The Venus Trap

by Voss, Louise

  ‘This is great!’ I shouted, beaming at John. At that moment I felt a perfectly rounded and complete happiness, unlike anything else I’d ever experienced. Since Dad died and the incident in the alley, I hadn’t even come close to this sensation of joy—except for New Year’s Eve, of course. As if to emphasise it, John grabbed me round the waist and swung me into a hug, almost lifting me off my skates. We nearly overbalanced, but I managed to reach for the barrier at the side and hung onto it as John skated into me, pressing me against him. I breathed deeply into the oily wool of his thick sweater, and he wrapped his arms around me in a protective, silent embrace.

  Donna and Gareth skated past, Gareth with panic in his eyes, resembling a huge newborn foal, and Donna assertively leading him.

  ‘Hey, you. You do still want to go out with me, don’t you?’

  I was flabbergasted. I couldn’t believe he’d doubt it for a second. I had to bite my tongue to stop myself saying ‘Go out with you? I want to MARRY you!’

  ‘Of course! Why, do you think I don’t?’

  John’s chin pressed into the top of my head and he whispered into my hair. ‘Thing is, I get paranoid about you dumping me . . . I like you so much but I—well, sometimes I think you and Donna are laughing at me.’

  This was a different John to the John who tweaked my WHSmiths bag that time and teased me about my Final Countdown single. That John wasn’t the sort of guy that could care less if two sixteen-year-olds were laughing at him. I felt confused by this, but decided it was best not to think about it too deeply.

  ‘No! Never! I promise you, we weren’t laughing at you.’ Well, I wasn’t, anyway. Donna does, all the time—but then she’s his sister, and brothers and sisters always laugh at each other.

  ‘Can I ask you a question?’ Again the chin dug into my scalp. ‘Can we do this again sometime?’

  ‘Sure,’ said John. ‘Just the two of us next time.’ He kissed me and we were both smiling inside the kiss.

  Claudio laughs meanly. ‘John would never have married you. He was a player. He said that to whatever girl he was going out with.’

  I don’t believe him. He’s just jealous.

  ‘Can I stop now? I feel sick again and I need to sleep.’

  ‘Very well,’ Claudio says. ‘I have a few things I need to sort out, emails and so on. We’ll take a break for an hour or so and then I will come back later.’

  Great, I think sarcastically. Like this is some sort of twisted team-building exercise, in our office of two. Three, if you count Lester.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Day 4

  I feel calmer once he’s gone, but still nauseated. I think it might be from all the exercise this morning; or perhaps he gave me concussion when he hit me. Anyway, I was sick again. I didn’t quite make it to the bathroom on time and some of it got on my bed. But that’s fine, that’s what I want. I want him to be so repulsed by me that he won’t come near me, even if he doesn’t have a sense of smell, damn it.

  I couldn’t get back to sleep, though, despite telling him I needed to, so I’ve just been sitting in the bathroom reading my diary. It really smells in my bedroom and the bathroom spotlights are brighter. Reading the diary is the only thing that takes my mind off the smell. I got really engrossed in my writing when I was reading it to Claudio, but now I’m slowing down again in the knowledge of what’s coming. I start flicking through chunks instead of reading every word—this particular section seems to be a paean to John. Somehow it was easier reading the grim stuff—the bulimia, the attack, Dad’s death, proof that I’d been through desperate times before and blossomed back into happiness. But I don’t want to be reminded of the happiness. I feel like I’m rubbing my own nose in it, knowing how transient it turned out to be. A mere few months later in 1987 and everything would be turned upside down again, even worse than before.

  I’m finding it hard to concentrate. There is vomit on the corner of my mattress and over the carpet, and the acrid sharp stink drifting through to the bathroom mingles with my own body odour. The feathers I pulled out of the pillow have settled on the puke like some kind of hideous and malodorous art installation. My bedclothes are all balled up in a corner of my bedroom. Even Lester’s deserted me—he shot out at speed when Claudio last came in, even though his food bowl is in my bathroom.

