhaps he couldn’t be arsed to make it taste nice after last night’s dinner went so badly.

I have a small internal argument with myself: would it be better to try to seduce him, to get him to let his guard down, or to attack him? The pasta is steaming hot. I could rub it into his face like a clown throwing a custard pie, but that would hardly incapacitate him long enough for me to extract the keys, unlock all the doors, and run out.

At least I get to drink some wine. I down the first glass and ask for more.

‘What would your colleagues think, Claudio,’ I say as he turns the little tap on top of the wine box and refills my glass, ‘if they knew that you had imprisoned me like this?’

He doesn’t reply.

‘Seriously, I’m curious. Do you hang out with them in the pub after work? Chat about last night’s
Coronation Street
around the water cooler? Do they set you up with their single friends? Do they know you’re a freak, or would they be shocked?’

‘Don’t call me that,’ he says through tight lips. He twirls a forkful of pasta too aggressively and the plastic picnic fork snaps. I have to bite the inside of my cheeks to prevent a brief snarky smile escaping, even though my hands are shaking too much for me to eat at the moment. I sit on them.

‘What—a freak?’ I keep my voice calm and measured.

‘I’m not a freak.’ His eyes swivel slightly in his head and he looks every inch the deranged freak. I can’t think what on earth I ever saw in him. Desperation—shameful.

Anger with myself and my own bad judgement makes me niggle further.

‘So, what’s your plan, Claudio? I think I have a right to know, since it involves me. Richard and Megan will be home in a few days. People will be missing me already.’

Calm down
, I remind myself. I moderate my tone. ‘You really can’t keep me here. I need some fresh air. I’m due on my period any moment. You don’t want to have to go and buy tampons for me, do you?’

He visibly blanches.

‘All these little practicalities, Claudio, that perhaps you haven’t thought of. I’ve missed several work appointments that aren’t in my phone’s schedule. I had a meeting yesterday with Steph and a publisher about us writing a book together, on sports trivia. Steph knows there’s no way I wouldn’t have turned up—I’ve been badgering her for ages for us to collaborate on a writing project; I’m so bored with medical writing. I missed my counselling session on Monday. I always call my mum on Sunday evening. Donna and I go swimming together twice a week.’

It’s once a week, but he doesn’t need to know that.

‘At some point very soon, Claudio, they will all realise that I’m missing—if they haven’t already. There’s only so long you can fob them off by sending texts from my phone. They will see my car’s there, and the door’s locked from the inside. Donna will get the keys off Ania and when she can’t get in, she’ll definitely call the police. Definitely! It’s going to happen. And when it does, you will be in deeper shit than you could ever imagine.’

I have swigged the rest of my wine, and I get up abruptly to help myself to more, resisting the temptation to call him a freak again. Claudio starts, defensively rearing up out of his own chair. Perhaps he thought I was going to lunge at him. For a moment we lock eyes across the table, poised as though we are going to chase each other around and around it like cartoon characters.

‘What do you
want
, Claudio?’ I repeat, for what seems like the hundredth time in the past few days.

This is the first time he answers, though. He walks around the table to me and grabs the back of my head, gripping my scalp.

‘You. I want you.’

He kisses me roughly and I feel bile rising as his tongue shoves its way into my mouth. It’s a horrible, fat, slimy tongue that seems to fill up every millimetre of available space inside my mouth,
coating
my teeth, pressing down my own tongue, oozing its disgusting way towards my uvula. I try to wriggle away but he slides his other hand around my waist and pulls me against him. We are stuck together, my head clamped against his face, my breasts pressing into his hot chest. I try to release my arms, and get one free, punching him ineffectually, but I’m too close to him to get any momentum going. I try to shake my head, but can’t. I’m going to be sick in his mouth. That’d get him off me, surely—I will it to happen. He moans with lust and I can feel his erection pushing against my belly, which starts churning like a tumble dryer. I become aware I’m making an odd strangled sound.

Finally he releases my head and restrains my flailing arm, so I’m pinioned. But at least his tongue is out of my face. I’m panting, and babbling.

