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

never touch the stuff again. I asked if she would leave him for good too. Never touch him again. Never see him again. Never contact him again. She wouldn’t assure me on that. She said things weren’t that simple.

‘That was when things turned bitter between us. I didn’t want to talk to her after that. I told her she should go back to Durham. I wouldn’t go to the police because I didn’t want her to go to prison, but I couldn’t be around her if she was still seeing him. I left her in tears in the kitchen. I feel awful about it now. And at the door, I said something worse. I told her he had images of him fucking her. They’d been left on my pillow. And I said, “I’ve still got them in case you want to keep them for your scrapbook.” That was a reference to something she used to do as a kid – even into her teenage years.’

I nodded, ‘I remember you telling me about it, when Titus used to do the same when he was younger.’

Matthew looked sad and distant after I said this. ‘Perhaps he inherited her creative streak,’ he said, his eyes shining. ‘She didn’t just do it for holidays, though. She’d fill these large, leather-bound books with photos of all sorts of things. Animals, pages from books, leaves. She’d always have a new project on the go. And somehow, me mentioning something so vulgar in the same breath as one of her childhood passions felt nasty. Ugly. Something broke between us that day. Things were never the same again, right up until she died.’

Matthew paused, and looked over at me. It was as if he knew what I was thinking. Knew that I was going to ask the question that had been on my mind since he started talking. ‘You never felt you could tell me?’

As I said it, his face crumpled into something broken, fractured, like a smashed mirror. For a second, I thought he was going to burst into tears. Then he pressed his fist to his mouth and took in a deep, shaky breath.

‘There’s more. A lot more. To be honest, all that stuff was just the beginning.’

Chapter Thirty-Nine Charlie

Less than a week to go

Matthew settled himself down into the single-seater chair near the fireplace. He rubbed his face. Brushed his fringe away from his forehead. Then focused his eyes on the floor as he continued to talk.

‘I wanted to believe Collette would keep her word about no longer taking the stuff. I really did. And for a while, it looked like she was managing to do it. Then it became clear she was still seeing him. Still spending time with Johnny, even though she knew what he’d done to me. I began to have panic attacks. Would wake up at night, convinced the men in masks had returned and they’d castrated me or raped me with the hunting knife, or bound me up again in ropes. I began popping pills – opioids, on prescription – convinced I could still feel the bruises from their rough treatment of me. I was terrified Collette might bring him to the highlands and I’d have to see him face-to-face. I started to avoid her, even though this clearly hurt her. I was tempted to have it out with her, tell her she’d betrayed me, her brother, by continuing with that psychopath. But I didn’t. I couldn’t talk about it all. It was at Christmas when she came up to me and asked – in fact pleaded – for me to join her and our mutual friends, David and Sylvia Gibson, along with some of their cousins, on a skiing trip in Norway. They’d hired a few cabins and she said she was worried about me and it would probably help. I didn’t have to ski; she just said a change of scene and being around people would help both of us. She was worried about me, sitting in the castle with my thoughts. Eventually I gave in. She was going for a couple of weeks at the start of January before her university semester began.

‘The first few days were actually really good. Like, more than I could have ever thought possible. It did wonders for my spirits, and the change of scene really did have a rejuvenating effect. I’d always got on well with the Gibsons and it was really nice to spend time with them again. Their cousins were really nice too. All of it was going surprisingly well. Until one night, when we were having dinner in the main hotel building, Collette disappeared off for about half an hour. When she came back she had snow in her hair; she’d evidently been outside. Later I would discover she’d been outside to let someone into her cabin. Someone who’d just arrived. In Norway.’

As Matthew paused I felt myself tensing, realising where this was heading. Of course, I’d always known the vague circumstances around the death of Titus’s father, but never had Matthew told me them in such clear detail, with such deliberate attempt to get the whole story across to me, the full picture. And I had a really horrible feeling of foreboding that I couldn’t shake off. A strong part of me even wanted to run out of the room, out of the house, away from his strained, slightly trembling voice. Away from what secrets it could reveal. But I didn’t.

I carried on listening – a decision that would change our lives for ever.

Matthew had to take a quick break at that point. He’d been talking for a while and hadn’t gone to pee since we’d got home from Oxford. While he went to the bathroom, and no doubt checked Titus was still safe in his room with his music playing, I went into the kitchen and grabbed some leftover pizza and pushed it into my mouth. I was suddenly starving.