The Venus Trap (13 page)

Chapter Twenty
Day 3

W
hat actually happened last week with Sean was that
he left
a note stuck behind the windscreen wiper of my car: ‘I REALLY REALLY MISS YOU.’ My heart leapt with joy—
tempered
with caution, of course, because he’d done this before. I still seemed to run into him with alarming regularity in
Brockhurst
—it’s another reason I’m glad Steph and I gave up the office, because it was right next to the gym—and he’d give me these long, longing looks and the little sad smile that said
I don’t know what went wrong, I still love you
. . . I could assume—as Donna obviously did, when I talked to her about it—that this was just wishful thinking on my part, were it not for the further evidence.

The day after the note, I got a call from him. Last Monday, I think it was. Steph and I were in her flat having coffee. I’d been telling her about the first couple of dates with Claudio—wait, that’s a point! She knows about Claudio! Perhaps she’ll realise he might have something to do with it when she hasn’t heard from me for a few days?

Anyway, when I saw the display on my phone screen, I froze.

‘It’s Sean,’ I hissed in hushed tones, as the phone pulsed in my hand.

‘Well, answer it!’ she said, half-impatient, half-resigned. She was clearly thinking, ‘Oh no, here we go again . . .’

I answered it. ‘Hi, Sean.’

‘Hi, Jo, you all right? Just drove down Elm Road, saw your car and . . . well . . . I wondered what it was doing there. How come you’re not in your office?’

He was checking up on me, because my car wasn’t where it should be? All those months after we split up, and when he’s got a new girlfriend? How odd.

I wish he’d bloody well check up on me now. He could take Claudio out in a second.

‘We’ve given up the office. I’m just visiting . . . a friend,’ I replied then, not wanting him to know that it was only Steph, that I wasn’t visiting a boyfriend. I felt like saying, ‘What’s it to you?’ but my annoying heart was too busy singing, ‘He’s jealous, he’s jealous, he still wants you!’

‘So are you still there?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘Wondered if we could have a chat. If I’m not interrupting anything, that is.’

I didn’t know whether to dance around the room, or to tell him to sod off. This was really it this time—he wanted me back! He’d realised that there was no point going out with the Twelve-Year-Old (as I christened her, after I saw him outside Boots holding hands with her a couple of weeks ago. I bet she buys all her clothes from Gap Kids. No pub in the land would serve her without ID) and he wanted a real woman again.

I went over to the window and peered out—sure enough, there he was, standing by the kerb, suspiciously eyeing up my car and scuffing the toe of his trainer on the pavement as he talked to me on the phone.

‘See you in a minute, then,’ I told him and hung up, turning to Stephanie. ‘He wants to talk to me! He’s outside.’

Steph joined me at the window. ‘Couldn’t you have played just a
little
bit harder to get? Make him wait for at least ten minutes.’ Then
she added,
‘In fact, do you really think you ought to go at all? I mean, you’ve been here before, haven’t you? He’s going to tell you how screwed up he is over you, and how much he misses you, and you’ll get all excited—but then when you ask him to give you two another try, he’ll say no, and you’ll be gutted. Again. He’s a textbook sufferer of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I read all about it in
Cosmopolitan
. He can’t commit, but he just wants everyone to be in love with him. And besides, you’ve got another date with the Italian Stallion bloke next week, haven’t you, so why don’t you concentrate on that instead? He might be the man of your dreams.’

I hesitated. She had a point—about Sean, that was, not
Claudio
. Despite fancying him, I was pretty sure even then that
Claudio wouldn’t
turn out to be the man of my dreams, but I’d agreed to go out with him anyway. Just in case.

As for Sean, I already knew exactly what I was going to do.

‘Oh, you know what I think: there’s no point in trusting my instincts. It won’t make any difference in the long run. What will be will be.’

Stephanie sighed despairingly. ‘Well, I think that’s very defeatist,’ she said, uncapping a tube of hand cream and rubbing a smear into her fingernails. The smell of almonds filled the air.

‘You can’t help who you fall in love with,’ I added feebly,
checking
my make-up in her mirror. ‘Well, see you later. Don’t watch from the window. You’ll embarrass me.’

‘Don’t worry. I don’t think I could bear to watch,’ she said. ‘Good luck. You’ll need it.’

‘Went to Eastbourne last weekend,’ Sean said without preamble when I joined him on the kerb.

It was exactly a year since he and I had gone to Eastbourne for the weekend. I wonder if he remembered that. We’d had the most amazing time: playing pool, dancing in a tacky pier nightclub, having totally outrageous sex in the hotel, on the beach, in the car . . .

‘With the Twel—your girlfriend?’

‘Michelle. Yeah.’

