Page 46 of Seven Reasons to Murder Your Dinner Guests
“I read an interesting article about mercury levels in sea bassrecently,” he mutters, more to himself than Vivienne. “I think I’ll go for the tofu curry to be on the safe side.”
Tasteless tofu sums him up quite nicely, Vivienne thinks, but she just smiles and orders the sea bass along with a large glass of wine. Then she lets out a little chuckle, which she quickly disguises as a cough as she remembers Tristan had guessed her date would be vegetarian (“Just from what you’ve said about him, I bet he orders tofu”). His insightfulness knows no bounds.
“So I understand you’re a journalist?” her date asks, then sniffs again.
“Yes, for years I worked on a women’s magazine, but last year I launched my own website, thanks to my friend Tristan. It’s been quite popular and covers some very interesting topics…” Vivienne says, always keen to talk about her “baby.” She wonders if she should tell her date about the most recent, and most popular, articles on her site: “How to Have Sizzling Sex in Your Sixties” and the diary of a granny stripper.
“Oh, I avoid the internet like the plague,” her date—Ian something—says, cutting her short. “Our office manager keeps trying to enroll me in a course, but I prefer the good old paper and pen and a trip to the library.”
“Right, then,” says Vivienne, unfolding her napkin and then refolding it. “And where is it you work?”
She tries to listen, she really does, but finds she loses interest after ten minutes of him explaining the minutiae of what is basically bookkeeping for an insurance company. Her eyes drift over to the next table, where a young couple are clutching hands,whispering excitedly, a diamond sparkling on her ring finger. They exude youth, love, confidence. A wedding, beautiful children, a charmed life lies ahead of them, and Vivienne feels a malignant wave begin to rise from her tummy.No!She refuses to allow it to take over.Go away, envy. You’re not welcome here. The image of the eagle holding scales from Vivienne’s place setting often drifts into her mind. It has made her reflect on her past behavior. Had she been an envious person? The answer, she concluded, could only be yes. She’d envied all those young male editors who had been promoted above her; envied Cat and her colleagues’ youth; her friends, with their marriages and children. She is still fighting her envious instincts every day, but she hopes that, in the two years since Serendipity’s, she has let go of most of her envious behavior and changed her life for the better. The woman suddenly looks over at her, and Vivienne smiles in her direction. Instinctively, she smiles in return but then quickly turns back to her fiancé.
Focus on your own date, Vivienne…
“Do you have children?” she asks as the waiter delivers their meals, and she realizes that she’ll have to stay in this man’s company for as long as it takes to eat her sea bass.
“Yes, a daughter.” A smile passes over his slim lips. “She’s quite the academic, currently studying for a PhD in economics, along with Japanese business. She’s hoping to move over there after she finishes.”
“Oh, you’ll miss her, I’m sure,” says Vivienne.
“Yes, well, she’ll be back every Christmas, no doubt. We don’t exactly see eye to eye; she took the divorce quite badly, so seeingher old dad once a year will probably be enough,” he says, concentrating on spearing a lump of tofu with his fork.
Vivienne was ready to tell him all about Cat and Charlie—her surrogate daughter and grandson, as she’s come to see them—but now feels that her date would be even less interested than he’d been in her website. Perhaps as bored as she is right now. She’s going to kill Cat when she gets home. Ever since she’d found that old picture of James and persuaded Vivienne to tell her the story, she’d been determined to get Vivienne “back in the dating scene,” as she put it. Although Vivienne isn’t sure she’s ever been in that particular scene. The expression makes her think of a play, with characters wearing exaggerated makeup and performing little song-and-dance routines—which, she supposes, is what dating is like.
Cat’s initial suggestion was to sign Vivienne up on a matchmaking website, which she immediately rejected. So then Cat set about finding her dates. This Ian character had been cornered on the bus by Cat. “He’s tall and good looking, reminds me a bit of Robert Redford,” she said excitedly. After two disastrous blind dates (Sidney with the hair implants and fake tan, who’d spent the whole date regaling Vivienne with every detail of the hotel in Turkey he visited three times a year, and then Vincent, who had flirted with the young waitress and constantly checked his phone, laughing uproariously at text messages and tapping away responses while Vivienne tried to make small talk), Vivienne vowed this would be the last one, and she certainly isn’t surprised to find that this man is as much like Robert Redford as she is like Demi Moore. Heistall and does have a decent head of hair, she has to admit, but she’dhappily trade him in for a short, bald man with a bit of charisma. Charisma was something James had had in spades.