  The only problem with my descent into what I hope he thinks will be madness is that I don’t get to leave this room—I doubt he’ll cook me dinner in the kitchen when I resemble a bag lady. But I’m craving daylight so badly that at times I think I really am going crazy.

  I want him to see what he’s doing to me; I was wrong to indulge him before, by sitting down to dinner and making conversation with him. Surely he can’t fail to notice how badly it’s all going?

  I haven’t breathed any air outside of this room and my bathroom for two days. Maybe I’m poisoning myself with my own recycled breaths. I can’t do it. I can’t fake it: he’ll never believe me.

  I flick through the diary, trying to concentrate. Time is passing so slowly, like wading through treacle.

  April 1987—I lost my virginity in John’s stable-block bedroom, listening to The Jam, All Mod Cons, the loveliness of the track English Rose flowing over us both as we flowed over each other in the dark hot space under John’s slightly musty-smelling duvet.

  Needless to say I’d underlined that bit. I remember writing those diaries as novelistically as I could, but there’s a pretty fine line between novelistic and pretentious . . . in fact, all the bits I’d underlined are now the bits I’d edit out, in the unlikely event of their ever seeing the light of day.

  There was the sudden sticky pain Donna told me to expect—she and Gareth were a couple of months ahead—and the strange balloony smell of the condom, but apart from this it was a good experience.

  It all gets a bit X-rated from that point, which cheers me up a tiny bit:

  It had seemed like such a natural progression of events. John was already regularly slipping his fingers under my skirt and curling them around the edge of my pants, touching me where it was hot and liquid after just a couple of minutes of kissing; this had been going on for months. I was embarrassed at the little squelchy sounds his finger made inside of me, but not so embarrassed that I ever wanted him to stop. I learned how to feel him in return, tentatively at first, through his jeans and then more boldly, unzipping them and sliding my hand through the gap in the front of his Y-fronts to the damp heat of the velvety-smooth hardness inside.

  I hope Mum never read my diary. That brought it all back. I can picture John now, and how he felt. But it wasn’t just about sex, not at all. I was amazed at how sweet he was to me. How he could happily cuddle up on the sofa with me for hours, watching television, giggling at Ronnie Corbett in Sorry, or leaping up and running into the kitchen to make me and Mum a cup of tea.

  Mum absolutely loved John too, despite having been initially rather wary of the fact that he was two years older than me. ‘Such a handsome boy,’ she’d whisper, whenever he came round. ‘He’s so good for you!’

  I’d hiss at her to be quiet, both mortified and pleased. Looking back I realise, with a thrill of awareness, that I hadn’t felt the need to make myself sick for the entire time John and I were together. He said so often and with such conviction that he loved my body, and my ‘huge melons’—which had made me blush—that I could even imagine a day when I’d let him make love to me with the lights on. I hadn’t given up on the idea of the breast reduction, but since getting together with John, I had postponed it. I remember that it no longer seemed so important.

  Mum was much happier by then too. She had indeed got a new man—bit quick, I thought at the time. He was called Brian and he was a driving instructor—my driving instructor! That was how they met. They were enough of an item by then that he sometimes came over and watched TV with us. They requisitioned the sofa, and John and I were relegated t
o the big saggy armchair, where we’d hide behind the wings of it to disguise our laughter at Brian’s blissfully unaware scratching (he was always scratching—beard, tummy, Mum’s shoulder blades).

  I got a lot of free driving lessons.

  15th June 1987

  John asked me earlier if it bothered me that Mum had got another boyfriend so soon after Dad. We were eating takeaway chow mein in the kitchen. Mum and Brian had just gone out to the pub, to hear a blues band that Brian’s mates are in. John was looking at a photograph on the pinboard, that one of me and Mum and Dad on a beach—me as a toddler in frilly plastic pants, banging a spade on a sandcastle.

  I thought about the question as I ate a water chestnut. It made my heart hurt to see Dad beaming, as he was then: a young man of thirty-two who had believed he had his whole life ahead of him, when it turned out that he only had another measly fourteen years.