My eyes instantly filled up. ‘Sean. I so don’t want to know that! It’s a year since we went. Why would you tell me that you’d gone again with someone else?’

‘No, but you don’t understand. All weekend, I could only think of you. I missed you so much. We went to all the same places that you and I went to. We even stayed in the same hotel! I couldn’t stop talking about you, not once.’

‘That must have been nice for Michelle,’ I said sardonically.

Sean dismissed this with a wave of the hand. ‘Oh, she’s not the jealous type.’

‘Just as well, for her sake. Anyway, Sean, like I said, I really don’t want to know.’

He reached out and touched my hand. ‘Shall we sit in your car for a bit?’

I shrugged, glancing up to see if Stephanie was watching.
Fortunately
there was no sign of her.

‘OK.’

We climbed in awkwardly and sat facing one another across the hand brake. He picked up my hand again and caressed it gently.

‘The reason I’m telling you is this: it wasn’t the same, going with Michelle. It was like going with a mate. We didn’t even kiss, let alone do anything else!’

I shook my head, confused. It was clear that things had moved on between the two of them since last month, when he’d announced that he ‘couldn’t do anything’ at all with her. Now it seemed that he could, but hadn’t wanted to in Eastbourne. Perhaps he was waiting for her sixteenth birthday. Or for her to grow some breasts, or something.

‘Everyone thinks I’m so happy and sorted out,’ he continued, ‘but I’m not. I’m so screwed up, I just don’t know what to do. I keep thinking I should go away, on a retreat or something, or maybe go travelling round the world for a year.’

‘I think that’s a great idea,’ I said grimly. ‘Do it!’

Sean gazed deep into my eyes, still stroking my hand. It felt as though his touch brought back as many memories as there were nerve-endings on my palm.

‘I couldn’t,’ he said. ‘I’ve got . . . too many emotional ties here to think about leaving.’

Now he was really rubbing it in. ‘With Michelle?’ I said, just to check.

He smiled sadly. ‘No. With you, of course.’

I was flabbergasted. ‘Then why don’t you want to give things a go with me, if that’s true?’

He looked shifty. ‘Well. It’s a bit awkward, see. Michelle’s
stepmother
is the bar manager at the gym.’

Unbelievable. I couldn’t help being sarcastic: ‘Oh well, in that case, you’ll have to marry her, won’t you?’ I wanted to slap him around his big stupid head.

‘Do you want a hug?’ he said, ignoring my snarky comment.

Say no, say no, say no
, my instincts begged me from somewhere deep inside. As usual I ignored their distant trumpeting, and nodded.

‘Let’s get out so we can have a proper hug.’ Sean opened the door and leapt expectantly into the gutter, his arms open. It was so surreal. He always liked me to be up a step from him when we hugged, so our heights were better matched. I couldn’t help thinking that the Twelve-Year-Old probably had to stand on
a stepladder.

Still, I fell into his arms, and I had to admit it was like coming home. He enveloped me in a huge bear hug, my head
fitting
perfectly into the space between his neck and shoulder. We stayed there for a long time. I inhaled the warm smell of him and felt his body pressing closely against mine. Motorists and passing pedestrians gave us odd looks, this couple half on the pavement
and half
in the road. Meanly, I wished that the Twelve-Year-Old would drive past and see us (although, of course, she’s probably not old enough to drive, is she? Perhaps she could cycle past instead. I imagined her pedalling along behind her dad, on a tug-along attached to the back of the big bike, like Richard used to do with Megan. Ha . . .).

‘We had such an amazing relationship. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. We had an incredible time, didn’t we? Nobody could ever compete with you, Jo. I mean it. You and I were something else together, weren’t we? But it’s too late now . . .’

Sean was murmuring into my ear over the sound of the passing traffic, caressing me, holding me tighter and tighter, and I wanted it to last forever. I caught a glimpse of Stephanie at her living room window making hideous faces at me, but I pretended not to see her and closed my eyes. I kissed the side of Sean’s neck and moved my mouth towards his—but he turned away at the last minute.

Suddenly I knew exactly what he was thinking: he was
thinking
, ‘I’m not being unfaithful to Michelle if we don’t kiss. It’s just a hug . . .’

I broke away from him and stared at him. Time to stop pussy-footing around. ‘So why are you telling me this? Why did you want to see me? Do you want us to get back together? I mean, I’m not saying I would, definitely’—this was my attempt to play hard to get—‘but I might consider it. It might not be too late.’

He blushed slightly and stepped back onto the pavement so that he was taller than me again.

‘But it is too late, Jo . . . I’m with Michelle now.’

