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

friends she’d known from school and who’d become more-or-less aunts to me throughout my childhood, along with some rather dull people my father was working with at that point in time – usually from the world of politics. Occasionally she’d add in a surprise, left-field choice. It’s amazing who my mother knows, or has connections to through her many networks of friends and acquaintances. One year she rustled up two minor royals and a celebrated film director.

This year the Ashtons had a prior engagement, to the disappointment of my parents. ‘It just won’t be the same,’ my mother sighed.

‘Who have you asked instead?’ I’d enquired back in the autumn when she was planning the whole thing.

‘Oh, just a few others – nice people, I’m sure you’ll get on with them.’

These ‘nice people’, it turned out, were a former Prime Minister and his wife – something I wish my mother had warned me about, if only to avoid me freezing in surprise as they walked into the drawing room. I whispered this to my mother once they’d gone into the drawing room for pre-dinner drinks. ‘Well, it was either them or the Kellmans or the Knights, and what with one of the Kellmans now being sort of … out of the picture, and one of the Knights … well…’

‘Dead,’ I said.

‘Yes, well, quite. So I just thought they’d make up the numbers nicely. I did, in the end, ask Louise Kellman but she’s rather withdrawn from view, as you can imagine, now married to a convict.’

The rest of the evening passed relatively pleasantly, with Titus clearly enjoying talking to our former PM, politely but firmly letting him know which parts of his policies he approved of and which, with respect, he felt were misguided. At dinner I was stuck next to one of my mother’s friends, Baroness Vanessa Woodford, a sixty-year-old widow who simply loved the fact she had a close connection to a married gay couple (with an adopted child to complete the picture) and would regularly give me updates she believed I would find interesting (‘Did I mention my window cleaner is gay?’). She considered herself very active on Twitter, although her timeline was mostly filled with retweeting anything posted by Stonewall, the Terrence Higgins trust, or me. In short, she generally considered herself to be a self-elected ambassador for the ‘LGBTQ+ community’ (I got the impression she loved the ever-lengthening nature of this acronym and spent most of her days hoping they’d hurry up and add a few more letters). On this night, over the pistachio ice-cream dessert, she told me that she had ‘added her gender pronouns’ to her Twitter bio, something she clearly expected me to congratulate her on. ‘And where is dearest Matthew tonight?’ she asked, looking terribly let down. ‘It’s simply ages since I’ve seen him.’

‘He’s got a work thing,’ I replied, trying not to show my disapproval. ‘He couldn’t get out of it. You know what academics are like. Odd bunch. He’s got to keep them happy.’

I have no idea really what academics are like, outside the forgettable lecturers I had at university, and I cringed inwardly at my attempts to make out as if they were like high-flying city-traders.

‘Oh, completely understandable,’ Baroness Vanessa said, patting my arm, almost knocking the glass of wine out of my hand.

‘Yes,’ I nodded, ‘completely understandable.’

Matthew arrived the next day, and we all generally had a fun time going on long walks through the grounds, eating a lot and watching films by the fire while my mother wandered around, checking the staff had sorted out the right food for the coming week.

It was on Christmas Day that things turned odd.

We had, as is tradition, unwrapped our presents after Christmas lunch, then sat and watched the Queen’s speech. Afterwards, Titus requested we watch some Dickensian drama thing involving lots of snow and poverty, and I was trying my best to look interested in it. My father had just asked Matthew if he’d like a brandy – only to find Matthew wasn’t in the seat he’d been in moments before.

Puzzled, I presumed he’d nipped off to the loo. When he didn’t return for another five minutes, I went exploring to see if he’d gone to get some of the leftovers from the kitchen.

He wasn’t in the kitchen, but through the thin windows I could hear him; he was talking on the phone, outside.

‘I’m sorry. You’re right, I should have called earlier…’

My attempts to move closer to the window resulted in me knocking an iron tray into the sink. Matthew then stopped talking abruptly, finishing his call with ‘I’ve got to go.’

I waited for him to come back into the kitchen, but instead he took the long way round, taking a right so he looped around the back of the house on the outside to enter through another side door. Frustrated, I stomped through, out of the kitchen, down the corridor, and almost collided with him as he came through.

‘Christ, you made me jump,’ he said, jumping back.

I had the feeling he’d thought he’d been able to sneak back in undetected. Before I could ask who he’d been talking to, he volunteered the information.

‘Sorry, I was just talking to Ali.’

I looked blank, so he continued. ‘My colleague, remember? There’s been a flood at one of the co-publishers we’re working with in Ireland. We’re probably going to have to push back some of our projects. Bit of a nightmare.’

I couldn’t help raising my eyebrows at this. ‘And Ali called you on Christmas Day about this?’

Matthew laughed – a strange, tight laugh, somewhat unlike him. ‘He’s a Muslim, so he doesn’t celebrate it, and it was me that phoned him. I didn’t respond to his emails about it yesterday and he was getting in a bit of a flap. And it’s an important book we’re working on, about how the current economic policies in the west are deliberately rigged to disadvantage the poor.’

I could see his face become animated and