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

I’m furious at my own body for betraying me; the rage building within me causes my face to burn hot, the back of my neck prickling.

‘I think to most people it would be blatantly obvious what you and your lot do. You shift the goalposts for the less privileged. The goalposts that dictate what’s right and wrong, what’s success and failure, what’s deserved and undeserved.’

‘I haven’t done anything of the kind,’ I say through clenched teeth.

‘Then why wasn’t my brother allowed to live?’

‘Because,’ I say, louder than I intend, then lower my voice again, ‘because he was a layabout, drug-dealing vermin who destroyed the life of his girlfriend and the family that surrounded her.’

More shaking of her head. ‘You’ve got it the wrong way round.’

This makes me pause. ‘What?’ I say, looking at her knowing, infuriatingly self-assured expression. She sighs.

‘It wasn’t Johnny who introduced Collette to drugs. It was the other way around.’

There’s a shifting of the ground beneath me. A sense of déjà vu is corrupting my sense of reality, as if I’m being thrown back to a time in the past. Matthew standing next to the fireplace in our lounge. Telling me everything. Everything in his own words. His words. Things fitting into place for me. And now here it is happening again. Different truths, different stories. And always me, the one in the dark, the one from whom the secrets are kept.

‘You’ve been lied to,’ Rachel says, simply.

I shake my head. ‘No … no that’s not … Collette wasn’t into drugs before she met Johnny…’

Rachel shrugs. ‘I can’t prove it, of course, but from what Johnny told me, she already had established connections with dealers before she started her degree at Durham. Johnny just had the misfortune to shag her one night out the back of a club during her first term. Like your husband, he had a bit of trouble keeping his dick in his pants. But when he met Collette, he changed. He was always a kind, caring boy. Always looked out for me and Mum and Dad. Worked multiple jobs in shops and factories to bring in money. But when he started seeing Collette, his kindness and sense of duty went into overdrive. Everything he did was part of this huge effort to please her. And, thanks to her slipping an MDMA pill onto his tongue that night in the alley behind a club, he developed a taste for the same substances that she’d become acquainted with at whatever posh school she’d attended.’

I can’t cope with this. This is all wrong. It can’t be true; it just can’t be. I’ve seen photos of Johnny Holden. He looked awful – drug-addict thin, tattoos, not the kind of guy you’d want to meet on an empty street at night.

As if she can read my thoughts, Rachel carries on, ‘I think your crowd just presumed he was the more natural criminal. Couldn’t possibly be dearest, darling Collette, could it? With her Dior coats and Mulberry handbags and a cut-glass English accent even though she was Scottish. But honestly, can’t you see there’s a problem if you never thought to question all of this? Never thought that maybe there was a clear attempt to paint her as the victim, him as the poison, the parasite, the thing they needed to get rid of.’

I shake my head, slowly. ‘I … don’t know… I never thought…’

‘No, well, you wouldn’t, would you.’ Her lips twist as if in revulsion at me. ‘You really are all the same.’

‘But Matthew said … he said he was attacked. By Johnny. He said Johnny and a group of other young men turned up in the night and terrorised him. They did terrible things. Threatened to castrate him, kill him, forced him to take cocaine… It was … it sounded monstrous. And it was because he had been trying to get Colette to give up the drugs, distance herself from Johnny, do rehab or whatever was necessary to keep herself away from that sort of lifestyle.’

Rachel raises an eyebrow. ‘Johnny? Terrorise someone? I can promise you, no matter how many drugs he took, I can never imagine him ever doing something like that.’

I am struggling to fit this together in my head. ‘So you’re saying … Matthew was making it up?’ Even as I say this, I realise I can’t accept it, not when his description of the event had been so chillingly detailed. Rachel’s view of her brother must be a delusion, warped by her years re-living rose-tinted family memories before everything went wrong.

She looks back at me as if I’m stupid. ‘He’s already proved to be a liar at heart, hasn’t he? Did you even know he fancied women? In fact, did you even know him at all?’

This question hangs in the air between us for a few moments. I don’t answer it, and I don’t think she expects me to. Then she carries on, ‘Even if he was attacked, I could very much imagine other people not wanting him interfering in his sister’s life. I imagine she was very useful to a number of dealers – putting them in touch with other rich, young people like her. Maybe she was a bit loose with her tongue, blamed her brother too loudly for her attempts to detox.’

She may be right about some things, but she’s wrong about this. I am sure of it. I’d seen the horror of those memories come to life in Matthew’s eyes. Rachel must be blinded by her guilt, her sadness, her love for her deceased brother. Although I suppose, perhaps, she could suspect that of me. Blinded by guilt. Blinded by love.

I bring my hands to my face and rub my eyes. I’m suddenly feeling very tired. I thought all this was put to bed. I thought I was free from this turmoil.

‘So maybe now you can understand why I wanted your husband dead. But