When Vivienne had gotten her secretarial job at the age of eighteen (a source of joy and amazement, given her poor typing and shorthand speeds), her mother took her to buy some smart blouses and pencil skirts for the office, wagging a finger at her daughter in the mirror of the department store, lecturing her to “stay away from the office boys, they’ll give youbeaucoup de problèmes.” Vivienne rolled her eyes; her French mother lived by the belief that English men were only slightly removed from early man (which conclusion Vivienne assumed was based on her monosyllabic father, who had spent his life in three different positions: standing on the production line at a plug factory, sitting in his armchair at home, and lying in bed, barely uttering twenty words in between), but all Vivienne wanted was to earn a bit of money for herself and get some office experience so she could apply to work on a magazine. And yet, James turned up on her third day in the office, called upon to fix her jammed typewriter. His strong fingers had the machine going again in minutes.
“There you go, miss.” He smiled kindly, hazel eyes meeting hers for a split second. Vivienne suddenly felt her mouth go dry and wished she’d washed her hair that morning.
“He’s useful to have around, but I just feel for his wife. Fancy upping and leaving her after just two years of marriage,” the woman sitting next to Vivienne tutted when James had gone.
Vivienne had taken no notice of the office gossip; she’d just been happy to have someone who’d asked how she was and listenedto the answer. The much older women in the office only spoke to her to point out errors in her letters and to patronize her over her tea-making skills. One day, James found her sobbing on the back stairs, dashed off, and returned with a milky tea and a plate of ginger nut biscuits. Then he kissed her. She was so taken aback, she burst out laughing before returning the kiss. Her very first. He took her to the cinema, to a bar in Soho for champagne in delicate 1920s glasses, and introduced her to all sorts of exotic foods. Her mother had been wrong…until she was right. Two months after they’d met, James walked into the office looking pale and shaken.
“She suspects us,” he whispered. They’d managed to sneak out for a walk, and he’d broken the news that he’d quit his job that morning, as his wife, Sue, had demanded they start afresh in Wolverhampton. Vivienne wasn’t able to take it all in. He’d told her he was separated and she’d taken that to mean they were going to divorce, but it had been a temporary arrangement. It had all been temporary, including her. Instead of bawling and making a scene, Vivienne was struck by a sort of paralysis. She found herself nodding in agreement with James’s plan, walking mechanically back to the office, sitting down at her typewriter, and beginning her next letter. She didn’t want to show herself up as the eighteen-year-old she was. A part of her hoped he’d change his mind, but the next day, his chair stayed empty. And the next day, and the next. That’s where the story ended when she told it to Cat. The traumatic, heartbreaking, life-altering conclusion was something Vivienne still didn’t feel ready to share.
“What a sleaze,” Cat cried. “A married man hitting on an innocent teenage girl like that.”
“I know it looks that way, but it really wasn’t. He was only a few years older than me, and we had so much fun together. More than that, I felt…cherishedby him.” Vivienne shrugged, unable to explain that feeling.
“And you haven’t met anyone since, in all these years?” Cat quizzed, making Vivienne quietly proud. A good journalist knows to keep probing until you get to the answer.
“Well, I haven’t lived like a nun, exactly.” She blushed, remembering that lost weekend in Corfu, that glimmering brown back and chipped front tooth, or the builder from Eastbourne with surprisingly gentle hands. “But nothing like James again. And believe me, I’ve looked. I’ve spent years and years looking, but in the end, I decided that we all get one true love in our lives, and he was mine. And Tristan agrees. He says the same about Ellie.”
“Tristan just wants you all to himself,” Cat teased. Vivienne rolled her eyes.
Ever since Vivienne’s birthday meal, which Vivienne and Tristan spent with their heads close together, deep in conversation, Cat has kept up this joke that Tristan is her “toy boy.” As well as their Sunday meetups, they often saw each other midweek, too, for dinner in Soho or perhaps the cinema. They have surprisingly similar tastes in films. And TV shows. And books.
Vivienne and Tristan never seem to run out of things to say, and Tristan is always so eager to hear her opinion on the world. Vivienne hasn’t felt so “seen” in a very long time. Tristan has also opened up about his own life; he has such a talent for putting an amusing spin on excruciating moments, like the time he quoted “those whocan’t, teach” to Ellie’s teacher friends, or when he helped out at a trendy bloggers event and been dismissed as an “IT troll.” What with Tristan, Cat, and Charlie in her life now, Vivienne feels that she doesn’t need anyone else, but Cat isn’t prepared to accept that.
“I’m not giving up on you. I’m finding you a man. Besides, none of us are getting any younger.”
Vivienne sighed. “Fine, fine, what harm can it do?”
***
Vivienne’s new social life kept her busy, but it couldn’t totally block the fear of her impending number. In fact, as time went on, she found it was ringing louder than ever in her ears. So two months ago, she arranged to meet Tristan at a café near Serendipity’s.
