The Dinner Guest

by B P Walter

  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 of all the things I could say to him in that moment. Reassure him. Tell him I wouldn’t do anything terrible. Anything ‘irreversible’. But I couldn’t bear to go near the subject. Instead, I just told him I was going to pick Titus up from my mother’s, then go home and have a think about things.

  Archie raised an eyebrow. ‘Things?’

  ‘The future. Between me and Matthew.’

  Archie took his time selecting an apple from the bowl of fruit in front of him, in the end opting for a deep red Gala. There was something slightly less tense in his face, as if my words had reassured him a little. He cut his apple slowly and said, not looking at me, ‘And Rupert?’

  The name, spoken aloud, sent a shiver down my back.

  ‘Rupert?’

  Archie allowed his eyes to meet mine now. ‘Well, he does have a part to play in all this, doesn’t he? A big part.’

  I didn’t say anything and, after a moment, Archie continued, ‘From the sounds of the email – and if you don’t remember, you pushed your phone upon me and demanded I read it – it appears that you have a choice laid out in front of you.’

  I frowned. ‘What choice is that?’

  Archie chewed thoughtfully, then swallowed and said, ‘Stay married to Matthew. Try to find a route through all of this shit. Or walk off into a fairy-tale sunset with the Prince Charming of your dreams?’

  He was right. But, of course, it was never a future I could contemplate. I firmly expected to go to prison for what I was about to do. I was vaguely aware of the possibility that my father, through his labyrinthine connections in law and government, might be able to save me from incarceration through some clever defence in court, but all of that was just background noise. Just a distraction from the clear course of action: make Matthew understand his betrayal in the clearest and most severe way possible.

  ‘Just a word of caution,’ Archie said, ‘fairy-tale endings rarely work as neatly in real life.’

  I nodded. ‘I know. And don’t worry. I’m under no illusion that this will end well.’

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Charlie

  Three days after the murder

  My mother stares at me. She opens her mouth to speak, closes it again, then finally says, ‘I never would have thought it possible … that you could kill Matthew.’

  ‘You never thought I would be capable?’ I ask.

  She shakes her head. ‘Never of something like that.’

  Had Matthew been surprised, too? When he realised what I was doing, a split second before the knife slid into him. Had he been shocked that his husband was – always had been – capable of murder? I guess I’ll never know.

  But perhaps that was what he’d been trying to say as he’d struggled and gasped, trying to cling on to life.

  After.

  That’s what I thought he’d said. Maybe he’d been about to say ‘After all this time…’? After all this time, how could I do such a thing to someone I loved? This question carries me off into my own thoughts for some moments, then, when I return to the here and now, I give voice to a more pressing, practical one. ‘Why were you so quick to think Titus had killed Matthew?’

  My mother and father exchange a glance, then she says something that takes me by surprise. ‘Because he told me he wanted to. When he came over to my house, the day you thought he was missing. He was very upset. Somehow he’d found out Matthew was cheating on you. He wouldn’t tell me who it was or how he’d found out. He was so distraught at the idea that Matthew could cheat on you. It appalled him. He’s always seen you two as the epitome of a stable home. He said he hated him. Wanted him dead. I told him not to tell you, that I would think of a way to let you know. And then, two days later, when I got your call to say Matthew had been stabbed … and the slip-up you made when you said to me, “Rachel has confessed, she’s taking the … she’s confessed to the crime,” it all became clear to me that she wasn’t the guilty party.’

  She starts to cry, and dabs at her eyes. My father leans forward and says, ‘So all this time, we were puzzling why Rachel would want to kill Matthew, when you knew all along, and at the same time we were trying to protect our grandson from being arrested – when in fact we should have been looking at our son.’

  I look my father in the eye. He’s always been fairly unreadable, but there’s something in his eyes now that I think I can make out. Something different, that I truly haven’t seen before. It’s like he’s impressed. Like he’s viewing me in a completely different light. There’s an intensity in the air, as if the atmosphere has become so heightened by their realisation, you could almost taste the tension. It’s like something is on fire in the room, as if the smoke of the burning flowers Elena had sent has travelled up from the kitchen and started to singe the wallpaper.

  At last, I nod and say, ‘That’s about the long and the short of it.’

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Charlie

  The day of the murder

  Archie drove me over to The Ritz to get my car after we’d had breakfast. He’d lent me some clothes to wear and, due to him being a good inch or two shorter than me, I could feel the cool breeze of the late-morning air around my ankles as I stepped out of his ridiculous Spyder car and into The Ritz to sort out the parking charge. I vaguely wondered if I’d still be over the limit, although my drunken blackout had been relatively early in the evening and I felt perfectly in control as I said goodbye to Archie with a hug and a promise to call him if I needed somewhere to retreat to if things got tough in the days ahead.

