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

worry in my eyes, or if she’s just waiting for a reaction, but she holds my gaze for what feels like a disproportionately long time. Then she says, ‘We’ll leave it there for now. But we may need to talk to Titus again at some point.’

The chill down my spine develops into an icy burn. I only manage a jerky nod, and, ‘Right,’ before I stand up a little too quickly and show the detectives out of the library.

‘We appreciate this is a difficult time,’ DI Okonjo says as she steps out of the front door. ‘I hope you understand we just want to make sure the charge against Rachel is safe and there isn’t anything … unusual going on here.’

‘Unusual?’ I ask, my voice sounding uncharacteristically high-pitched.

She doesn’t reply to this directly, just nods and steps out the front door.

‘Thank you for your time, Mr Allerton-Jones,’ DS Stimson says, sounding a touch friendlier than he had when he first entered. Maybe the two of them have a good-cop/bad-cop thing going on that they haven’t quite ironed out. Then I see DS Stimson look round the outside of the house once again as he walks down the steps, and shake his head with a smirk. We aren’t people to them, I think. We’re things. Props in their pantomime. Actors in their strange play, there to be moved about and manipulated.

‘If they do need to speak to Titus again,’ Jacob says as I close the door, ‘just give me a call. And remember, you can ask to be present as the boy’s appropriate adult. He doesn’t need to do it alone.’

I nod. ‘Thank you. I’m going to need to think about things for a bit. Do you want to speak to my father at all? I can go and find him.’

Jacob shakes his head. ‘I’m actually running late for another appointment. Your father phoned me just in time before I set off.’ He surveys me as if I were still a child, sitting on the window seat as my parents hosted dinner parties, occasionally trying to talk to the guests in my no-doubt irritatingly precocious way. ‘Chin up, my dear boy,’ Jacob says, laying a hand on my shoulder. ‘And of course, it goes without saying, I am very, very sorry for your loss. I’m not sure I said that properly before. It breaks my heart to see your family experience something like this. But I’m sure you’ll all come out the other side.’

I give him a thin smile. ‘I do hope so.’ I open the door again and Jacob leaves. ‘Someone’s delivered flowers,’ he says, bending down to pick them up. ‘Odd for them not to ring the doorbell.’

I take them from him. The bunch is made up mostly of roses, already arranged in a glass vase, and there is an envelope attached to them. I bid Jacob goodbye and close the door, setting the flowers down on one of the little tables in the hallway, leaving the envelope next to them. I’m about to go upstairs and check on Titus when my mother spots me from down near the entrance to the kitchen.

‘Darling, what’s happening? Have the police left?’

‘Yes,’ I say distractedly, not wanting to discuss what was said but knowing I probably should.

‘Your father’s in his study and wants to talk to you,’ she replies, her worried eyes peering into mine. ‘You really don’t look that well,’ she says. ‘I think you should probably have a lie down.’

‘I’m fine,’ I reply, distantly. ‘I just want to check on Titus.’

She looks even more pained at this. ‘I really hope you know what you’re doing,’ she says, but lets me go without further protest.

I don’t know what I’m doing. In fact, this past forty-eight-hour period has been a journey of painful self-discovery for me: that I’m terrible at tactics, planning, and thinking on my feet. I can feel the situation hurtling out of control and I take the stairs two at a time as I march upstairs.

Titus is in bed. It’s alarming me how he seems to have taken to sleeping during the day since his father’s death – although I have to remind myself it has still only been two days. I don’t know how long shock and grief are supposed to last, but it’s probably reasonable for a fifteen-year-old boy to still be reeling from the violent events of two nights previously. As I draw close, I discover he’s not asleep, but reading a book on his side, the hardback cover pressed into the pillows. I sit down next to him and he closes the book, keeping his hand at the page he’s up to, allowing me to see the title in full: Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Rising. I find the bleakness of his reading choice – an unusually violent and genre-focused choice for a reader usually more concerned with the classics or literary fiction – so disquieting it almost makes me flinch. I decide, however, not to remark upon it. ‘How are you?’ I say quietly, as if the room itself were asleep and too loud a noise would cause frightening things to happen.

‘I’ve been better,’ Titus replies, pulling himself up in the bed so he’s facing me properly.

‘Do you need to talk?’ I ask, laying a hand on his arm.

Titus shakes his head.

‘The police were here just now. I thought they’d ask to speak to you, but they were just interested in me today. They’ll probably return, though, once they’ve spoken to Meryl.’

He looks puzzled. ‘Meryl?’

I take a deep breath. ‘The situation involving Rachel, in Long Island, when she came into your room at night … I told them about that. But I said it was your dad’s bedroom – our bedroom – she came into, not yours. I said I was out for a run and she tried to … get with him. And he turned her away. I thought it would be a good way of making it seem like she was … I don’t