The Venus Trap (22 page)

‘But he knows I’m here! Megan probably just missed getting to my call, so now they’re ringing me straight back from his phone! He’ll smell a rat if I don’t!’

Claudio hesitates, and I focus hard on getting my breathing under control. I hold out my hand for the phone. He doesn’t give it to me, but does press the screen to answer the call and holds it to my ear again.

This time joy floods through me as I hear Richard’s voice.

‘Hi, Jo, sorry, we could hear Megan’s phone ring, but didn’t get to it in time. How’s things?’

I swallow hard. ‘Fine, thanks, Richard. All fine.’

The knife is back, pricking me menacingly as though I’m a jacket potato about to go into the oven.

‘What have you been up to?’

I hesitate, and the knife goes in just a little further. I jump. ‘Nothing! Had a bit of a bug, actually. Been in bed a couple of days puking. You know how it is—I always seem to come down with something when I finally get a bit of time to myself. How’s the holiday?’

‘Ah, sorry to hear it, Jo, that’s no fun. It’s great here. Sunny. Could do without the horse flies, but other than that, it’s all good.’

I hear Megan in the background clamouring to speak to me.

‘Mummy!’ she squeals, and I manage to smile.

‘Hello, my darling!’

‘Tilly punched me in the bottom and got sent to bed early! I’ve got a
bruise
! And today we’re going to have ice cream in a town t
hat’s go
t lots of hills.’

‘Oh dear, that was naughty of Tilly, wasn’t it? But good news about the ice cream. I’ve left you a message on your phone, too.’

‘I couldn’t find it. We could hear it but it was hidden
underneath
a cushion.’

‘Ah.’

I suddenly don’t know what else to say. I can’t bear it any more. ‘I’ve got to go, darling, I . . . need the toilet.’

‘OK, Mummy. Well, I’ll see you soon, yeah? Bye!’

‘Definitely, sweetheart.’
Please, God.

She’s gone, and so has Richard.

Chapter Thirty-Two
Day 4

R
ead to me, Jo,’ Claudio says when he gets back from putting away the knife and removing my phone. Making sure we’re safely locked in, he flops down on the disgusting bed next to me. ‘Read your diary.’

I’m too upset after hearing Megan’s and Richard’s voices to speak. I roll onto my side away from him and stare at the boarded-up window, willing myself not to cry.

‘READ TO ME!’ he yells in my ear, in case I haven’t heard him.

‘In here?’ I whisper.

‘Yes of course in here,’ he replies testily. ‘Why not?’

‘Because it stinks in here. It stinks of BO and sick.’ And
despair,
I think.

I wonder if I am literally losing the will to live, until I think of Megan, her innocent peachy face and the freckles that the Italian sun will have popped out over the bridge of her nose. I want to see those freckles.

‘It’s a mess, yes, but I can’t smell anything. I don’t have a sense of smell, so it doesn’t bother me. If it bothers you, clean it up.’

Well that’s just great, isn’t it? I’ve gone to all these lengths to make myself revolting and malodorous and he doesn’t even notice.

He throws the diary down in front of me and I start reading from a random bit, about how surprised everyone was that Donna and Gareth were still going strong, two months after New Year . . .

‘No!’ he interrupts.

‘What?’

‘I don’t want that bit. I want to hear about when you went ice-skating with John, the first time.’

‘You must have already read it, then,’ I comment miserably.

‘I only glanced at it. I want to hear it properly, from you.’ There is an odd intensity about him—more odd than usual, anyway. I am really afraid of him today. I fumble through the notebook until I find the correct entry, about halfway through, and start reading in a croaky voice.

14th March 1987

We went ice-skating as a foursome; me and John, Donna and Gareth. I got to sit in the front seat of John’s bronze Lancia, sneaking sidelong glances at his profile as he drove recklessly along the dual carriageway on the outskirts of Brockhurst, with a cassette of
Bat Out of Hell
blaring out at top volume. He seemed to be able to smoke, drive, laugh, and gaze lustfully at me—I was torn between feeling impressed at his ability to do it all at the same time, overjoyed at the way he was looking at me and terrified at the speed we were going. I clutched tight onto the handle above the passenger door, wondering if he would take me into his stable room again later that day. I was dying to reach my arm along the back of his seat and stroke the bristly nape of his neck.