‘Not like this, Claudio, not like this. I swear I’ll never love you if you force me to. If you rape me I will never talk to you again, or look at you. I will find some way to kill myself so you can’t have me and then you’ll be done for manslaughter if not murder . . .’

I force myself to slow down and meet his eyes. There is spittle in the corners of his mouth and I gag.

‘Sorry. It’s just shock. Let go of me, Claudio. Let me sit down. Let’s talk. We can work something out. I don’t want this and I don’t believe you do either.’

To my immense relief he loosens his grip on me. I gulp in air to stop myself being sick. My pasta has congealed on the plastic plate into a solid mass and the sight of it tips me over the edge. I run over to the sink and puke into it, all over the dirty pots and pans he’s left in there. The thought crosses my mind that maybe it’s an effort for him to have to keep looking after me like this, doing everything for me, especially if he’s a mummy’s boy. Perhaps he’ll get tired of it.

I glance behind me and see him hovering, a look of disgust on his stubbly face. ‘Sorry,’ I mumble, and turn the cold tap on full. I pick up the pasta pan and start rinsing the sick off it. It’s heavy. And metal! He never thought of that, did he, with his plastic plates and picnic cutlery and no sharp objects—you can’t cook pasta in a plastic saucepan. I thank God I don’t have a microwave,
otherwise he
would have done. Before I think about what I’m doing, or give him the chance to realise, I grab the handle of the pan in my other hand and swing it out of the sink like a tennis racket, heavy bottom first, backhand towards Claudio’s face. Water and sick spray around us as the pan flashes through the air and I’m aware that I’m screaming, my whole being focused on his horrible jutting chin: that’s my target, I can’t miss, I can’t miss, I’ll knock him out and—

He reaches his left hand up and grabs the pan easily before it hits him. With a deft twist, I’m disarmed, and as I lurch towards him, he lifts his right hand and hits me with his own backhand, smack across my face. My cheek explodes with pain and I fall and hit the other side of my head on the tiled floor, tiny black and silver stars popping pyrotechnically around me.

Then suddenly he is on top of me on the floor, flattening me completely, grunting, the iron pincers of his fingers grabbing between my legs like the man in the alley, only this time I’m not wearing a duffel coat and a thick dress and woolly tights, just thin pyjama bottoms because I didn’t want to dress for dinner, I didn’t want to indulge him, and now he’s going to indulge himself and it will kill me, he’s stroking me ineptly like he thinks it’s foreplay but at least he’s not trying to kiss me because I have sick around my mouth and he sticks his hand down my trousers and his finger inside me and it hurts and I feel his fingernail scratch me because of course he’s clumsy and it’s the last thing I want but my head and face hurt too much to be able to fight him off and I’m making this weird strangled moaning noise again and he rips down my pyjamas and undoes his jeans and I’m crying now because I think this is it, raped on my kitchen floor but at least not in my bedroom, and I brace myself for the thrust—

But it doesn’t come. I feel something small and warm pushing against me, and I hear his yelp of frustration and anger. He’s lost his erection.

Thank God, thank God, thank God. But does it mean he’ll hit me again?

I put my hands on the front of his shoulders and forced myself to focus on his face.

‘Claudio. Let me go back to my room. This is a mistake. You know it is. I’m sorry I tried to hit you. Let’s forget this ever happened. Come on. My head really hurts. I need to lie down.’

There’s a long pause, like he’s working out what to do. Then he slowly shuffles backwards off me, turning away to do up his jeans. He won’t meet my eyes. I sit up, my head throbbing, and wipe my mouth. The room swirls and dips as I try to stand, and I don’t know which side of my head to hold harder, as if I could squeeze away the pain. I drag up my PJs with one hand. It’s like the aftermath of a bomb, a stunned disbelief and knowledge that everything has changed both physically and emotionally, atoms rearranged, a void into which crowd only fear and pain. Working my way around the kitchen by clinging onto the counters, I make my way to the locked door and stand by it like a cat waiting to be let out. That’s a point: where’s Lester? I want him.

