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

‘There’s lots of food, darling, if you’re hungry,’ my mother called out from inside the living room, the sound of Daniel Craig’s tones getting quieter as she turned the volume down.

‘I’m fine,’ I called back.

My father looked at me, as if trying to work something out. I’ve always found his gaze somewhat penetrating, ever since I was a child, and now it was as if he could tell there was something wrong and, crucially, I wasn’t getting very far in working out what it was.

‘Sleep well,’ he said, finally, and went back into the lounge.

I was about to go back upstairs, try to read or do something until sleep overtook me, when something caught my eye.

Matthew’s shoes.

They were by the door where he’d taken them off. The shoes of someone who had traipsed, according to him, through ditches and fields in order to get a signal to call for help. A call to a breakdown service, but not to me, his husband, or his son. And somehow he had managed to do this without getting a speck of mud on the main body of the shoes or the laces or, as I saw as I turned them over in my hands, on the soles. They had a few bits of grit and dirt on them. But that was it. No sign anyone had trampled through damp undergrowth. Through puddles. Through a muddy field.

I put the shoes back down, then went silently back upstairs, through the doors to our bedroom, then into the bed and under the covers. And all the while, I was desperately trying to stop my imagination running away with itself.

Chapter Eighteen Rachel

Eight months to go

I started to find it very difficult, turning up to the book-club meetings, appearing all happy and friendly, even though everything around me seemed pointless and impossible. I tried to get work in a garden centre in Hampstead, but they clearly wanted a plant specialist, not someone to stick ‘reduced’ stamps on the leftover Halloween decorations. A café in Battersea didn’t want me, since I’d never had any other jobs waiting tables or handling food. They said they had twenty-two candidates answer the job advertisement and some of them had ‘extensive experience in the food services sector’. This was for a minimum-wage position in a basic café. The whole thing made me want to cry.

It was Meryl who came to my aid. At the end of the November book-club meeting, she offered me a lift home on her way back home. I told her it wasn’t on her way home at all – it would mean her veering off in a different direction – but she just waved her hand and said her driver Kenneth was used to her taking detours. In the car, Meryl asked me some direct, probing questions. Was I happy? What sort of work was I looking for? What could be done to improve my current situation?

It turned out she had the answer.

‘I can put you forward for a job, my dear. It would be no bother.’

I blinked at her as the car crawled along in the slow-moving late-evening traffic. ‘You mean … at Streamline?’

I was familiar with the brand – who wasn’t? – but it had always been well out of my price range and the thought of entering their offices in my normal clothes filled me with horror. I’ve always thought I dress as well as I can on a budget, but thinking of setting foot in the corridors of a major beauty company … I’d feel like a fish out of water.

‘Yes, at Streamline. I still flatter myself to think I have at least some sway with what goes on there, even if I have taken a bit of a back seat in the running of the business in recent years.’ She must have seen how worried I looked because she smiled and reached across to lay a hand on my arm. ‘Don’t look so worried, my dear. It wouldn’t be anything too high-powered or stressful. Just office work. I’m sure they can find you an admin role of some sort. It may not be the most intellectually stimulating job in the world, but I imagine it will be better than fighting for shifts in some dodgy café.’

I laughed. ‘Yes, I expect it would.’

‘Excellent,’ she said, giving my hand a tap. ‘I’ll talk to Sophia; she heads up PR and publicity and is also on the board. She’ll settle everything in HR for you.’

Everything was settled, just as easily as Meryl had made it sound. The next day I had a call from Ms Sophia Nero-Booth at Streamline to ask me to come in for an interview at the end of the week. By the following Monday, I had a job. The interview itself, though held in the inevitably swish head offices on Buckingham Palace Road, was far more relaxed than I ever could have hoped. Indeed, Sophia greeted me like an old friend, even though I doubted she’d have looked twice at me if Meryl hadn’t more-or-less instructed her to find me employment.

Those first few weeks at the start of December were, to my surprise, almost fun. I was good at organisational tasks and quickly got to grips with my daily responsibilities. By the end of the third week, however, I was starting to feel low again. The novelty of the job had worn off, and because I had a number of hours of down time each day (which I filled by reading novels in the ladies’ loos) and not enough work to keep me mentally stimulated, I ended up ruminating. About the past. The present. And how things were going to turn out in the future. I hadn’t really given myself a time limit in London, and suddenly the months were slipping away without me doing what I had properly come here to do. Perhaps it would have made more sense to keep