  When I arrived at Wilton Crescent, I was informed by my mother that Titus had slept in late and had been quiet and subdued when she had spoken to him briefly that morning. She said he’d been quite upset the night before and that I should keep an eye on him. One of the big things I would regret, in the weeks and months, maybe even years, to come was that I didn’t pay more attention to Titus on that day. In fact, I barely registered him as he slipped into the seat next to me in the car and grunted his acknowledgement when I told him Matthew was coming home. I was too caught up in thinking about the knife I would use. And the look I might see in my husband’s eyes as I slipped it into his heart.

  In the end, after an hour’s deliberation back home, I decided on a heavy, weighty carving knife as the tool for the job. It fitted in my hand like a glove and its sharp edge glinted in the warm light of the setting sun. I laid the table for dinner as I listened to Titus wander about upstairs. I’d said he could stay the night at Melanie’s flat and he’d looked suspicious at my apparent ease at the suggestion, then elated. We hadn’t discussed his outburst the previous day. To be honest, I barely remembered it. I was so caught up in anticipation for when Matthew got home, the whole episode just seemed trivial and irrelevant.

  Things became tricky when Titus arrived in the kitchen and said he wasn’t going out after all. Melanie had another boy at her apartment, apparently. It seemed both of them were sleeping around. No wonder my disapproval of Titus having multiple girls on the go seemed prudish to him. ‘Well … perhaps you could see if another friend is free?’ I said, tentatively.

  He sighed. ‘I get it, you probably want to have a fight with Dad without me listening. Don’t worry, I won’t get in your way. I don’t want to talk to him. I’ll just have some food and leave you to it.’

  This wasn’t ideal. I knew it, and yet I still carried on. The idea of Titus being present
in the house should have stopped me. I would come to understand that seconds after Matthew’s death. But before, I don’t think I was capable of thinking rationally.

  Matthew looked nervous when he walked in, as if expecting gunfire to erupt from the landing above. I just called out, ‘In the kitchen,’ and let him walk the short distance alone, no doubt wondering what mood he’d find me in.

  ‘I’ve got the food,’ he said, by way of a greeting. He placed the Ottolenghi bag on the neatly laid table. ‘Where’s Titus?’ he asked, looking around, noticing the table was set for three. ‘You said in your text he’d be out.’

  ‘He’s upstairs. His plans fell through. His friend couldn’t see him tonight after all. He said he’ll come and eat. Then we’ll talk.’

  The look of a frightened rabbit facing down an oncoming lorry flashed across his face, but he didn’t argue.

  We dished up the food in silence and before long Titus wandered into the kitchen and sat down, ignoring Matthew’s presence.

  ‘I’m sorry I had to go away,’ he said, going over and awkwardly trying to hug the boy, who remained stiff and unresponsive, sitting straight-backed in his chair. ‘But I’m home now. Things will get back to normal, I promise.’

  This didn’t elicit a response, so Matthew sat back down and started to eat slowly, his eyes darting between me and Titus.

  I felt a cold gust of air flow around the table. If I’d been in a more present state of mind, I’d have registered it properly and investigated where it came from and realised that Matthew had, in his trepidation on entering his once peaceful, happy family home, left the front door open, his travel bag stopping it from closing properly.

  ‘I thought you were going to be at a friend’s,’ Matthew said to Titus, probably trying to get onto a nice, easy topic.

  ‘I was supposed to be at Melanie’s,’ Titus said, looking at his food rather than at Matthew.

  ‘Ah,’ Matthew said, clearly less impressed with this. ‘Is she busy or something?’

  ‘Probably getting fucked by Nathaniel. He’s in the year above me. He gets laid a lot. Always manages to work out which girls are easy. And Melanie’s definitely easy.’ He said this with a half laugh, half sneer. Again, if I’d been properly alert, I too would have been disconcerted by his language, but it felt as if I were observing the whole scene playing out under water. It was all strangely distorted and murky, like shapes and sounds, instead of people and words.

  ‘Titus, I know you must be upset with me, and I don’t blame you, but there’s no excuse for language like that. And I especially don’t want to hear you talking about women that way.’

  Titus did his half laugh again. ‘But it’s true. She’s got quite a few of us on the go. That’s why I’m fucking Pippa. And I doubt I’m Pippa’s only conquest, judging by how well she sucked me off the first time. But I dare say sluttiness runs in the family…’

  ‘That is enough!’ Matthew shouted at him, rising from his seat. Titus leapt up too, white with anger, and slammed his chair back into the table, causing the plates to clatter. He stormed out of the living room and ran up the stairs, leaving Matthew and me sitting in the now oddly silent room.

