The Dinner Guest B Walter (readict books TXT) 📖

the tears were flowing freely down my face, causing my skin to smart as the cold wind hit me. I knew what I was going to do, as soon as I got in. I felt the need so desperately within me, had felt it all throughout dinner, with Titus opposite me and Matthew to my left. That familiar ache, that companionable pain, the feeling that would never go away as long as I lived. Or at least, not until I finished what I’d come to do.

At the door of my block, I could see someone holding the door for me and I ran to catch it. It was the busybody next door, Amanda, carrying Peter Jones carrier bags. ‘Oh goodness, are you OK?’ she said when she saw my tears.

‘Yes, I’m fine. Sorry, it’s the cold. It makes my eyes stream.’

If she didn’t believe me, she decided not to mention it. ‘Oh, it has got chilly, hasn’t it! Part of me wishes I’d got the bus back.’

I looked at the bags she was carrying, feeling I should make some effort of conversation as we made our way over to the lift. ‘Early Christmas shopping?’ I asked.

‘Oh, sort of,’ she replied. ‘My sister has a whole gaggle of children; couldn’t stop breeding, bless her. The oldest is now in his forties, the youngest is now twenty-three, and some of them have kids of their own, too. It’s a marvel I don’t go bankrupt every year, what with all the birthdays.’

I nodded, even though the idea of a wide extended family was completely foreign to me. ‘Do you have children of your own?’ I asked, then immediately wished I hadn’t, as I saw a shadow fall over her face, and her lips tighten.

‘No,’ she said, ‘sadly that never quite worked out for me.’

The lift juddered to a stop and I felt a sense of desperation to get out of this awkward conversation and into the solitary safety of my little flat. ‘I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t…’

‘Oh, it’s fine,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I’ve got a step-daughter, from my husband’s first marriage but, well, we’re not exactly close.’ I stood back to let her leave first and followed as we walked the length of the corridor to our respective doors. ‘She’s a bit of a bitch, actually,’ Amanda continued, a slight bitter note creeping into her voice. ‘Very self-centred. It’s all about her drama, her problems. Probably comes from being an only child.’

At her front door she stopped and flicked a look at me. ‘Oh gosh, I’m sorry, are you an only child?’

I’d been rummaging in my bag for my keys and the question unsettled me so much, I dropped them on the floor, then ended up tipping the whole contents of my bag out as I leaned down to get them. ‘God, I’m so clumsy today,’ I said as Amanda put down her shopping bags and helped me scoop up my things. Though annoyed at myself, I was grateful the commotion gave me a reason not to answer Amanda’s question. I managed to sound almost normal as I said goodbye and let myself in.

Although the food had been excellent at the Allerton-Joneses’, I was suddenly starving, and scrabbled around in the freezer for something easy I could throw in the oven. I settled for a cheap, heavily processed pizza I’d picked up at the reduced counter in Sainsbury’s a week earlier.

While it was cooking, I went into the bedroom and felt under the bed for the photo album. I nestled there, on my bed, pulling the covers around me, and looked at picture after picture of his smiling face. His bright blue eyes. So kind-looking, so happy with life. In the midst of sobs, curled up in my duvet, I ended up drifting into a half-sleep, thoughts and fears and memories circling my mind. I only woke when the smoke alarm cut through my dreams, alerting me to the charcoal-like state of the pizza in the oven.

Chapter Seventeen Charlie

Eight months to go

When I was a child, one of things I loved most about Christmas was term finishing at Eaton Square School and, on that very night, my parents driving us down to Tolleshunt D’Arcy in Essex to spend the Christmas holidays at Braddon Manor. I probably over-romanticised it in my head over the years, but I still have vivid memories of the car winding up the drive past all the big trees glowing with warm-white lights. Inside the manor, nearly every room would have a Christmas tree, adorned with whatever theme my mother had negotiated with the decorators.

Although no longer eight years old, there was still a certain magic about arriving at Braddon at Christmas time. Of course, although I didn’t know it then, that Christmas would be the last we’d all spend together as a family. It’s a shame I would come to look upon that week over the festive season that year with hatred – both of myself and the situation I found myself in. For my inability to spot what was happening, almost in plain sight.

Matthew and I arrived separately that year – me in the BMW, him in his Tesla, me in the afternoon of the 22nd, him the next morning on the 23rd. We were supposed to all be going down together, but he said he had a dinner with some old school friends over in Ealing that night and it made sense to him to go back to the house in Chelsea then follow on the next morning. ‘We’ll wait for you,’ I’d said, but he told me to go. He looked pained. ‘You’ll miss your mother’s annual dinner,’ he said. ‘I’m just so sorry I’ll have to miss it.’

My mother’s annual dinner was less of an event than he made it sound. She would just end up inviting a select cluster of friends of the family, usually their close friends Lord and Lady Ashton, a handful of my mother’s old