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

‘Maybe we should be asking Titus that,’ I said, rounding on him. ‘Titus, what happened? Did she touch you? Where did she touch you?’

‘Just my face…’ Titus began to say, and I saw Rachel look over at him, as if mortified he’d offer up such a detail so readily.

‘I thought I was moving a pillow across,’ she said. ‘I hadn’t sussed out I’d gone into a different room. They all look identical.’ She then buried her face in her hands and sobbed. ‘I’m so sorry, Titus. I must have given you such a fright. It made me jump too, realising there was a person in what I thought was my bed.’

I made a noise of disbelief. ‘Regularly go to bed in your swimsuit, do you?’ I asked. My tone was probably a little too nasty, as Titus cut in, ‘Dad, please, she said it was an accident.’

‘I was going for a swim,’ she sniffed. ‘It was too hot; I couldn’t sleep.’

‘It’s OK,’ Matthew said gently, putting a hand on her shoulder. ‘You’re right; in the dark everything does all look rather similar.’

I was enraged that he was believing her preposterous story so quickly. This was something we should at least discuss together before we even entertained the idea that she’d just accidentally been scuttling around a teenage boy’s bedroom half naked.

‘It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have yelled,’ Titus said, looking awkward now, bunching his slim, gangly frame as if he was cold. ‘I just want to go to sleep. I’m sorry, Rachel.’

‘Stop saying sorry,’ I said. ‘You don’t have anything to be sorry about. It must have been frightening, finding someone crouching over you stroking your hair.’

‘I wasn’t stroking him,’ Rachel said, getting up so she could look me in the eye, pleading, desperate, imploring me to believe her. ‘Honestly, it was just a mistake.’

I stared back at her for a moment, not trusting myself to reply to her directly. Instead I turned back to Titus. ‘Why were you standing naked on the other side of the room?’

Titus ran a hand through his very ruffled blonde hair. ‘I’d taken my pyjamas off because it was too warm; the air-con isn’t strong enough. When I woke up and saw someone in the room, I thought this was like, well, a home invasion or something. Like that film, The Strangers. So I leaped out of bed.’

‘You see,’ Rachel said, her red eyes still on me. ‘It really is all a misunderstanding.’

To my shock, I heard Matthew chuckle. ‘It really does sound like it. Come on, we should all let our horror-movie addict here go back to sleep. Maybe a few less of the home-invasion thrillers in future.’ He said it jokingly to Titus, but the boy didn’t smile. He just nodded. Matthew started to lead Rachel away, who was still sniffing and taking deep breaths.

I walked over to Titus and put an arm around his shoulder. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

He nodded, looking a bit dazed and sleepy. ‘It just … made me jump, that’s all. I thought I was having a nightmare.’

‘That’s completely understandable,’ I said. ‘Come on, back to bed.’

It reminded me a bit of when he was little, when I used to sit on the side of his bed and read him a story. I pulled back the duvet so he could get in, then said, ‘Would you like me to get you anything?’

He pulled a face. ‘Like what?’

‘A hot drink?’

‘It’s, like, thirty degrees. And I’m not a baby.’

‘I know, I know, I’m sorry. This … we … we all make mistakes, you know. Me and your dad. Because you don’t have any older siblings, it means we haven’t had a chance to perfect our parenting. This period you’re going through … boy to man, that sort of thing…’

‘Please don’t,’ he groaned, rolling his eyes.

‘I’m just saying that it’s probably going to take some trial and error and you may feel we’re parenting too much or being too controlling; you’re growing up so fast, and to us it’s literally been the blink of an eye.’

He smiled. ‘Any more parenting clichés? Or can I go to sleep?’

I smiled back. ‘I’m just saying, have patience with us both. If it feels like we’re still treating you like a kid, it’s probably because we don’t want to let those days go. And because it’s all we’ve known for years.’

He nodded. ‘I get it, don’t worry.’ He settled back into the sheets as if he were about to fall off to sleep straight away, then said, ‘I think you’re both great, by the way. I mean, some of the others at my school ask what it’s like having two dads, as if it would somehow be strange. Especially the kids from countries where that wouldn’t be OK. And I always say you’re both perfect. Couldn’t be better, really.’

Disconcertingly, I found myself feeling a little moved, and instead of saying anything in return I just reached for his hand and gave it a squeeze. After a few seconds, I got up and said, ‘I’ll let you sleep. Love you.’

‘Love you too,’ he said, then, as I was about to close the door, he spoke again. ‘One more thing.’

I stepped back into the room, ‘Yes?’

I heard Titus sit up a bit more in his bed. ‘It was weird, you know. Rachel being in the room. I can’t quite work out what was a dream and what wasn’t but … I think she may have been standing here for quite a while before I realised she was real. It was … just weird.’

I didn’t know what to say. Eventually I took a deep breath and said, ‘Try to put it out of your mind. I’m sure she didn’t mean any harm.’

A few moments of silence passed, then he said, ‘OK,’ and I heard him relax back down into the pillows. ‘Goodnight.’

‘Night,’ I said softly, and closed the door, just as Matthew was approaching from around the side of the pool.

‘Is he