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

out of my trousers from the floor, walked slowly upstairs, unsure if I was going to find my husband in bed asleep or ready to start up the conversation we’d been having the night before. In actual fact, neither was the case. The bed was empty and made, although not quite as neatly as how Jane did it. I showered whilst my phone was on charge and came back to see a string of messages from Matthew. Three were sent around midnight last night when I was out on my long walk, and the fourth was sent at 6.40am this morning. It read:

We both need some thinking time. I’ve gone up to Scotland to stay in the castle for a few days. I left a message for Titus but if he asks tell him he can call me. I love you.

I put the phone down without replying.

The night before had ended with Matthew confessing everything to me. The true story about what had happened to Johnny Holden that night on the veranda in Norway. How Matthew had been … modest about the level of his involvement in his death.

After I told him I knew he had murdered Johnny, Matthew sort of collapsed. I watched, not going over to the bed to comfort him. Just watched calmly, waiting for him to pick himself up and stop shaking enough to talk. His worst nightmares were becoming real before his eyes and I couldn’t bring myself to display the compassion he so desperately wanted in that moment. I did, however, avoid shouting and raging. I stayed calm. I asked him to explain. Although, of course, there wasn’t really much to explain after I’d worked it out. Just for him to correct a small detail: that he hadn’t stood by to watch as Johnny had sunk slowly under the water and drowned of his own accord. Instead, he’d helped Johnny on his way, laying a hand on his shoulder to tip him off the ledge into the hot tub and under the water’s surface.

He carried on making his excuses, going round and round, saying the same thing over and over again about how it was his only choice, he just wanted to save his sister, it was a moment of madness but he acted out of love. ‘Was it though?’ I eventually cut in. He blinked at me, confused by the question. ‘Was it entirely out of love?’ I clarified. ‘Or was it something else?’

‘What do you mean?’ he said, although Matthew wasn’t stupid. I think he’d worked out the point I was making.

‘Well, you said yourself how much of an effect Johnny’s attack had on you. How his awful treatment of you that night in the grounds of the castle had haunted you. So I’m asking: are you sure you killed Johnny because of the danger posed to your sister? Or for another reason? Like … revenge.’

He kept his eyes on me. Staring wide. Pleading. ‘I just wanted to save my sister.’

Another lie. I knew it as soon as I heard it. Whether it was because he couldn’t admit it to himself or because he couldn’t bear telling it to me, I don’t know. But after that moment, I didn’t want to hear any more.

‘Well then, that was a fairly pointless reason, wasn’t it?’ I said, flatly. ‘Because she died less than a month later. You know, if Johnny Holden had still been alive, and they’d been together when she took that industrial dose of heroin, maybe he’d have been able to save her.’ I knew my words were cruel, but I said them anyway. They didn’t bring me satisfaction as such; they were more anaesthetic to my pain and anger and a steadily churning nausea that had started to rise within me once more.

Ignoring Matthew’s pleas to stay, I went to the bed, picked up a pillow and told him we’d speak in the morning. I was done.

Of course, we didn’t end up speaking in the morning. We wouldn’t end up speaking until the day he died.

Chapter Forty-Four Charlie

The week of the murder

The heat wave that had engulfed the south of England from mid-June to late July burnt itself out as we entered August. Suddenly the skies were grey, the temperature was colder, and autumn was definitely on the horizon. Golden leaves littered the pavements of Chelsea; they’d fallen prematurely due to the searing heat, and now, coupled with the colder weather, gave the impression of October rather than late summer.

Matthew stayed away from the house for five days. Part of me wondered if he’d ever return at all.

I couldn’t face going into the office, so told them I was unwell and stayed in the house, unsure what to do with my time. Things reached an apex when Jane started hoovering around me, so I tried to do something productive – from reading to exercise – but conflicting senses of both tiredness and buzzing restlessness consumed me.

On Tuesday morning, when I was answering a few work emails on my iPad at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, I heard the thud of the front door and then a bag being dropped onto the carpet. My heart instantly started to pound, expecting Matthew to stroll into the kitchen, but it wasn’t Matthew. It was Titus.

The realisation was both one of relief and disappointment. I wasn’t even sure what footing I was on with the boy at the moment after our borderline row on Sunday morning. He’d sent me a message the day before that just read Still alive, but nothing more.

‘You’ve decided to move back home, have you?’ I said, meaning it to sound only semi-serious.

‘I hadn’t moved out,’ Titus said, coolly. He wandered over to the fridge and drank some orange juice from the container, then filled up a glass.

‘So how was the shag-athon?’

Titus narrowed his eyes as he surveyed me across the kitchen countertop. ‘That’s a bit … I don’t know, inappropriate.’

I shrugged a little.