  This is what I said to John: ‘It would have bothered me if I hadn’t met you. It sounds selfish, but if I wasn’t with you, I think I’d feel . . . lonely, if Mum was going out the whole time, and being all lovey-dovey around another man. I do miss Dad, like anything . . . But it’s sort of, well, now that I know what it feels like to be in love, I’m just happy that she’s happy. If that doesn’t sound too soppy.’

  John pushed back his chair and came across to my side of the kitchen table. He kissed me and his tongue tasted of noodles and garlic.

  ‘You’re gorgeous, you are,’ he said, pulling me down onto the lino, even though it was none too clean, and I felt grains of spilled rice sticking to my elbow. We were almost underneath the table, but I didn’t care about the rice, or the patch of something sticky near my face, or the fact that my neck was cricked up against one of the table legs. All I cared about was the feel of John’s tongue caressing my mouth and the weight of his body on top of mine.

  I just about managed to resist asking him if I was more gorgeous to him than Gill was, or any of his other ex-girlfriends. Thankfully.

  Instead, I giggled and whispered, ‘What are we doing down here? Why don’t we go up to my room?’

  ‘Can’t wait that long,’ he replied, stroking my boob, thrusting against me through our clothes, making the table shake.

  ‘Stop it! This table’s rickety. I don’t want chow mein in my hair.’

  ‘Just adds to the excitement, doesn’t it, though? At any moment, one of several things could happen—I’ll take your knickers off, you’ll feel me pushing inside of you, or you’ll get concussion from a plate on the head, and noodles all over your body . . . .’

  ‘I’ll take my chances,’ I said. ‘I like the sound of at least two of those options.’

  John slid his hand up inside my skirt and was just, true to his word, easing my pants down over my hips, when there was the unmistakeable sound of a key in the front door, followed by Mum’s high laugh.

  ‘Shit!’ John hissed, rolling off me and banging hard into the table leg. The table wobbled dangerously this time, but somehow nothing fell. I was just scrambling up from the lino when Mum came into the kitchen, delving in her handbag—which was a relief, since it prevented her noticing John hastily doing up his flies. Brian followed, hanging his head as Mum good-humouredly berated him.

  ‘Hi, kids, it’s only us. What are you doing down there, Jo? I forgot my purse, would you believe it? I think it’s in here somewhere—I had it out earlier to pay the milkman. Needless to say Brian hasn’t got any money. Typical, isn’t it? I wanted a sugar daddy and I get a penniless driving instructor . . .’

  ‘A resting pop-star, if you don’t mind,’ said Brian, pulling at his tufts of beard and trying to look dignified.

  ‘Twenty years is a bloody long rest, if you ask me, Rip Van Winkle. Oh look, here it is. Who put a tea-towel on top of it?’

  ‘That’s what I like about you, my sweet,’ said Brian, putting his arms around Mum’s waist from behind. ‘You keep my feet on the ground.’

  John and I, who were both sitting back down again by then (John somewhat hunched over and grimacing), made faces at one another.

  ‘Right then, we’ll leave you kids to your Chinky and . . . whatever else it is that you’re doing,’ Mum said, with a wink and a tilt of the head in the direction of the floor. ‘Be good, and if you can’t be good, be careful. See you later!’

  They were gone again. I buried my head in my arms on the table and groaned. ‘She knew what we were up to!’

  John laughed. ‘She’s not daft, your mum. Besides, she didn’t exactly seem to mind, did she? She’s cool. And it’s not as if we were at it, or anything . . . . Lucky she didn’t come in five minutes later, though.’

  I just moaned again, blushing so hard that I was actually sweating. ‘It’s so embarrassing!’

  John took a large mouthful of tepid chow mein and told me to forget it. ‘She might as well get used to us bonking all over the place. She’s going to have to put up with it for years to come.’

  He glanced sideways at me, and I think I blushed on top of my blush. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. I reckon. Don’t you? Mrs S’ll be my mother-in-law one day.’

  I just beamed back, so hard that I didn’t care if my fangs were showing.

  This entry makes me laugh out loud. It is like a little gift from my teenage self. I laugh harder and harder until the laughs turn into sobs, and then I lie on the bed and cry until my bare mattress has acquired more dark tear stains to add to all the other ones.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Day 4

  Did I hear you laughing in there earlier?’ Claudio has an expression on his sallow face that’s half curiosity, half disgust. He’s brought me in a sandwich for dinner but I can’t eat.

