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

King, when we were playing cricket. He’d stepped out of position, put me off my game, and then lied about it to everyone else after, making out I was the one at fault. I was rather hurt, to be honest, since I’d always regarded him as a friend. Our scuffle in the changing rooms later put an end to that though, and he walked away with a bleeding lip and me with a strict telling off and a call home to my parents, where phrases like ‘zero-tolerance policy’ and ‘never happen again’ were used.

Once off the subject of my past misdemeanours, Archie did his best to convince me to accompany him to some ghastly art exhibition launch in the evening. I took a sip of my ‘Gorgeous Greens’ smoothie and shook my head. ‘Can’t, I’m sorry. We’ve got a friend coming round.’

Archie rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, is it one of those book-club affairs Matthew’s finally dragged you into?’

I gave a half laugh to this. ‘No, no. Well, actually, sort of. It’s this Rachel woman Matthew’s become rather taken with. I’m probably being unfair, as she did come to Titus’s assistance during an attempted mugging…’

Archie’s eyes widened. ‘An attempted mugging? What did she do, fight them off?’

‘Well, something like that. Told them to fuck off and leave the boy alone. And it worked, according to Titus. They left. So I suppose we do owe her a dinner at least. Matthew and Titus are home preparing it now.’

Another eyeroll from Archie. ‘It’s only just gone twelve. Surely they don’t need, what, seven hours?’

I waited a moment, nudging a bit of flaxseed out of my teeth before I responded. ‘Matthew seems to be a bit … I don’t know, a bit taken with her.’

Archie noticed the pause, and the way my voice had got a little quieter and more serious. ‘You’re not suggesting…’

I batted his unfinished question away with my hand. ‘No, no. I know he never would. It’s her I’m worried about. I think he’s always super-friendly and keen to make friends and she’s taking advantage of that. I’m just not thrilled with the idea of her coming over for supper … dinner … whatever.’

This earned another odd look from Archie.

‘Matthew doesn’t like the word “supper”,’ I explained. ‘Thinks it makes us sound too upper class.’

Archie nodded with understanding. ‘Delia can’t abide what she calls “poshisms”. Did you know she grew up partly on a council estate in Rainham? Her father was from, in her words, a “traditional East London working-class family”. It was her mother who turned her into one of us. She was in a different circle. Probably why she ended up divorcing Delia’s father, hence the Rainham flat. When she stayed with him, it was in some ghastly high-rise on some estate built in the 60s to hold Dagenham Ford workers – the Mardyke Estate or something.’

Something Archie said reminded me of our impending dinner guest. ‘Rachel lives on the Churchill Gardens Estate.’

‘That’s Westminster, isn’t it? I think I remember hearing about it getting some lottery grant or something similar.’

‘Yes, it’s in Pimlico,’ I said. ‘I grew up right near it; it’s practically next to St George’s Square. I dare say it has its fair share of troubles, but I never had any issue, although Mother never liked me walking through there. Rachel’s just moved in. I think that’s why Matthew wanted to take her under his wing.’

Archie raised one eyebrow, then took a sip of his drink.

‘What?’ I said.

‘It’s nothing,’ Archie said, turning a bit red. ‘Sorry, I wasn’t trying to say anything…’

I leaned in. ‘Oh, come on, I saw that weird expression. What were you thinking?’

Archie looked pained all of a sudden, and I was struck how old he was getting – how old we both were getting. Still only thirty-six, but it was a long way from the sixteen-year-old boys we used to be, happily playing rugby and moaning about our schoolwork.

‘Well,’ he said, slowly, ‘I … I’ve never known whether to mention this… I’m probably speaking out of turn, here…’

‘Now I’m terrified,’ I said. ‘Please, spit it out.’

He let out a heavy sigh. ‘This isn’t my place to say, but you know Jeremy was at St Andrews when Matthew was there?’

I vaguely knew Matthew had known Archie’s brother Jeremy at university, but they weren’t very close, so it rarely came up.

‘Well, Matthew … um, according to Jeremy, in his final year of his Master’s, Matthew had sex with his housemate.’

I shrugged. ‘So?’

‘His housemate Megan.’

A small bud of foreboding started to bloom within me. Matthew had slept with a woman at university. This fact itself shouldn’t really have concerned me. Of course, it’s normal for gay men to have dabbled with the opposite sex in the past, the same way it’s not uncommon for heterosexual guys to experiment with other boys. I wouldn’t have minded a jot if I’d known about it before. But this was the type of thing Matthew would normally have told me. We’d chatted about past relationships, past dates gone wrong, past screw-ups and successes. Never once had he mentioned sleeping with a girl when he was at St Andrews. When he was twenty-two. That was relatively old – not an experimental fling when you’re a teenager. He was a man. An adult. And, learning it now, from Archie rather than from Matthew himself was – there was no other word for it – hurtful. The secrecy, the borderline lying-by-omission … it hurt me.

‘I knew I shouldn’t have said anything.’ Archie was looking pained, then leant back so the waiter could serve us our food. I wasn’t a bit hungry anymore. I just wanted to leave.

‘It’s … it’s fine,’ I said, trying to pretend I couldn’t hear the pounding of my own heart in my ear. ‘I … well, I guess we’ve all got our wild pasts.’

He laughed and nodded. ‘You can say that again. But honestly, mate, I didn’t mean to imply Matthew was, I don’t know, having it off with