Donna and Gareth were snogging in the back. Over the noise of the engine, and Meat Loaf, I could just make out little smacking, slurping noises, and they made my toes curl in my new tan suede pixie boots, bought with my birthday money.

‘Get a room, you two,’ John yelled.

‘Huh,’ said Donna, surfacing. ‘I’m not taking instructions from someone who plays flippin’ Meat Loaf in the car. I’m ashamed to call you my brother!’

‘Meat’s cool, sis,’ said John laconically. He looked across at me
and smiled.

‘Can you ice-skate, by the way?’

‘Never tried. Can you?’

‘Yeah,’ said John. ‘I’ve been loads of times. Don’t worry. I’ll hold your hand.’

‘And the rest,’ commented Gareth from the back seat.

‘Put a sock in it, Gaz,’ said Donna, slapping him affectionately across the side of the head. ‘I think it’s sweet, Jo. Can’t imagine what you see in my stinky brother, but if he’s going to go out with anyone, I’d much rather it was you than that narky old Gill.’

I don’t even like to hear Gill’s name mentioned in front of John. I’m permanently convinced she’s going to persuade him to dump me and go out with her again. Apparently she’s been telling everyone John’s the love of her life and that it’s just a matter of time. I hate her.

I twisted my head and glared at Donna, mouthing ‘Shut up’.

‘What?’ said Donna, as Gareth grabbed her roughly round the neck and pulled her towards him again.

All in all, I was glad when we arrived at the car park of the ice rink. John had been driving so fast that, even though I was in the front seat, I was starting to feel very queasy, and the thudding music hadn’t helped either. I was also quite nervous about the skating. What if I kept falling on my bum, and made a leg-scissoring, windmilling-armed fool of myself? Or what if someone skated over my fingers and chopped them off? I had a lurid image of the ice stained crimson in sweeping petal shapes around me, and my unattached fingers rolling across the rink, as embarrassing as tampons spilling out of a handbag.

Gareth and Donna piled out of the back seat and I took off my seatbelt, leaning forward to pull open my door handle.

‘Wait a minute,’ said John. He leaned sideways towards me and kissed me softly on the lips, gazing at me with his flecked amber eyes. ‘You’ve got multi-coloured eye-tops.’

‘Eyelids, John; they’re called eyelids. And it’s eye shadow,’ I murmured back, feeling so grown up, and so turned on.

‘It’s pretty,’ he said, his lips millimetres from mine.

Donna and Gareth banged on the passenger window, making us both jump.

‘Now who needs to get a room?’ Donna shouted.

‘By the way,’ John whispered in my ear before we got out of the car, ‘don’t worry about Gill. She
is
narky, and now I’ve got you, I don’t ever want to get back with her again. OK?’

I love that boy sooooo much.

We all queued for skates, joking about smelly socks as we handed over our boots and shoes to the girl behind the counter (who, I noticed, stared openly at John, pairing up his battered black lace-ups on the counter with something approaching tenderness). John helped me get my feet into the hard blue plastic clodhoppers by pushing down on my shoulders and lacing them up for me. I gazed down at the top of his head before allowing him to escort me, both of us clumping awkwardly, to the side of the rink. John was holding my cold hand in his warm one and he led me onto the ice with such grace and confidence that it was easy to slide along next to him.

‘Hey, you’re a natural at this,’ he said, as we swept past a dad with a dangerously wobbling toddler in tow.

I was frowning with concentration. It was difficult, but not as
difficult
as I had expected. The ice was desperately—and somehow
surprisingly
—slippery, but once you got into a rhythm, it was OK. It was the other skaters who were more of a problem, veering and lunging towards us.
Curiosity Killed the Cat
blared tinnily over the speakers as we dodged and weaved around, our blades churning the ice into vapour trails of slush.

‘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 a
fter 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 to 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.