The Venus Trap by Louise Voss Read Free Book Online Page B

information in it.’
    I suppose it did have. Eighty-six was the year I first met Richard , the year he first fell for me.
    He sighs heavily, as though I have made a great imposition, and moves to leave. ‘Very well. I’ll get it for you.’
    ‘Thank you, Claudio,’ I say meekly as he leaves the room.
    What I don’t understand is how I could have believed that this, any of this, would be better than being married to Richard. Especially up until last year, when I thought I was happily married. I had security, mutual trust, affection, validation. Yet I divorced the man whom I loved more deeply than I’ve ever loved anybody else, and he wasn’t having an affair. He didn’t beat me, or roll his eyes if I said something inane. He wouldn’t dream of kidnapping a woman and attempt to make her love him.
    I can’t stop thinking about him. We told each other ‘I love you’ every day.
    When Megan was a baby, Richard didn’t wrinkle his nose at the mere suggestion of changing a nappy, nor did he feign sleep when she cried, leaving me to get up and give her a bottle. He’d get up and feed her himself, and I’d hear him singing to her. That song that goes It’s all about you, it’s all about you, baby . . . was a particular favourite. Every time I hear it, I think of him.
    He bought me clothes and jewellery that, nine times out of ten, were things I would actually have chosen for myself. He did DIY around the house, expertly and without being asked. And he could cook—boy, could he cook. He cooked for me every single night, even though he didn’t get in from work until eight thirty most evenings. Pale and hollow-eyed with exhaustion, he would pour us both a glass of wine, wrap the navy and white striped apron around himself, and set to in the kitchen, knocking up something delicious and often unexpected—tuna steak with chilli and water chestnuts, or a quick Thai curry with fresh lemongrass—‘Ricky meals,’ he called them, although he hated being called Ricky by anybody else.
    To top all that, he’d been in love with me, and only me, since he was sixteen years old, apart from a brief relationship with a skinny girl called Chrissie when he was eighteen. He says he never loved her, though. She picked her nose in her sleep, allegedly.
    It took me a lot longer than that to come round to his way of thinking, but that only serves to give him more credit for persistence and patience.
    Well, that’s one way of looking at it. The other way is to say that I should have trusted my instincts. I should never have allowed him to talk me into falling in love with him. But when you’re twenty-one, and insecure, and your instincts have let you down so many times that you can only regard them with the deepest of suspicion, it’s easy to accept that perhaps someone else knows what’s best for you.
    Perhaps by this reckoning, Claudio is the man of my dreams . . . After all, you could say there are similarities between his behaviour and Richard’s. They both decided that I was the only one for them, and I didn’t fancy either of them when I first met them.
    This thought makes me feel sullied. I can’t believe I even thought the words ‘Claudio is the man of my dreams.’ He’s the stuff of nightmares.
    I don’t understand it. I wouldn’t fancy me, if I was a bloke. They probably only fancied me when I was a teenager because I had massive boobs, and I don’t even have those any more. It occurs to me that I seem to attract these needy, persistent men—but then I feel guilty for bracketing Richard with Claudio.
    Richard was—is—a lovely man. He looked after me. He rescued me from myself. He gave me a home, stability, self-respect. We loved each other. So how could I have let it go all the way to separate houses and solicitors and signed divorce papers? His new girlfriend must be helping him regain his happiness, because he’s putting back some of the weight that fell off him after my shock desertion. The stress-induced