The Venus Trap by Louise Voss Read Free Book Online

John. A dress I didn’t like but kept wearing because my dad bought it for me. My mum, missing my dad. He’d only died a few months before then.’
    Claudio doesn’t express any sort of sympathy. There was clearly only one point of interest for him, and he’s probably pissed off that I didn’t mention that he featured. ‘You were mad about John, weren’t you?’ he says, sulkily.
    ‘Yeah.’ No point in denying it.
    He sighs, long, heavy and bitter. ‘John always got the girls.’
    Then he stands up, picks up the tray, and walks to the door, unlocking it and backing out.
    ‘I’m tired. I’m going to watch TV in bed.’
    Thank God he’s not planning to sleep in my room, or Megan’s. I would rip his throat out if he slept in Megan’s room. I grit my teeth as I imagine his malodorous body sullying the purity and softness of her floral cotton sheets. But he is far too tall to fit into her three-quarter-size cabin bed that you have to climb a ladder to get to, even if he wanted to. His fat arse would never fit down the attached slide. And the thought of his head on her pillow, seeing what she sees before she goes to sleep—the whirling lions and zebras on her magic lantern, the butterfly stickers on her wall—makes me feel murderous. I’d almost rather he slept with me.
    I feel heady with relief that he’s finally going. The air in my room stinks of him. I don’t tell him that the TV in the spare room doesn’t work—he’s probably got an iPad anyway. I suppose I’d better give him the wifi code if he asks; otherwise he might come back in here to watch whatever it is he wants to watch . . .
    ‘But I’m going to leave you with a clearer answer to your question from earlier: it’s incentivisation. ’
    ‘What do you mean?’ A new trickle of fear snakes its way up inside me. I’m not even sure if incentivisation is a word—but it’s not the semantics that are scaring me.
    ‘It’s just over a week until your daughter comes back. So you have seven days to tell me you love me, in a way that I believe you really mean it. No bullshitting.’
    I shake my head incredulously. He’s crazy.
    ‘How do I do that?’
    He shrugs. ‘You can do it. Tell me your memories of all the other men you’ve known, then cleanse yourself of them. Photos, reminders, gifts. Help me plan our future. It can happen, if you let it. I have a lot to offer you—you’ll see. We could be great together. But you have to let me in.’
    Never.
    ‘And if you don’t,’ he says almost casually, leaving the room but not quite closing the door behind him so that there is just a crack through which he speaks, like Jack Nicholson in The Shining . ‘If you don’t convince me that you love me within seven days, I will kill you.’

Chapter Six
Day 2
    W hen I wake up at five in the morning, my head feels less muzzy and painful, but panic immediately surfaces, spurting in like water through the walls of a cracked viaduct: when will people start looking for me? Who knows what will have happened by the time anyone realises I’m missing? Perhaps nobody will realise, not until Richard gets back. I’m a freelance medical writer, no office to go into, no colleagues to miss me—I used to share an office with my journalist friend Steph but we gave it up just last week, because of the cost. I’m not due to see Steph or Donna and I don’t speak to them that often on the phone these days. There’s no reason for them to call me. Mum only rings me once a month from Scotland. Megan is unlikely to call me—she rarely does when she’s on holiday with Richard, and that’s fine with me because I know that it means she’s having a good time.
    Usually fine with me, I should say. Right now I’m wishing they called me religiously once a day because surely, after a day or two of my phone being switched off or unanswered, Richard would start getting worried? I never turn off my phone. I’m having a repeated fantasy in which he rings Donna and asks her