The Venus Trap (27 page)

Chapter Forty
Four months later

T
he only time I went back to the flat was to move out. I couldn’t bear to spend a moment longer there than necessary, even though Donna and Ania had been in and cleaned
everything
, once the police had allowed them to. Poor Donna. She still felt really bad that she hadn’t realised sooner that something was amiss
that week
.

She’d been on her way, though. She had just filed a Missing Persons report, alerted Richard in Italy, and told Henry to come to my flat to check on me, which was why he’d turned up at the very moment I escaped. Our mutual cleaner, Ania, had shown Donna the abrupt text Claudio sent her from my phone and they both agreed that it was out of character. Donna knew how much I liked Ania—I’d never have sacked her by text like that, using those words. As a result, Henry and his police colleague had been on their way over with Ania’s set of keys.

So they’d have come, eventually. It helps, knowing that
I
was
missed.

Megan and I are now in a two-bedroom cottage round the corner from Donna and Henry’s. It’s a bit ramshackle—the doors don’t fit properly and there’s a horrible plastic conservatory roof that you can’t be under when it’s raining because of the noise. But it has thick open beams, quarry-tiled, slightly sloping floors, and a sweet little garden, and we love it. Lester has spent most of the time we’ve been here behind the sofa in a sulk.

I found the rest of my old diaries in a box in the loft during the move and have been working through them, to remind myself that there has been so much more to my life than the events of 1986/7. I wish I’d read them before. They put a lot of things into perspective. A list caught my eye, from a few months before Richard and I split up:

– Number of stomach crunches I did at the gym just now: 60

– Number of times Richard’s told me he loves me this week: 78

– Number of times he really meant it: 78

– Number of times he said it through spontaneous affection: 31

– Number of times he said it out of fear that something’s wrong, and thinking that by telling me this, everything will automatically be fixed: 41

– Number of times he said it out of habit: 26

– Number of times this week we’ve talked about making love: 8

– Number of times we made love: 0

– Number of times I tried but just couldn’t face it: 3

That little list made me feel sad. Our marriage hadn’t been
perfect
—but how many marriages were? In my mind, I’d
rewritten
history to paint myself as the absolute ultimate bitch-betrayer, breaking up a marriage on a selfish whim, for no good reason, but that wasn’t the case. I needed to stop beating myself up about it so much. Reading the diaries made me realise that we were just a normal, confused couple, muddling along, happy with some things, not at all happy with others, and yet too afraid to rock the boat by making an issue out of them. Things that were ultimately fixable, if we’d only faced up to them. Things could have gone either way, even with my feelings for Sean.

I remember once, near the end, when Richard and I hadn’t touched one another for months. I knew it was a problem, but I was totally smitten by Sean and I tried to justify it by pretending things had gone to a place beyond redemption with Richard.

‘We can’t carry on like this,’ he said, his one and only attempt to confront our problems.

‘Perhaps we should go and see a sex therapist,’ I replied, knowing that he’d rather walk over hot coals than do any such thing. ‘You book us an appointment, and I’ll come along.’

And that was the end of that. I wish I could have burrowed through that superficial layer of the longing and lust I felt for Sean, right through to the core of me, to the me who loved Richard with all my heart; who’d be so, so sorry when I’d lost him—but I couldn’t. Not then. I didn’t trust that little voice shouting at me not to break up the little family that meant so much to me. I didn’t listen to it, because I was so used to not listening to it.

In the end I didn’t have to go to court, although of course I gave lengthy statements to the police. Another advantage of there not having been a massive publicity campaign when I went missing was that the whole thing was kept out of the press. With no trial to come, there were no curious reporters wanting to know about ‘my ordeal’. It was a huge relief.

Henry told me that the police had had to break down the door to get back into my flat, where they found Claudio in my bathroom, unconscious, having drunk bleach and cut his wrists. He died the next day in hospital. There’d been a note in his hand, written in wobbly letters:

TO JO, I’M SORRY. I JUST LOVE YOU AND I ALWAYS HAVE. I WAS SO HAPPY WHEN I THOUGHT I’D FOUND YOU AGAIN. BUT NOW I’VE LOST EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE.

I didn’t cry for Claudio, although I felt very, very sorry for him. And bizarrely, I kept getting a mental image of the fuzzy-felt Bambi lying hooves-up in a skip somewhere. I wondered who’d have to clear out Claudio’s flat. But I didn’t ask, in case it turned out that I was the only person he knew, or something mad like that, and I’d feel obliged to do it myself. When I told Richard about what had happened, how Claudio had confessed to being my attacker and then said that he’d been at the ice rink the day that John died,
Richard
said something that made me seize up with fresh horror: ‘Do you think it was him who caused the accident? Crashed into John on purpose? Easy to do, on a crowded ice rink . . .’

I couldn’t speak for some time, but eventually two things occurred to me. The first was, thank
God
I didn’t have that realisation when I was locked in the flat with Claudio, because I would definitely have killed him. Thank God he didn’t confess to it. And the second thing was that now that he too was dead, it actually didn’t matter any more. It, like Claudio himself, was in the past.

Eileen helped me come up with an image of all the pain caused by Claudio, and by Dad’s and John’s deaths. I put them in an imaginary metal box that I dropped from a great height into the very deepest part of the deepest lake on earth and watched the green waters close over it with a big splash. When the ripples settled and the water became glassy once more I visualised a sign sticking out of the surface. The sign read: NO FISHING. The sessions I had with Eileen over the next few months were surprisingly positive. Something had changed in me and, with her help, I was able to analyse and utilise this change.

