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

off a cliff in a murder-suicide gone wrong. He died. She survived. And so did his lover, their mutual friend who was in the back of the car and able to tell the police about the argument that had unfolded and how the woman behind the wheel deliberately accelerated towards the cliff edge in an attempt to kill them all. Matthew had said that the woman who killed her husband can’t have truly loved him, otherwise she wouldn’t be able to inflict the risk of life-changing injuries or, as it turned out, death upon him. He could be so naïve sometimes. So I told him it was because she loved him so much that she was completely capable of doing so. Love was the vital ingredient. And when combined with betrayal, the resulting reaction can have the power of a nuclear bomb.

‘I won’t ignore him,’ I said, finally meeting Archie’s gaze.

‘What are you going to do?’ he asked. His voice was still calm and free from fear or accusation. But there would be many times in the future when I would wonder if he knew then how all this would turn out. Because what he said next suggested he always had a good measure of me. And the type of person I was, or would one day become.

‘I would urge you, Charles, to pause before deciding to do anything substantial.’

I frowned at him. ‘Substantial?’

Archie held my gaze, then spoke slowly, as if choosing his words with great care. ‘I think we both know that you don’t react well to being betrayed. You don’t take kindly to being made a fool of. I wouldn’t want you, or your anger, to drive you to do something … irreversible.’

We continued to look at each other, neither of us speaking for a long time.

Then he said, ‘Charlie, I think we both know what I’m referring to.’

I knew. Though I’d forgotten how well he knew me. How much I had let him see of me in the past, and how much that must be worrying him now. Archie was the only person I’d ever really spoken to about the thoughts I had when I was young. The thoughts I’d always had, if I’m honest. One night when we were both sixteen, he’d come over to spend the night in St George’s Square. I used to find the holidays without him rather tough. He was the best friend a guy could have at Eaton and we’d find every excuse to be in each other’s company when we weren’t at school – to the point where, when people heard that I was gay, they presumed Archie was my lover. This wasn’t true. There was nothing sexual at all about our close friendship, but there was a deep foundation of love that had never gone away. And because of this, that night in my bedroom when we were sixteen while my Dad was out at his club, no doubt blackmailing some government minister into creating another legal loophole to his benefit, I spoke to Archie candidly about my deepest secret. About how often my mind would turn to violent thoughts. A yearning for violence. For retribution to be meted out to those who wronged me.

‘When do you think about these things?’ he’d asked, turning to face me.

‘Every day,’ I replied. ‘When someone upsets me, when a teacher mocks me, when it’s clear someone I fancy doesn’t fancy me, when someone pushes past me rudely in the street…’ I remember his eyes looking into mine as we lay together on my bed, a horror movie VHS playing in the background.

‘Tell me some of the things you think about,’ he said. He kept his tone calm and measured, but I could tell his interest had been piqued.

‘Just … hurting them. Kicking their teeth in. Stabbing them in the heart. Watching them bleed.’ His eyes widened just a jot at this but, credit to him, he didn’t even flinch.

‘Is this … a sex thing?’ Archie had asked, frowning a little. The suggestion of this hadn’t angered me – it just sort of baffled me.

‘No, not at all.’

I could tell this slightly puzzled him. I think if it had been a ‘sex thing’ he’d have at least been able to chalk it up to sadism or a weird kink. But without that context, he wasn’t going to understand fully. I knew then and there that whilst I wouldn’t receive any judgement or criticism from Archie on the subject, I wasn’t going to get any answers. It was clear that he would never really appreciate the sense of completion, the sense of satisfying inevitability of imagining hurting people, and using this as a kind of weapon against others every day of my life. Although his next words had given me some inkling of a deeper disapproval: ‘Perhaps … don’t talk to anyone else about it though. Wouldn’t want them getting the wrong idea about you.’

He gave me a small smile, but there was something else in his eyes that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Disappointment, perhaps? Or concern, maybe. I looked at his face for a few more seconds but there were no other clues, no other ticks of repulsion or fear, so I pulled my eyes away from him and turned back to the film we had been watching.

Now, two decades on from that conversation, its reverberations still echoed between us. A teenage boy’s confession to his best friend, coming back to haunt two grown adults at the brink of middle-age. Occasionally, throughout the years, Archie had touched on this conversation. I think it had been his way of cautioning me against my own nature. Steering me onto the right path. My mind flicked back for a second to the lunch we’d had earlier in the year, when he’d referenced my assault on Jasper King at school. One of his little warnings, perhaps, to keep me on my guard. Remind me of what is right and what is wrong.

I thought