Free The Venus Trap by Louise Voss Page A

days before we had any money, in the mid- nineties . When Richard took me out to dinner for the first time, I was appalled that the bill came to twenty-seven pounds. It seemed the height of extravagance. How many thousands of dinners did we have, over all the years since, I sometimes wonder?
    I can’t do anything for a long time. I just lie there missing Richard and thinking about how I wish I had never set eyes on Sean, the catalyst for my disaster. My own personal marriage-wrecker. And now, six month s after it’s all over with Sean, I get Claudio? Give me a break!
    Self-pity threatens to swamp me, so I make a conscious effort to rally. I remember when I was a kid my mum saying, ‘If you’re upset, go and clean out a cupboard.’ Although ‘upset’ is an understatement in this situation, I take her point and decide to attack the remaining chaos on my bedroom floor.
    As I’m sitting cross-legged on the carpet separating tiny components from board games into piles, there’s a scratching at my door, and a tentative mew. Lester! Claudio must have left the kitchen door open. I crawl across to the door—it seems easier than standing up and walking—and lie down on my belly, whispering to him through the gap at the bottom.
    ‘Hey, baby, how are you? Is he feeding you? Are you OK? Can you go raise the alarm for me, eh? Mew once if you’re in Cincinnati .’ I’m paraphrasing a line from Anchorman that Ron Burgundy says to his dog on the phone, and it almost makes me giggle. Not quite, though.
    Richard and I love that movie.
    In response, Lester slides a paw beneath the door and scrapes at the carpet by my face. I stroke the top of his soft foot and hear the low rumble of his purr, followed by a gentle flopping sound as he collapses onto the floor, pushing his front leg as far as he can through the gap. It is so comforting that it makes me cry. We lie like that for a long time.
    Some time later I hear Claudio’s footsteps coming out of the kitchen and down the hall.
    ‘Hello, cat,’ he says. Lester’s foot vanishes from my view and I sit up, feeling light-headed. ‘Jo, I’ve been Googling recipes for tonight. I’m just popping out to Sainsbury’s. I thought I’d got everything I needed yesterday but I’m missing a few ingredients and you don’t have them.’ He says this like an accusation. ‘Do you need anything?’
    ‘Can you let Lester in here?’
    There is a pause.
    ‘Please?’
    Another pause. ‘Well, I don’t see why not,’ Claudio says, unbolting the door and opening it just enough for Lester to squeeze his narrow tabby body through. I’m so happy to see him that for the first time my heart doesn’t sink when Claudio locks me in again.
    ‘Hello, my baby, my darling,’ I croon like the mad cat-lady I’m bound to end up as—assuming I even make it out of here alive. I gather him into my arms and press his dusty warm fur into my face. He struggles and protests so I let him go; he is happier to weave around my legs until he flops down again, on top of an Aran sweater which in turn is covering up most of a manila A4 envelope that I hadn’t noticed before in all the mess. I pull it out from underneath him and open it curiously, to find several typed sheets of paper. When I realise what it is, I make a sound that is half-sob, half-laugh. It’s the copy I made of the printout of every single text that Sean ever sent me, over the course of our eleven-month relationship. I typed them up myself on my laptop, painstakingly transcribing all those emotions because I couldn’t bear the thought of losing them.
    Claudio’s gone out. I hear the front door close then, faintly, the door to the street. I’m going to have another go at screaming. I don’t think it will do much good but I have to try. My bedroom and bathroom are at the back looking down over a few small squares of unloved gardens, and the front of the building is on a busy road where there’s a lot of traffic noise.
    This flat was only ever