  That was, of course, the moment I should have realised Titus knew about Matthew and Elena. And that Pippa must have been the one who told him. But I wasn’t in the right state to make the connection. Instead, I was having an odd flashback to when I had, for a period, played the clarinet at school. The night I had my first recital at one of their end-of-year concerts, I was both excited and nervous to perform. The thought of performing in front of others properly for the first time brought with it a buzz, a sense of risk and danger – mild of course, but intoxicating. I remembered as I waited in the empty room away from the performance area, my hand had trembled as I poured myself a glass of water. But, minutes later, when I came to pick up my clarinet from the table and go through the door out to the waiting audience, my outstretched hand closed around the instrument without a tremor. It was completely steady. Everything was going to go according to plan. I just knew it. And it was like that right now. With Matthew’s hypocrisy swirling around me like wisps of smoke – his indignant, self-righteous anger at his son’s behaviour while trying to hide his own – I had no difficulty in picking up the knife from the table. The knife that wasn’t needed for the meal, but nobody had noticed. Matthew noticed it, of course, as I took hold of it with my perfectly steady hand. And as I walked around the table, calmly and quietly, towards him, with it held tightly in my grasp.

  I think it was the surprise of the whole thing that stopped him properly fighting back. That was quite a gift, where forensics was concerned. It meant there was no blood splatter to incriminate me, no scratches on my face, skin cells crammed under his fingernails. He was sitting still in shock as I leant down towards him, held his shoulder with one hand and pushed the knife between his ribs. I felt the tip of it snag and crunch through something as I pushed it deeper. He started to panic, once he’d registered what was happening, but I’d managed the insertion well and he wasn’t able to do much more than fumble, clutching limply at the knife within him as the blood soaked his light-blue shirt and he struggled to say what he so desperately wanted to say.

  I never found out how much Titus had witnessed. Or why he’d come back to the kitchen. I just remember turning round and finding him standing at the doorway, his mouth slightly open, his face even paler than it had been before. I saw him sway a little, and suddenly I was able to act like a responsible parent again. I pulled his chair back out from under the table and sat him down. I poured him a glass of water. He took a meek, quiet sip from it then set it down on the table. There was a strange companionability to the silence, as if we were both sheltering from a storm that was going on all around us. And in the quiet and stillness, I found I too could no longer stand.

  I don’t know how long we sat there at the table, but it can’t have been longer than a minute or two. I didn’t hear Rachel come in. I only registered her presence once she was in the room with us. Taking in the scene. Her eyes open in … amazement? Horror? She looked at the two of us sitting there, then just said, ‘The door was open.’

  She then walked over to Matthew’s body. I saw her touch his neck with her finger. Then she pulled the knife out of his chest. It’s odd, but for some reason I imagined him gasping for breath as soon as the knife was out, as if it were the only thing stopping him from taking in oxygen, like something trapped in his throat. But he remained still as she stepped away, the bloodied knife in her hand. She looked down at it for a few moments, then said, ‘I’m going to call the police now. Stay quiet while I talk to them. Whatever I say, whatever you hear, don’t interrupt me.’

  We didn’t agree or disagree. We just stared at her. She seemed to be controlling her breathing, trying not to take in too much air too quickly, as if she was fighting not to become emotional. In spite of her efforts, I noticed a tear falling down the side of her face as she sat down in the unused seat at the table and took out her phone. And in spite of my odd, hypnotised state, I couldn’t help but ask, ‘Are you OK?’

  A strange thing to say, I know. It would have been normal to ask her what she was doing, why she wasn’t screaming, running from the house, or demanding an explanation. But I think we’ve already clarified that I’m not that normal. Nothing about this situation was very normal.

  She didn’t reply to my question. Instead, she stayed sitting at the table, with the knife on her lap, the blood staining her light-blue jeans, and took out her phone.

  ‘Police please. A violent incident. I’ve killed someone.’ She waited for a second, apparently listening to the person on the other end of the line. After the pause she gave them our address, went silent once again, then continued. ‘No, he’s not breathing; he’s dead. I stabbed him. Please send the police. There’s no need for any armed response or anything like that, I’m not going to hurt anyone else. I have the murder weapon, but I’ll put it down on the table when they arrive. I wo
n’t resist being arrested or anything like that. I’m ending the call now.’

  If I wasn’t already sitting, I might have fainted. As my vision started to cloud and distort, I became vaguely aware of Titus getting up from his chair and walking out of the room. Part of me wanted to call after him, tell him not to leave the house, but I wasn’t able to and, as it turned out, I didn’t need to. I heard the creak of the stairs as he walked up them slowly, presumably towards his bedroom.

  Once the police had arrived, I would find him there later, before we were led away to the police station for questioning, an officer behind me, making it clear we needed to leave.

  ‘Rachel’s confessed,’ I told him, his tear-filled eyes staring back at me.

  Then he asked the question that had been burning through me over the past half hour. The question that probably helped plant the seed of doubt into the police’s investigation.

  ‘But … why?’

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Charlie

  Seven months after the murder

  It’s an unseasonably hot day in April and I’m driving from London to Oxford. I even have the window down – something that would have seemed like madness the week previously – and I enjoy the light breeze on my face as I move slowly along in the traffic towards the Oxfordshire countryside. I drum my fingers on the steering wheel, listening to an unknown rock track, then switch up the vibe, tapping on my iPhone with one finger, selecting some sweeping piano music which bathes me in its lush, romantic tone and I feel my mood lift. I am, for the first time in a long while, happy.