Frustration, rage, and sorrow built up in me until I felt like jumping up and down with fury. He’d got me again, reeled me in like a fat stupid carp. I wanted to scream insults at him, punch him, kick him in the balls. This was the man who was wild with jealousy as I was going through the long, painful process of extricating myself from my marriage, which I thought I had to do because surely nobody could ever love me more than Sean did. This was the man who sobbed with abandon when I told him I was struggling with my decision to get divorced and thinking that the right thing to do was surely to at least try to give things a go with Richard. This was the man who begged me not to. This was the man who told me gleefully that he knew exactly how he was going to propose to me, just as soon as my divorce came through. This was the man who, right after that last wonderful weekend in Eastbourne, said he couldn’t bear it any more and that he knew the right thing to do would be to leave me alone until I got the divorce sorted out and finalized, that he didn’t feel comfortable going out with a woman who was not yet divorced, even if she had been separated for some months. This was the man who said he’d wait ‘as long as it took’ until I could be his, because I was worth waiting for.

This, then, was the man for whom I hurried through my divorce, quashing the nagging little voice in my head
saying
‘You haven’t given you and Richard a fair chance to work things out.’

This was the man who, when I finally rang him up to tell him that my decree absolute had arrived, announced that I’d always be the love of his life, but that ‘he couldn’t handle it’, and left me.

What I wanted to say to him that day was, ‘You are a
narcissistic
, selfish arsehole, and I wouldn’t go out with you anyway. I’ve met someone else, as it happens.’

But of course what I actually said was, ‘Well. Good luck. See you around.’

So I’m not at all surprised that he’s texted me since. I’m such a wuss when it comes to Sean, and because he really is a narcissist, he just wants to keep me hanging on indefinitely.

Bastard.

Chapter Twenty-One
Day 3

A
fter Claudio’s gone I lie there for a very long time, my ear throbbing, while the stars gradually subside. I wish I could get rid of the memories of Sean as quickly.

I have to make a conscious effort to get him out of my head.

I have to make a conscious effort to get away from Claudio. I force out the bitter thoughts of Sean and try to concentrate instead on my current predicament.

Last time I read my diary there was a mention of the fact that Claudio fancied me. I think it’s weird that I had no recollection of it. I hadn’t even remembered that he was a member of the swimming club too. I had better not tell him what scant memories I have of him. He’s still upset that I didn’t remember him writing me that stupid song. I decide again that I should perhaps try to flatter him a bit instead. Tell him that I had a secret crush on him when we were kids, but didn’t realise how he felt. Would that work? It feels so deeply counterintuitive, but I need to start trying harder to get him to believe I could love him. I can’t be too over-the-top, but if I play it right maybe I can let him think I’m thawing towards him. After all, I did really quite fancy him up until recently. It can’t be impossible to ‘fake it till I make it’, can it? I remember times towards the end with Richard when he kept reaching for me and I kept backing away. I had no desire for him at all, not an iota. When I—reluctantly—used to kiss him it felt like licking a frozen pump, fearful and desperate.

I pick up the diary again. There is a section of its pages that are clipped together with a paperclip. When I first found it, I hadn’t thought much of it, thought it was random, but now I’ve got to the page, I see the warning:

PRIVATE! EVEN MORE PRIVATE THAN THE REST
OF THIS DIARY.
PLEASE DON’T READ.

I suppose that must have been for Mum’s benefit, although I don’t know that she ever even knew I kept a diary. I was pretty haphazard with it, though. Weeks went by without me writing anything, and most events seem to be written about in retrospect, days or sometimes months after they happened. I think I had delusions of being a novelist around that time, so I probably looked at it as if it were my ‘memoirs’.

I’m intrigued—what was going on in my life at that time that needed such rigorous censoring? But as soon as I start to read, I remember. It wasn’t scandal or misbehaviour that I was trying to keep private. It was shame. Even now, more than a quarter of a century later, I feel it afresh. My other ear starts to burn in tandem with the one Claudio whacked.

I don’t even want to write about this. Maybe it will help. But I would die if anyone ever read it. Just die.

I suppose it started after Daddy died. The first time it was a massive craving for sausage in batter and chips. But Grease + Calorific Awareness = Guilt, and it was only the taste I wanted. So I had an idea.

What if I went along to the Chinese chip shop, handed my money across the shiny metal counter, carried the hot damp heaviness of the plain paper packet home in my hands, smelling the mouth-watering scent of the chips and feeling the tingling of the vinegar inside my
nostrils
. . . What if, once home, I unwrapped the parcel, inhaled the full unfettered heavenly smell, added a snowstorm of salt and a spring shower of extra Sarsons, took a bite of the spicy, warm sausage in its delicious swaddling of batter . . . but just didn’t swallow it?

