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

meanwhile, is a strong believer in keeping the old character of a place alive. If my mother had remained in the house I grew up in, I’m sure she would have enforced a renovation upon it by now, as she has with a number of the rooms at Braddon Manor, much to my father’s barely contained annoyance.

A croissant is placed on a plate and slid towards me. It’s warm and has just the right level of crispiness and it’s only when I’m biting into it I realise how hungry I am. I let a few seconds pass while I digest her words. Then she begins talking again and her sentence drives any thoughts of my father from my mind.

‘This isn’t what you’ll want to hear, amidst your grief and what you’re no doubt going through, but you have to understand that Titus’s position in all this is, shall we say, a little rocky…’

I get up off the seat. ‘I can’t talk about this,’ I say, taking the croissant with me. I’d started to feel shaky as soon as she mentioned the word ‘grief’ – a word I’m not ready to accept or let into my world at present.

‘Oh, darling, I understand this must be … difficult.’ She too gets off her chair and comes around to where I’m standing, laying a hand on my shoulder. ‘Your father’s plane will land this evening. We’ll need to go through it all then, you realise? We won’t be able to avoid it.’

I grit my teeth and try to breathe slowly. ‘Don’t you think it would be better for everyone – better for you both, at least – if you didn’t know everything? The less you know, the easier it will be when…’

She grips me firmly with both hands now. ‘No. We’re going to talk it through; your dad has already contacted Oliver Harrington. We’ll all talk it through first, then decide what’s the best thing to do for Titus.’

I find myself wince at another mention of Titus’s name, the thought of him upstairs asleep, about to wake into one of the most difficult days of his life – one of a series of them – paining me greatly.

As if reading my thoughts, my mother then says, ‘If you wanted, I could talk to him beforehand. Tell him we’re all going to…’

‘No,’ I say, firmly. ‘I think … I think we should leave things be for now. Leave him be. I tried to talk to him last night, but he clammed up.’

I see the anxiety in my mother’s eyes. ‘I’m just concerned that there’s so much we don’t yet know – so much none of us understands. And the police will be able to tell if we’re not telling the truth if we don’t first get a handle on what we want our version of the truth to be. Do you understand me? At the moment, Rachel holds all the cards. We can discuss for hours why that might be or what she might be up to, but it’s important that, if she changes her story, we’re able to fall back on firm foundations – not weak guesses and suggestions.’

All I can do is nod and say, ‘I know.’ I’m finding it hard to look at her now. Everything she’s saying is unleashing the wave of anxiety I’ve had walled up within me since waking, and it’s threatening to rush through my entire being. I leave the kitchen without saying another word, walk back upstairs, and within minutes I’m throwing up into the sink in the bathroom. As I’m letting the gush of the taps wash away my vomit, I jump to see Titus reflected in the mirror. He looks like he’s just got out of bed, his hair all messy and ruffled.

‘Sorry,’ I say, giving the sink a cursory wipe with my hand, unsure why I’m apologising.

‘It’s OK,’ he says, his face drained and pale. ‘I’ve been sick too.’

Chapter Sixteen Rachel

Ten months to go

The dinner at the Allerton-Joneses’ had been going well before Charlie’s mother turned up. Cassandra Allerton seemed to be one of those very polite but chilly women – not quite over-posh and haughty, but not quite warm and friendly. There was something a bit Maggie Thatcher about her, although her dress sense was a bit more subtly stylish and modern. Anyway, our nice little dinner was interrupted by her barging in as if she owned the place (maybe she did, for all I knew) and sitting down to eat with us. That was when the odd moment happened. She was in the middle of talking when she suddenly stopped mid-sentence and looked at me as if I were a particularly confusing ghost. I could see her mind whirring, trying to work out what it was that had startled her about me. And I had a terrible feeling all this was a symptom of déjà vu. Sure enough, when she finally spoke, her words made that crystal clear.

‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I just … do you know, my dear, it’s the strangest thing, but I feel like we’ve met before.’

I tried to play it well. Make out I just had ‘one of those faces’. But it did make me worry that my efforts to befriend the Allerton-Joneses would be destabilised so quickly. I wracked my brains as to how she could have recognised me, tried to think if she and I had ever come into contact before. Perhaps she’d seen a photo somewhere. I couldn’t be sure. Or maybe, just maybe, it was a pure coincidence – that she once knew someone who looked like me, and I was reading too much into it.

Whatever it was, it meant I walked home later that evening feeling a lot more uneasy than I’d hoped, worried I was playing a far more dangerous game than I’d first realised. By the time I reached my flat, I was properly crying. Not sobbing, exactly – passers-by probably wouldn’t even have noticed – but