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

In the nights leading up to the murder, I allowed myself to dwell on the past. Allowed myself to dwell on memories I normally tried to keep locked up. Doing so both stoked me up to press forward, and reminded me why it all mattered. As if I needed reminding.

Travelling over to Norway to find my brother was one of the most difficult, most stressful times in my life. Through talking to some of Collette Jones’s university friends, and Johnny’s business acquaintances, I’d discovered Matthew Jones had flown out to try and convince his sister to break up with my brother and come home. He was staying in a room in the main building of the posh hotel complex. Of course, I couldn’t afford anything of the kind, what with my mounting credit-card debts and the less-than-secure state of my income. So I booked myself into a hostel on the outskirts of the forest, a half hour walk from the ski resort. It was a dreadful place – mix-gendered dormitories filled with penniless students going backpacking and various other unsavoury-looking characters. I was terrified. But I had to carry on, for the sake of my brother.

The first shock was to find out he was now a father, meaning I, of course, was now an aunt. I had no idea Collette was pregnant; they’d been out in Norway for so long at this point, and I think she stopped him from letting his family know. I hammered on the door for ages before it was opened by a sleepy-looking Johnny. His hair had grown from the close-shaved look he had when he was in England. It reminded me of when he was younger, his scruffy blond hair adding to his cheerful, sunny personality. I saw Collette wandering into view behind him in a dressing gown, clutching something making a mewing, coughing sound.

‘Oh my God, Johnny,’ I gasped, my hands rising to my mouth in shock. ‘What have you done?’

That meeting didn’t go well. He was either drunk or stoned and accusing me of ‘stalking him like a fucking nutcase’. Things got heated pretty quickly the next day when I went back and told him it would break Mum’s heart when she found out he’d had a child without telling her and that he needed to come home and we could work out what to do all together. He’d stood up, standing shakily in the hot tub he was sitting in, towering above me, told me I was being selfish and just wanted us to be a ‘happy little family’ which was, according to him, ‘a fucking fantasy I needed to let go of’. He then called me a bitch and told me to fuck off. I knew it must be the alcohol or drugs talking, but I still looked back up at him in shock. That was when it caught my eye. The mark on his right arm. Little circular wounds, merging together into one blot. Needle marks. So he had started on heroin. And short of calling the cops and trying to land my own brother in a Norwegian jail, there wasn’t anything I could do to stop it.

I only saw Matthew three times when I was there. Well, four times actually. But I wouldn’t discover the third until a long time after. The first was when I saw him strolling towards the cabin on the first day I arrived, the second when I had journeyed into the main building of the hotel, desperate for a proper meal. I’d been buying snacks at a nearby petrol station, but on the third night couldn’t bear it any longer. I went into the luxurious, warm main entrance of the hotel, and was about to be shown to a table in the restaurant when I saw the occupant of the one next to me. ‘Oh please,’ I said very quietly to the waiter, ‘perhaps … a table near the back, by the windows?’

‘Of course,’ the waiter said, giving me a kind smile. Before I was led over to the other side of the restaurant, I glanced at the young man. He was pretty-boy handsome, and everything from his cream cable-knit jumper to his manicured nails shouted money and comfort. He was rubbing his eyes with his hands, and when he set them down on the table I saw his face. Stressed, tired, a man – no, a boy – out of his depth. I’ve often wondered, looking back, how things might have turned out differently if I’d gone to sit at that table and explained to him we were both there for the same reason. Offered to join forces in persuading our siblings to come home. But I didn’t. I went and ate a horrendously expensive meal I couldn’t really afford on the other side of the restaurant, and kept my head down for the rest of the evening.

The next day I went for a long walk around the grounds of the hotel, and into the forest that bled into its grounds. Even though I was in the process of giving up my studio and photography business and looking for other employment, I still carried my camera around with me to take occasional pictures. There was something about it that soothed me.

That was the day Johnny died. I flew back to England in the late afternoon. I would never forgive myself for not trying to visit him again. The body was returned to us in the UK – Collette wasn’t married to him, and I don’t know who they considered his next of kin, nor how the Norwegians worked the whole thing out, but eventually we were allowed to hold the funeral at home in Bradford. Collette came on her own. She sat at the back, sobbing quietly. None of us spoke to her.

The months and years that followed were almost unbearably difficult as my mother’s cancer took hold, her grief over her son’s death knocking down any fighting spirit she may