  ‘Something funny on the radio,’ I say sullenly. There’s no way I’m going to admit to it being the diary that made me laugh, in case he makes me read it out loud to him.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Perhaps my plan is working, even with the curveball of his lack of sense of smell. Perhaps he’s going off me. He’s concerned that I’m losing the plot. Good.

  I shrug. ‘No.’

  ‘You look like you’ve been crying again.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Don’t be like that, Jo. I just want you to be happy.’

  ‘Well that’s a joke.’ I blow some feathers off the mattress in a huff of irritation.

  ‘I don’t like it when you’re in this sort of a mood.’

  It’s then I notice that he’s also brought in the small chair from Megan’s room, a flimsy little ladderback thing with a wicker seat. He plonks his big arse on it next to the bed like I’m a patient he’s visiting in hospital. Presumably having decided the mattress is too skanky to sit on.

  ‘I don’t like being locked in my bedroom forced to talk to you all day. Does that make us quits?’

  ‘Is this what you’re really like?’

  A chink of hope splinters through me. ‘Yeah actually, a lot of the time. I’m unbelievably moody, more so when I’m tired or stressed or pre-menstrual. Richard divorced me because he couldn’t take my moods any more. He stopped fancying me, and then we split up when our sex life petered out completely.’ I take a breath and add, pointedly, ‘He’d built me up to be something I’m not, by fancying me for so long before we got together. It just took its toll, in the end.’

  Claudio straightens up and examines me as though I’m something he found in his net on a nature trail. ‘Really? I thought you split up because you were banging your personal trainer.’

  ‘I wasn’t banging him, as you so delightfully put it. Not before Richard and I separated, anyway.’

  ‘But you wanted to.’

  I pause. ‘Hadn’t really crossed my mind at that point.’

  This is a complete lie. Of course it had, and not just crossed my mind but bulldozed a twelve-lane highway through it. It was all I could
think about, until I was convinced that the reality could never be as good as it was in my imagination.

  Yet when it finally happened, it was even better. It was the best sex I’ve ever had in my whole life, and it was here, in this bed, in this flat. It led to a Saturday morning ritual that began shortly after I moved into this flat, which Sean and I christened Tea in Pants.

  On the weekends that Megan stayed at Richard’s and Sean stayed over here, he would slide out of bed first thing, dress, and jog down to the twenty-four-hour Tesco for fresh croissants. He would let himself back into the flat, warm up the croissants, and make two cups of tea. From down the hall I’d hear faint sounds of clothing being removed and then, as I propped myself up on one elbow, eagerly waiting for the bedroom door to be pushed open with a shoulder, Sean would eventually appear. Two steaming cups of tea in one hand and a plate of croissants in the other, a big smile on his face and naked except for his pants.

  ‘I can hear you rolling over to watch me coming in,’ he’d say, laughing at the lust on my face.

  ‘I can hear you taking your clothes off down the hallway. It’s such a turn-on.’

  The memory of his body coming into my bedroom like that was as strong as perfume: the broadness of his shoulders, his flat muscled stomach, his buttocks like two grapefruit . . . He would carefully place the tea and croissants down on the floor, and then roll on top of me in an effusive morning hug that sent Lester leaping off the bed in disgust. The tea almost always went cold before it was drunk and I was forever sweeping croissant crumbs out of the sheets, but I wouldn’t have changed the ritual for anything.

  Those mornings were what we were all about. The way Sean looked into my eyes as he made love to me, slowly and tenderly, with such passion, never breaking my gaze, a complete and almost spiritual connection. I’ve never known anything as powerful and it made me forgive everything else he did that irritated me—saying ‘up London’, liking Harvesters, stuffing his food, not knowing who Carole King was—none of it mattered when Sean was deep inside me, feeling like a part of me so new and wonderful that I became new and wonderful too. After all, you could talk about music and eat in posh restaurants with anybody, couldn’t you? But there was only one person you could make love with, have that connection with.