The Dinner Guest by B Walter (best short books to read txt) 📕

perusing the Domino’s menu. I’m not sure what it was – the light-headedness that comes with knowing things are all OK, or a natural high that follows a tense couple of hours of anxiety – but I suddenly felt happy and free. ‘He’s fine. He’s completely fine. He’s sitting here now. We’re at home. Do you want to speak to him?’

I gave Titus the phone and he took it.

‘Dad, I’m fine,’ he said, rolling his eyes a little.

I took the Domino’s menu he was holding and pointed at the American Hot on one of the pictures, and he grinned and nodded. I went through to the kitchen while I ordered the pizza from the app on my phone, all the while aware I was listening out for a keyword. And before long, I heard it.

‘Yeah, Rachel. She was there. She was amazing.’

Chapter Eleven Charlie

Ten months to go

When Matthew arrived home, almost at the same time as the pizza, we went through a proper post-mortem of what happened to Titus.

‘I can’t believe they just tried to take your phone. In broad daylight. In Kensington.’ Matthew was both baffled and angry. I couldn’t help feeling, if I had said the ‘in Kensington’ line in another context, he’d have taken the piss out of me. He shook his head, then chewed thoughtfully on a slice of pizza crust. ‘I suppose they won’t ever catch the boys.’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘There’s a lot of CCTV around the Albert Hall area. They might be able to track them down.’

‘And Rachel was there?’ Matthew continued, looking at Titus questioningly.

He nodded. ‘She was just walking by. It was really nice of her to help out. It was all … well, horrible, really.’

‘I’m sure it was,’ Matthew said, rubbing Titus’s arm. ‘Thank goodness Rachel was passing by.’

‘Bit odd, isn’t it,’ I interjected, ‘how she was just there, at the right place and the right time?’

A frown creased Matthew’s forehead. ‘What do you mean? I’d say it was jolly good luck.’

I chose my words carefully as I closed up the pizza box in front of me. ‘I just mean that, out of all the thousands of people walking the streets of London, Rachel is in that very street at the very moment when Titus is in need.’

I could see Titus watching me now too, and I suddenly felt a tad rattled by their sceptical expressions. ‘Oh, come on, I just mean … what are the chances?’

‘Well, coincidences happen,’ Matthew said with a little shrug. Then he turned to Titus.

‘What were you doing in Kensington, anyway?’

The look of sheepishness was as plain as day on the boy’s face. ‘Oh, well … I was … just out for a walk.’

‘A walk?’ I repeated. ‘With all your school things? Why didn’t you drop them back home first?’

Titus was looking at his plate now. His lips twitched a little, like he was filtering his response, trying to think how to compose it. ‘I was … visiting a friend.’

Matthew smiled. ‘Well, why the secrecy? Is this a friend from school? What’s his name?’

Titus shifted in his chair, as if he couldn’t get comfortable. ‘I … it’s … she’s a she. Not a he.’

I could see Matthew computing this and then come to the same result at the same time as me: Westminster School doesn’t have girl students in the lower years.

‘So, if she’s a she,’ he said slowly, ‘and a friend from school, she must therefore be…’

‘A sixth former,’ Titus replied, his eyes in the direction of the table.

A few moments of silence greeted this. ‘Right,’ Matthew said. ‘Well, that’s nice.’

‘What’s her name?’ I asked.

‘Melanie.’

‘Since your school only allows girls in the sixth form, I presume Melanie goes to a different school?’ Matthew said.

I saw a flash of indignation ignite Titus’s face, but he didn’t dodge the question this time. ‘She’s … she doesn’t… She’s eighteen.’

Silence. Matthew and I looked at each other. He decided to go first. ‘Um … don’t you think … that’s a bit of an age gap?’

Titus met his gaze with defiance in his eyes. ‘There are nearly three years between you two. Why’s this so different? And anyway, why have you suddenly presumed that we’re fucking? I didn’t say we were.’

The shock at hearing him say ‘fucking’ hit me hard, almost like a physical force. Titus had sworn within our hearing before, but always in a comic way, or to deliberately wind us up. The use of the word in this context made it sound adult and serious, as if he’d joined a more mature and severe world without us realising it.

‘It’s different,’ Matthew replied, ‘because you’re fourteen years old, and we’re both in our thirties. And regarding the fucking, if we’re apparently using such language at the dinner table now, I’m sure you realise that wouldn’t just be a question of age-gap disapproval. That would be a crime.’

Titus let out a low laugh. ‘Oh, come on. I’m not like a victim of grooming or anything. I thought you guys would be casual about it.’

‘Well you clearly didn’t think that,’ Matthew snapped back, ‘otherwise you’d have told us about her sooner, rather than us having to wait for you to be mugged outside her flat before we found out.’

Titus got up abruptly. ‘I’m going to bed.’

Matthew stood up too. ‘We need to get to the bottom of this. Are the two of you an item? Were her parents home? Who even are her parents? Would we know them?’

Titus tucked his chair in under the table with a slam. ‘No, we’re not an item. She just fucks me occasionally when we both have some spare time. I’m sorry I nearly got beaten up and ruined your evening. Goodnight.’ He stormed out of the room and thumped up the stairs. We heard his door slam. Then Matthew put his head in his hands and rested his elbows on the table.

‘Christ,’ he said, ‘this is awful.’

I moved round the table to the chair next to him