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

her physical appearance has markedly changed since I last saw her at the trial. Although she always had a slim frame, she’s lost a notable amount of weight. Her jaw and neckline are now pronounced and sharp, giving her a more unforgiving, maybe even crueller, look than before. ‘Thank you for coming.’

I take my seat, feeling awkward and a little nauseous. I find it hard to meet her eyes; she keeps hers trained on me, like a sniper fixing on a mark. ‘Well, like you said in your letter, I didn’t really have much of a choice.’

‘That’s right.’ She gives a short, business-like nod, as if satisfied I understand her message. I get the feeling she’s enjoying having the upper hand here. ‘Since we don’t have long, and I think we’ll both agree that we’d be better not to make meetings like this too frequent, I just thought it might be good for both of us to go through a few things before we start off properly.’

I frown at her. ‘Start what off properly?’

She smiles. ‘The rest of our lives, of course.’

The smile unnerves me. Makes me wary about what she’s about to say.

‘So,’ she says, shifting her chair closer to the table. ‘Now the dust has settled, I wanted to explain everything. I thought it was … well, your right. Right to know.’

‘Why you did what you did?’ I ask.

She lowers her voice to barely a whisper. ‘Why I gifted you your freedom.’

I don’t like the way she words this, and I feel my insides tighten as I finally allow my eyes to meet hers.

‘This is all going to sound a bit harsh about your dead husband, I’m afraid, but since the last time I saw you together you’d just plunged a knife into his heart, I don’t think you’ll find this too upsetting. But if you need a break at any point, do say.’

It’s a weird thing to say, reminiscent of the police interviews I’d gone through in the months after Matthew’s death. I don’t reply, just wait for her to carry on. She clearly has a little speech planned and, in spite of my discomfort, I’m keen to hear it.

‘I wanted your husband dead for years. Really, really wanted it. Desperately. I imagined all the ways one could possibly kill someone. You could probably call them fantasies. They helped me get to sleep at night. Anyway, you’ve probably worked out by now that Matthew killed my brother, Johnny.’

I nod.

‘I thought you might have. Did he tell you? Or did you piece it together yourself?’

‘He told me,’ I reply.

She nods. ‘I thought his conscience might crack. Was it, by any chance, on the day of the Ashtons’s anniversary party?’

‘Yes.’

She nods again. ‘Men really are so predictable, aren’t they?’ She rolls her eyes to the ceiling. ‘And they have a habit of underestimating women. Matthew underestimated me. What I would do. What I would endure. But I don’t think you did.’

‘No, I didn’t,’ I say. ‘I knew there was something … wrong about you. Something Matthew, in his constant effort to be nice to people and make friends, couldn’t quite see.’

Rachel looks at me, her face thoughtful, and I wonder if there’s perhaps a touch of respect in the gaze. But then she says, ‘He was just so keen to get to know me, wasn’t he? That took me by surprise at first, but when his WhatsApp messages started getting more and more flirty – well, I worked out he swung both ways. He was after something else from me other than book chat. That’s another thing men all have in common: they think with their dicks. You weren’t much better, really … so frightened that I was trying to seduce him or I had some perverted obsession with your adopted son. It always just comes down to sex, doesn’t it? Didn’t think to look elsewhere, did you?’

Her tone has become quiet, low, dangerous. I stay silent, uncomfortable in the knowledge that her assessment of me and Matthew has been, at least so far, depressingly accurate.

‘First, let me clear up why you killed him,’ she says, sounding a bit more business-like again. ‘It was because of his affair with the Ashtons’s daughter, wasn’t it?’

I give her a short nod.

‘And did you find that out on the night of the party?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘A bit later.’

A look of surprise flashes through her face. ‘Oh, well, I had presumed he would have told you everything all at once. Especially after … oh gosh, you don’t know, do you?’

‘Know what?’

She grins, relishing being the bearer of news. ‘Know that he was shagging her at the party. I caught them. They were in the bathroom, him and Elena. I’d followed them, of course, and could make out the shape of them through a crack where the door doesn’t meet the hinges. I waited until they’d finished before I confronted him. But, well, it’s all a little bit tacky, isn’t it? And a bit ironic, really, since I’m fairly sure the reason why my brother was allowed to die was because you lot viewed him as tacky. Working class. A low-life. Not one of the club. Went to a comp in Bradford, not a private school in Berkshire. A salesperson and small-scale entrepreneur rather than a high-flying company director or fashion designer or politician.’

This irritates me, as she probably knew it would. ‘He was a drug dealer.’

She shakes her head. ‘No, I’m sorry, but that’s wrong. He was a drug user. He was unwell.’

I let out a noise of disbelief. ‘He chose to take that stuff. He knew the risks. He knew the law. He knew what it would mean as soon as he started smoking and sniffing and injecting.’

She continues to shake her head, slower now, as if staring at a hopeless child. ‘Such hypocrisy. I would bet anything in the world – not that I have much left to bet – that you would indulge in a line of cocaine after a