Claudio doesn’t bother to tie my wrists up again before he unlocks the kitchen door. He can tell there’s no fight left in me. He shoots me sheepish, anxious looks as he grasps my elbow and helps me back down the hall to my room.

‘Do you need anything?’ he asks, and I give my head a tiny brief nod that sends pain flooding and pulsing behind my eyes.

‘Nurofen.’

‘I’ll get you some.’

He locks me in my bedroom and I hear him go into the main bathroom and rummage in the cabinets. Presumably that’s where he’s put all my confiscated contraband.

Lester is stretched out like a concubine on my bed and the sight of him makes tears spout out of my eyes. I sit slowly down next to him and let my hand rest on his fur.

Now I know that he would do it. He would rape me, if he could. I was just lucky that he couldn’t. It adds a whole new level of horror to this fucked-up situation.

Oh, this is
so
fucked up.

When he comes back in with pills and a plastic beaker of water, I’m lying curled around Lester on the bed. I ignore him and he puts the beaker and blister pack down on the bedside table.

‘Goodnight, Jo,’ he says uncertainly.

I continue to ignore him.

Why the hell had I not had the sense to ignore him after our first date?

Chapter Twenty-Eight
Day 4

I
took the three Nurofens left in the pack and sipped the water until the taste of sick went away. I didn’t have the strength to get into the bathroom and clean my teeth or have a shower. All I wanted was to hear Lester’s purring and the oblivion of sleep.

Now it’s 4.00 a.m. The pounding in my head and the shock have subsided just enough for me to start relaxing towards sleep, but I realise I’m only thinking of Richard. It’s a new day and I don’t want to give Claudio any more head space.

Richard blames himself for the divorce. He told me so, a couple of months ago when we went for a heartbreakingly polite little drink in the pub. He said he should have seen the signs, should have done something about it before it was too late. But he couldn’t. He was terrified that if he said anything, it would all come crashing down on his head.

‘I never realised I was such a coward,’ he said, so sadly that my throat seized up and ached with the effort of not sobbing then and there, under the horse brasses and oak beams. ‘But I never thought for a second that you’d actually leave me. We thought we’d be married forever—didn’t we? OK, so it might not have been the most passionate relationship in the world, but it was stable, and secure, wasn’t it? I didn’t think there was any doubt that we loved each other . . . not until you told me you didn’t love me enough.’

I tried to protest that I was wrong, that it was how I felt at the time but not now—but he just shook his head and I knew it was too late.

He admitted that he’d put me on such a pedestal—a
Nelson’s
Column sort of size—that even when he craned his neck and shouted up at me, I was just too far away to hear him. Because it took him so many years to win me, I had been a prize to him. Perhaps that ought to have made me proud, but all I feel now is shame.

At the time I thought he didn’t make enough fuss when I said I wanted a divorce. I thought the fact that he didn’t fall to his knees and beg me to stay meant that somehow he went along with my decision that we should just be friends, and not married any more. But he was in shock, and when he’s in shock, he said, he goes into practical mode.

He looked at me over his pint so bitterly that I dropped my gaze. ‘So, Jo, forgive me that I didn’t react in the way you expected. Forgive me that I started talking about which bits of furniture I wanted to keep and when I would get to see Megan . . .’

‘Don’t,’ I said, peeling back layers of a cardboard beer mat. ‘I’m sorry.’

We had stopped sleeping together months before. Every now and then he reached for me, but I would turn my head away if he tried to kiss me.

‘You looked so unhappy,’ he said, the corners of his mouth wobbling. ‘But I just couldn’t bear to ask you what was wrong, because I knew it was
me
. Every time I tried to talk about it, the words just solidified and I couldn’t. I’m sorry.’

So many sorries.

I am finally just falling asleep, one hand resting on the cat, the other still clutching my head, when I hear my door being unbolted, loudly, roughly. Lester shoots up in alarm and runs into the
bathroom
.

Claudio is angry again. I can tell, before he even gets into my room. What’s made him so mad that he needs to come storming in at
6.00 a.m.?