I realised that, after that awful year when Dad and John died and Claudio attacked me, I’d thought nothing that bad could ever happen to me again—but that very rationale was what had led to all the other bad things that had ever happened, and now I could not be passive any longer. I’d felt powerless for over twenty years, allowing myself to be swept along on a tide of fatalism. The one thing that brought it home to me with the greatest force was that my whole life had been shaped by Claudio’s attack on me—and he’d assumed I wouldn’t even remember it!

What a waste. Strange, but I can’t hear those words without thinking of Sean saying, ‘What a waist.’

Even more strange, I saw Sean last night: the evening when everything changed again.

Steph, Donna, and I met up for a girls’ night out, at a salsa club in the upstairs room of a seedy pub in Brockhurst, as part of our new regime of more regular socialising. There we all were, in a line in the beginners’ section, laughing, as the instructor had us take two laborious steps to the left, then two steps to the right again, whilst across the room the more experienced dancers were showing off.

Suddenly Sean and the Twelve-Year-Old walked in and headed for our group.

‘Shit. It’s Sean,’ I hissed to Steph and Donna, who were flanking me. We were all holding fingertips with our partners: my
current
one was a weedy little nerd with sweaty fingers and not an ounce of rhythm.

‘Oh
no
,’ said Steph and Donna in unison.

‘We can leave, if you want,’ added Donna, as they approached.

I ducked my head in panic, my cheeks scarlet. Oh shit, oh shit, what do I do? I thought. For a moment I did want to run. Anything but to have to see Sean there with another woman—well,
girl.

But then I thought, Hell, no, I’m not leaving. If he feels uncomfortable, he can go. I was here first.

They joined our ungainly line, holding fingertips and joining in with the left-right-left, behind, in front, behind. Sean hadn’t even noticed me. My rhythm—such as it was—went right up the spout and my partner glanced at me, surprised to find that suddenly my own fingers were as clammy as his. I was trying to check out the Twelve-Year-Old up close, and to my annoyance I had to concede that she did look a bit older than I’d originally thought. Fourteen or fifteen, at least. I was pleased to see that in profile, though, she slightly resembled Princess Margaret. I wondered if she had any idea who I was.

‘Change partners again!’ said the instructor, and Sean was suddenly right there, holding out his hands for me to link fingertips with him. The shock of his flesh against mine again after so long made me feel vertiginous and I realised we were both holding our breath, as we had little choice but to look into each other’s eyes.

I waited to feel the depth of yearning that I’d always associated with him, the desire to jump into his arms.

But nothing happened. My feet automatically did what the instructor told them to do. I could feel Steph’s and Donna’s anxious glances in my direction. I could see right into Sean’s blue eyes—but all that was there, for both of us, was a sense of regret
and embarrassment.

‘Jo! You all right?’ he said, and my toes curled in my high heels.

‘I’m fine,’ I said, forcing a smile. ‘How are you?’

‘Yeah. Good. Me and Michelle just got engaged, actually.’

The floor wobbled beneath my feet but I managed to remain upright. ‘Oh! Good for you . . . That was quick,’ I couldn’t stop myself from adding as a postscript.

‘Well, you know,’ he said sheepishly. He opened his mouth as if to say more, but caught the eye of the Twelve-Year-Old, who was clearly trying to lip-read our exchange.

‘When’s the wedding?’ I asked, not out of politeness but just so I could arrange to be out of the country that day.

‘Dunno yet. We haven’t set the date.’

‘Right. Well, good luck.’ I couldn’t think what else to say. I felt numb, but mercifully calm. I couldn’t decide whether this was just delayed shock, or whether in fact I really had moved on and didn’t care any more what Sean did with his life, or with whom.

‘Change partners!’ called our instructor.

‘Well, take care, Jo. It’s nice to see you. You look great.’ Sean smiled uncertainly at me. In the old days, my heart would have jumped at him saying I looked great but now, as we both moved one place to our left, it merely occurred to me that it was a mistake on his part to say his farewells, since we only had to swap partners six times before we’d be back facing each other again. I wondered if we’d have to endure this small talk each time around?

I grabbed Steph’s and Donna’s arms. ‘Sean’s getting
married
. . . Come to the loo with me?’ I hissed. The three of us marched off the dance floor towards the Ladies, leaving Sean and two other confused-looking men without partners.

‘Are you OK?’ Donna asked, hugging me tightly once we got into the toilets.

I thought about it for a moment. ‘Actually—yes. I think I am. After everything else that’s gone on, Sean’s the least of my problems. I hope he’s happy with the Twelve-Year-Old. I hope I never have to see them again. But I feel all right. I’m off men, anyway . . . . I told you that I deleted my profile from the dating website,
didn’t I? I haven’t
even looked on there for ages. And seeing him tonight has made me kind of realise that I don’t mind being on my own. I’ve got Megan. And Lester. And you two. Who needs a man?’

‘That’s the spirit,’ said Steph, putting on lip gloss in the mirror. ‘Let’s get out of here, make a night of it and go clubbing. I’m sick of taking two steps to the left and two back again. It’s humiliating. I feel about six years old.’

To my surprise and alarm, as we came out of the Ladies Sean was waiting for me, leaning against the wall looking anxious.

‘Just wanted a really quick word, Jo,’ he said, gently grabbing my elbow and steering me down the corridor towards the Mens. For a moment I thought he was going to usher me in there.

‘Shall we meet you outside, Jo?’ Donna asked, giving Sean the sort of look she usually reserved for one of the twins when they were misbehaving, or Henry when he left the toilet seat up. ‘Or do you want us to stay?’

‘No, it’s fine. I’ll see you outside in a second, OK?’

Donna and Steph left, both now shooting me resigned backwards glances and warning stares. But I didn’t need to be warned. I found, to my interest, that I had absolutely no intention of begging Sean not to get married, or indulging in any other sort of similarly demeaning behaviour. It was such a relief.