The Venus Trap

by Voss, Louise

  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 o
f 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.?

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Day 4

  Claudio switches on the overhead light. He is wearing his horrible old-man dark stripy pyjamas, and holding a bulging Sainsbury’s Bag for Life in front of him. I sit up in bed, the sudden movement making my bruised cheek throb. I want to say ‘What now?’ but I’m too scared.

  In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared in my whole life. It’s as if he’s a ball of wool and someone is pulling at the end. He is unravelling.

  ‘This isn’t going as well as I’d hoped,’ he says, and I nod in submissive agreement, although I don’t know what he means. But from the aggression in his voice, I can tell he’s really upset about it. I suspect it’s a male pride thing: he’s humiliated that he lost his erection last night at the crucial moment.

  ‘I can tell you aren’t in love with me!’

  No shit, Sherlock.

  My heart is banging so hard in my chest that I feel breathless. ‘Give me time, Claudio. It’s not easy when I’ve been stuck in here for days, and now you’ve been violent towards me, when you said you wouldn’t be.’

  I brace myself in case he hits me again.

  ‘That was only because you went for me!’ His voice is squeaky with outrage, at the perceived unfairness of my accusation. I’m half-waiting for him to say ‘It’s Not Fair!’ and stamp his foot.

  He puts the bag on my bed and I see that it’s full of photograph albums. My photograph albums, from the bookcase in the front room.

  ‘So, I’m going to do something to help you along a bit.’

  Sitting on the edge of my bed, he tips the bag upside down. Along with the albums, several loose enlargements of photos spill out, photos that were until recently in frames either on my wall or displayed on the mantelpiece. There is one of Richard and Megan on Megan’s fourth birthday, one of Richard and me at our wedding (I keep it on display because Megan says hello to it every day), another of the three of us at a wintry bird sanctuary somewhere, Megan happy in fun-fur and mittens between us. I can’t remember who took it.

  Claudio has removed each one from its frame, presumably so I don’t take the opportunity to smash the glass and stick a shard into his face. He bloody thinks of everything.

  ‘I’ll put them away somewhere if you don’t want them out on display,’ I say hastily, looking at Megan’s little face with longing. She is blowing out the candles on the Barbie cake I made her for her fourth birthday. Her cheeks are perfect pink puffs and her mouth a tiny excited rosebud. Richard is standing over her, gazing so fondly down at her that I have to swallow hard to try to shift the pain at the back of my throat.

  Claudio shakes his head, as if that made him sad. I hate him.

  ‘I think it will take more than just putting them out of sight,’ he says. ‘Your ex—both your exes—seem to be something of a barrier, and our future happiness depends on there being no barriers. A clean slate, that’s what we need. So, you’re going to get rid of these. Tear them all up.’

  �
�What? No!’ Protectively, I gather my precious memories in my arms. ‘I can’t do that, Claudio!’

  ‘You have to,’ he replies calmly. ‘And I’m going to watch you do it. So get going. I’ll start you off.’

  He opens Megan’s baby album, lifts the sheet of clear plastic covering the photographs, and takes out the first one, a shot of me in a hospital bed with a freshly born Megan in my arms, so freshly born that I have a smear of my own blood on my nose. I am beaming from ear to ear.

  He tears it in two and drops the halves onto the floor.

  This is outrageous. He’s doing it to punish me for what happened last night.

  ‘No! Claudio, please don’t!’

  I reach out my hand to grasp his arm in entreaty, but he shakes me off and rips up the next one, Megan cradled against Richard’s chest. Richard looks so proud, and so young, his face exactly the same as when he was a student.

  ‘Wait!’ I try, desperately. ‘Listen, please! I accept that you don’t want me to have photos of Richard, that’s fair enough. But please, please, don’t make me get rid of Megan’s baby pictures! After all—’ I take a deep breath to cover my revulsion at the words I’m about to say, ‘—she and I come as a package. You can’t just airbrush her out of the picture. She lives with me, Claudio! You’d be her stepfather. It’s not ideal but if you want to be with me, you have to accept her too. Like I said, these things don’t happen overnight.’

  Claudio pauses. I can see that he’s capitulating.

  ‘She’d be devastated if her baby photos were gone. She looks at them all the time.’

  This is true, she does. She’s slightly obsessed with her birth and ‘how she came out’. I plough on. ‘If you want me to love you, you can’t do this. I know you’re a good man really. It’s absolutely crucial to me that you and Megan get on, and you don’t want to get off on the wrong foot with her, do you?’

  ‘Suppose not,’ Claudio mumbles. I almost want to laugh at the absurdity of the words I’m saying. Absolutely crucial that he and Megan get on? Absolutely crucial that I fucking kill him before he ever sullies the air that she breathes, more like.