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

with a hard stare, then speaks in his low, firm voice. ‘You’ve been so incredibly stupid, Charles. The police will find this out. As we speak they’ll be scouring Rachel’s background and they’ll make the connection, if they don’t get it out of her first.’

Suddenly, my mother holds up her hand and says, ‘Stop, Michael. This is all going to be OK. It will all work out the same in the end. They’ll uncover the reasons, Rachel will go to prison for murder, and Charlie and Titus will be safe. Even if she decided to backtrack on her confession, this is still a pretty damning motive. As long as Titus holds his nerve.’

As she says this, I see my father looking between us both, looking even more grave and concerned than he did moments before. ‘Part of me thinks it would be best if we didn’t talk about this, but your mother has told me what Titus said to her the night before Matthew’s murder. And I agree with your mother that Titus needs to be protected. He’s got a great future ahead of him, I’m sure. It would be a tragedy if the police find out the real truth about this.’

I stay silent for a while after my father has said this. Then I stand up. I don’t plan on leaving. I’ve done enough walking away from my troubles. I just go to the window, look out at the dying light of the late afternoon, then return to sit back down and face my parents. ‘I’ll be forever grateful that you’re both ready to rally round a boy who isn’t even your biological grandson. It means a lot to me. That you’ve both been there for him throughout his life. And through all this. But I really have to ask: why are you so sure Titus killed Matthew?’

My mother and father stare back at me in amazement. ‘But … I thought we all understood that that’s … what happened, surely?’ Cassandra says. Then her face changes. And she looks at me with a mixture of pity and horror.

Chapter Forty-Three Charlie

The week of the murder

The morning after our night of hell, I woke to find Titus standing over me. I was on the sofa in the lounge, having been unable to spend the night next to Matthew after our discussion. I’d bypassed our guest bedroom and instead opted for the lounge – something to do with putting sufficient distance between us. Titus was fully dressed in a white Ralph Lauren shirt and light-blue shorts.

‘What are you doing down here?’ he asked, his expression unreadable. ‘Did you and Dad argue? I heard the front door go a couple of times.’

I pulled myself up so I was leaning on the arm of the sofa, the material slightly rough against my bare arms. I hadn’t wanted to return back upstairs to the same room as Matthew to get my pyjamas, so I’d shed my evening clothes and slept in my underwear, using a cashmere throw as a makeshift duvet. ‘Yeah, we did,’ I replied.

‘About me?’

I looked back up at his face, seeing the hardness, the resolute toughness that had become more frequent over this past year.

‘Sort of,’ I said, being deliberately vague. If only he knew to what extent the whole thing was about him, and how he’d nearly died one cold night in Norway, he wouldn’t look so unbreakable. ‘Are you going out?’ I asked, looking again at his attire.

‘Yeah,’ he said, brushing his fringe out of his face. ‘I’m going over to Melanie’s in Kensington for the day. Maybe the night too.’

This was something I hadn’t expected. ‘What? Melanie…? You mean … the eighteen year old?’

He nodded, and I could see in his eyes the slightest glint of satisfaction. He knew this news would disconcert me. Catch me off-guard.

‘Yeah. Although she’s nearly nineteen now.’

I noticed now the leather Mulberry travel holdall by his feet. ‘You’re … going to her place … to stay?’

He sighed in an over-the-top exasperated way. ‘Calm down. Only for a night or two. I’m not leaving home.’

‘But,’ I spluttered, ‘after yesterday? You and Pippa? And now you’re going to see Melanie?’

He shrugged, a tiny grin edging at the corners of his mouth. ‘Yeah, well, Pippa and I aren’t exactly an item. So I’m still a free agent where that stuff’s concerned.’

I looked at him in astonishment. Then I thought, should it astonish me? I’d been in love with Rupert for most of my teens, but I certainly hadn’t remained celibate throughout the intervening years before we’d become a proper item. But this was different. This was Titus. He was supposed to be young, innocent, a child, not some confident London Lothario sewing his wild oats left, right and centre. I thought about telling Matthew, bringing him down here, having it out with Titus, both of us a united front. And then, an instant after having this thought, I found I just didn’t care. Fine. Let him do what he wanted. Let him try to shock us. If Titus’s aim was to cause a stir and freak us out, he wasn’t going to get it.

I let myself thud back onto the sofa and lay back down. ‘OK. Whatever,’ I said. ‘Text us your plans when you know them.’

I could tell by the way he stayed there motionless that I’d surprised him.

‘So … you’re fine with me going to Melanie’s?’

I shrugged my shoulders and pulled the cashmere over me as if I was going to go back to sleep. ‘Sure. Just use a condom this time, OK?’ I closed my eyes and turned away from him.

Still he didn’t move. Then, after what felt like an age, he finally said, ‘I don’t know what’s going on here but it’s driving me up the fucking wall.’ Then I heard him grab his bag and stomp out of the lounge. The slam of the front door followed quickly after.

I got up off the sofa and, fishing my phone