I could just spit the mouthful out, into a paper towel, right before that point of no return when my saliva went into overdrive and the swallowing reflex became too overpowering (we did it in Human Biology). That way I’d get all the taste with none of the calories. Perfect!

The thing is, though, I underestimated just how powerful the swallowing reflex really is. As soon as that golden vinegary potato hit my taste buds, my mouth simply refused to let it go, zipping shut my lips, forcing me to swallow. My throat wanted that food, and so did my tummy. They weren’t giving it up, not until it had reached its destination.

So that idea didn’t actually work. I ended up eating every mouthful of two great fat sausages in batter, and a large portion of chips. Afterwards I felt so bloated, huge, a grease-soaked sausage myself in a 34H bra and Lee jeans that had to be undone at the waist. The food sat uncomfortably in my stomach, like it was saying to me, Look, I never wanted to be in here in the first place. What are you going to do about it?

It didn’t take me long to realise that it wasn’t too late to fix it. A clandestine trip to the bathroom, two saliva-slick fingers down my throat, and whoosh, problem solved. Slowly at first, and then in great liberating splurges of anti-calorie. Straight down the toilet, cut out the middle man.

Not quite as satisfactory as spitting into a paper towel, and harder work, but infinitely more rewarding, tastewise.

That night, the night of Balaclava Man, after Donna took her damp togs and my appropriated Europe single and went home—in a mini-cab, paid for by Mum, I later found out, ‘in case he was still out there’—I was lying in bed, on my left side so as not to put any weight on my grazed right cheek. But my nose was all blocked up on the left, from crying, and I wanted to roll over. I tried lying on my back, but it made me feel vulnerable. Then I realised that I was starving. Crying always makes me peckish. On the day of Dad’s funeral I ate sixteen mushroom vol-au-vents, one after the other.

I waited until all was silent downstairs, knowing that Mum would have nodded off on the sofa, the fire out, test-card on the television, nobody to tap her on the arm and say, ‘Come to bed, darling, you’re snoring,’ as Daddy used to do. It never occurred to me to tell her to wake up and go to bed. It would have been presumptuous. I tiptoed downstairs to the kitchen in my dressing gown and slippers.

I opened the larder door and conducted a quick recce of the contents. Not much that day, since it was a Friday, the day before our big Safeways shop-cum-ogle-at-John, but enough to make do with. I found four tins: a tin of custard powder, one of fruit cocktail, one of peaches, and one of prunes. I heated up a pint of milk and stirred in the custard powder. I love custard powder. It’s the way it’s pink, before it goes
yellow
, and it tastes gritty, pink and sugary. I poured it into a big mixing
bowl and
added the tinned fruit. If only there was some fresh cream in the fridge. I thought about adding a carpet of hundreds and thousands, and some glac
é
cherries, and bingo, I’d almost have a beautiful trifle—but decided that the aesthetics weren’t really top of my agenda. I rinsed out and squashed the empty fruit cans as quietly as I could under the hard rubber sole of my slipper before hiding them at the bottom of the bin under the sink. Then I washed up the custardy saucepan and wooden spoon, running the taps at little more than a trickle. Eventually I tiptoed down the hall past my snoring lonely mum and back to my bedroom, nursing the mixing bowl.

It occurred to me as I sat in bed shovelling in the fruity custard that this was the same mixing bowl that Dad used to bring out whenever I was poorly. He’d perch on top of the covers next to me, holding the bowl underneath my chin for me to vomit into, stroking my sweaty hair away from my face. ‘My beautiful girl, my beautiful daughter,’ he’d murmur, even when I was bug-eyed, retching stinking bile.

That night I didn’t need to stick my fingers down my throat. In fact I hardly made it to the bathroom in time before the whole yellow lot came up again, prompted only by the memory of the sour breath of that man in the balaclava, and his mean trespassing hands roaming over my fat helpless body.

I close the diary. I don’t do that any more, thank God. But I still want to sometimes. I hate myself so much that I want to push everything good away, out of me.

That’s the crux of it, really: I have never loved myself, so how can I love anybody else? Since John, I’ve
always
faked it. I faked it with Richard at first, and when I stopped faking it then I pushed him away. In hindsight I faked it with Sean—I thought he was the love of my life, but if I’m honest, I fell for him out of vanity, sheer vanity and boredom. The fact that a beautiful, fit, young man could love me in such an all-consuming way blinded me to the truth—that I was a conquest to him, a MILF, a sexy older married woman. When I extricated myself from my marriage, he ran a mile. I guess I hadn’t been the only one faking it.

Therefore I can fake it with Claudio too.

I have to be able to—my life depends on it.