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

know … bitter towards him. But I forgot…’ My voice shakes now, almost turning into a sob. ‘I forgot that she might have told Meryl that it was your room, not Matthew’s, she was caught in … so this may have just made things worse.’

I wipe my eyes and try to control my emotions, breathing slowly and clearly, my brain a mixture of panic at the situation and anger at myself for being so stupid – and for crying in front of Titus when I needed him to stay strong.

Titus surprises me with a small shrug. ‘We’ll just say Meryl’s wrong. That Rachel was probably upset about the ordeal but said it was me in order to … I don’t know … divert attention away from what really happened. In fact, are you sure Rachel would even tell Meryl anyway? Surely she’d have just been thankful nobody else heard the commotion and just, well, tried to forget about it?’

I’m impressed at how much more of a handle on the situation Titus seems to have compared to me. Even if I am keeping secrets from him. For his own protection, of course.

‘Yes,’ I say, nodding slowly to myself, ‘you’re right. You might need to say that to the police, if you’re asked.

He nods. ‘OK.’

I look at him, and he looks at me, and it’s as if, in that moment, I can see a replay of the whole violent carnage of that evening played out in slow motion: the blood, the gasps of shock from Matthew, and then Rachel, standing there, telling us what to do.

‘If you wanted all this to stop, right now, I wouldn’t blame you,’ I say, my voice low but thankfully steadier than it has been. ‘If you didn’t feel you can go through with this … with the lying, for the rest of your life, I would understand. I’m doing my very best for you, to make sure things don’t change, to make sure me, you, my parents, all stay a united team. But if you think it will be too difficult, now is probably the time to say.’

He’s still staring back at me, his face oddly blank. Then finally he says, ‘I think we should carry on as we are.’

I give his hand a squeeze, then get up from the bed. ‘I’ll leave you to your book. But come and find me if you need anything.’

As I close the door, I see him settle back down into his strange reading choice, leaving me feeling even more uneasy than I had when I entered the room.

Back downstairs, I know I should go to see my father to update him on my talk with the detectives, but detour via the kitchen for a glass of water. I see on the table my mother’s brought through the flowers I’d left in the hallway and left them on the kitchen table, the card now out of its envelope. I pick it up and glance through it. Then I see the name and freeze. It takes me only a few seconds to read the note, but I force myself to do it again, slower, taking in every single word, every fucking word. Then I pick up the vase and carry it roughly – vase, wrappings and all – and drop the whole thing in the sink, allowing the glass to smash. Grabbing a fire lighter from the windowsill, I begin flicking it at the flowers until the paper surrounding them catches alight. The roses themselves don’t burn properly, but start to shrink and curl as the wrapping flares around them, the smashed glass encased within it now breaking loose into the sink. Then I hear a noise from behind me.

‘What on earth are you doing?’

Chapter Twenty-Eight Rachel

Two months to go

I expected Matthew and Charlie to out me to everyone the next day after they discovered me in Titus’s bedroom. But, to my surprise, nothing further was said about it. Or at least, nothing to me. I suspected Charlie may have mentioned something to his mother, because she gave me another of her strange looks over lunch the next day. I decided it would be best to keep my distance from all three of the Allerton-Joneses and instead keep my attention on making sure Meryl was happy and had everything she needed, along with getting through book after book by the poolside.

It was the week after we returned to London when things became difficult. Meryl was asking me about timings between her hair appointment and the book-club meeting in the evening. The two of us were expected at Carlyle Square at 7pm, and when I looked up at Meryl over the pages of her diary, I felt my lip tremble a little. ‘I … I don’t think I’ll come,’ I said, trying and failing to look and sound normal.

Meryl’s kind green eyes rested on me. ‘My dear,’ she said, laying a hand on my arm, ‘what on earth could be the matter?’

I let my knees collapse so that I was sitting on the sofa and Meryl sat down next to me. Her hand once again ended up patting my arm, and after a few seconds of swallowing hard to hold back my tears, I was finally able to speak. ‘I don’t think … I would be welcome.’

Meryl brought her hand back to her lap. ‘I don’t understand, my dear, why would you not be welcome?’

I dabbed at my eyes with the back of my hand. I was supposed to be keeping a cool head. A calm, clear game, that was my aim. But suddenly, I felt a real, burning need to confess something, anything, some aspect of what happened in New York, otherwise I felt like I would shatter into a thousand pieces. ‘Something … something odd happened.’

‘Odd, what do you mean, odd?’ Meryl said, her brow creasing.

I couldn’t hold her gaze for long, and instead focused on my hands, clasped around her diary in my lap. ‘I