“Still searching,” he tells her. “If you know anyone?”
As Janet guffaws, throwing back her blond blow-dry, Matthew catches Stella’s eye and gives her a split-second wink. A frisson of excitement sparks through her. Maybe tonight will bring some distraction after all.
Tristan
Staring down at his gnawed fingernails, Tristan listens carefully to the conversation going on around him. Chatter weaves in and out, certain words hanging in the air like cartoon speech bubbles.Mysterious… Serendipity’s… Celebrity…The truth is, Tristan can’t remember the last time he was at a dinner party. Perhaps it was back when he was a student, sharing pizza with like-minded computer science undergrads. As he counts on his fingers, it dawns on him that he hasn’t even spoken to anyone face-to-face for five days. The number of people in this room, their loud voices, their different personalities, their range of opinions—it’s all hurting Tristan’s head. All he wants to do is run out of this place, jump on the tube, and get home, return to the safety of his little flat in Manor House.
“God no, they ruin your body and spoil all your fun,” Janet bellows across the table after Matthew asks if she has children. Her red-painted lips are stretched wide, her strange yellow-green eyes bright with humor. It all seems so forced, and Tristan wonders ifthis is true. He glances at the journalist, Vivienne, sitting on his right, her sharp profile pointing toward Janet with a look of open disgust. She is a person whose thoughts are projected straight onto her face, and right now her face is showing that she’s not impressed with Janet—or any of the other dinner party guests, it seems.
When he bumped into her in the street, he watched her take in his unappealing appearance, soaking-wet hair, and old denim jacket. She instantly wrote him off as insignificant; she probably even considered pretending she knew nothing about the dinner party. But the invitation was clearly in her hand, so she had no choice but to admit she was looking for the restaurant too. When he pointed out the door, she swept past him and marched down the stairs as if she owned the place and he was merely a doorman. As they entered the dining room, she immediately distanced herself from him, her eyes scanning the room for anyone more interesting, more dynamic, more altogetherpalatablethan Tristan.
His hand instinctively reaches up to touch the scar on his cheekbone; the tip of his forefinger fits perfectly into the hollow left by that thug’s boot. The wound has healed, but the dent will always be there to remind him of that night. He looks down at his old Metallica T-shirt and thinks he probably should have made more of an effort. Janet appears to be wearing a ball gown of some sort; Matthew and Gordon are in suits; Stella is wearing a tight black dress and cowboy boots, diamonds sparkling in her ears. Tristan rarely thinks about his appearance these days, but today, before he got dressed to come out, he stood naked in front of his bathroom mirror and wondered where this almost-forty-year-oldhad come from. It felt like mere months ago he was a nowhere-near-twenty-year-old with an exciting and possibly lucrative future at his outstretched fingertips. Lately he’s grown his hair longer, brushing it across his forehead so it just about hides the worst of his widow’s peak. It doesn’t seem fair that his hair is disappearing, yet he still suffers from acne… Then his eyes fell to the sad-sack belly, which has surprisingly inherited the hair he’s lost from his head. Lately, he finds himself patting it protectively, like you see pregnant women doing.
Just as he was about to leave, his landline rang. It could have only been one person, and he hesitated before deciding it was easier to get it out of the way.
“Why did you take so long to answer? You scared me half to death!” his mother shrieked.
“I was just on my way out.”
“Oh, are you seeing Ellie?”
“No, Mum, it’s over. Remember?” he sighed.
“It’s such a shame. You never did tell me what you did to chase her away—”
“Mum, I have to go. I’ll call you tomorrow,” Tristan said, hopping from one foot to the other.
“OK, you go. Have you been taking those vitamins I sent? Muriel next door said they helped her son’s acne. He’s eighteen now and just started a medical degree at Edinburgh.”
“Yes, Mum, I’ve been taking them,” he muttered, teeth gritted together.Please go.
“And don’t forget, your father is driving over tomorrow to lookat your boiler…”
As he made his way to the restaurant, Tristan reflected on the months he’d spent living back at home over the summer. His mother had insisted, keen to “look after” him following the breakup. It hadn’t been so bad at first; she’d filled him up with all his childhood favorites: shepherd’s pie, lasagna, homemade chips, and pale sausages. He’d spent whole days in his old bedroom, his laptop on his knees as he sat up in bed, wrapped up in his single duvet, like a large receding Baby Jesus. But one Sunday morning, when his parents were at church, boredom had led him to poke around in their bedroom. Tucked under their bed, he found a box. Why hadn’t he just left it where it was? Why had he chosen to release those secrets?
Now, sitting at the table among these loud and rude people, he thinks wistfully of his quiet flat, even his parents’ cozy semi. Still, he forces himself to tune into the chatter. They’re all trying to work out who has planned the dinner party, but Tristan can’t think about that now; his mind is already overloaded. He hasn’t spoken a word since he sat down. He should saysomething.
“It reminds me of a Murder Mystery night,” he mumbles. He’d gone to one with Ellie, hated every second. His teeth push together, his jaw clenches at the memory. Tristan’s words drift across the table and disperse like cigarette smoke as the other guests watch Matthew and Janet resume their excruciating flirting. Looking at Matthew, Tristan notices how the candlelight creates a halo effect around his thick chestnut hair, his eyes as dark as a well. Vivienne at least acknowledged Tristan before dismissing him, whereas Matthew’s gaze hopped over him, stopping only briefly on Vivienne to flash his luminescentteeth. The older chap, Melvin, greeted them both enthusiastically and introduced Janet, who hasn’t taken her eyes off Matthew. Stella briefly glanced up from her phone to give him a reluctant wave. As for Dr. Gordon, Tristan earned a curt nod of the head.
As Matthew laughs and Janet grins back at him, Tristan lets out a controlled sigh and turns away. His eyes fix on the name card in front of him, which pictures a bulldog in a white shirt, its arm raised, paw balled into a fist. He focuses on the humanlike fingers of the fist and counts.Two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen…
“Oh goody, I’mstarving,” Janet squeals as the smartly dressed waiters file back into the room and stand, elegantly poised, behind each seat. In one synchronized movement, they place seven plates in front of the guests.
“Foie gras—my favorite.” Matthew beams over at Janet, who grins back.
“Could you confirm there are no sesame seeds in this? I’m allergic,” Dr. Gordon tells his waiter and gets a brief nod in response.
“Anyone going to tell us what this is all in aid of?” Vivienne queries, but the waiters are already marching out of the room.
“And they say there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” Janet chuckles and picks up her cutlery.
Tristan gazes down at the sticky-looking beige square in front of him, the wafer-thin crackers. He hasn’t eaten since breakfast, but the sight of this food isn’t exactly making his taste buds tingle. He watches Janet expertly smear the gooey substance onto a cracker and land it on her pink tongue. She closes her eyes in apparent ecstasy. He tentatively picks up his own knife and scoops up somefoie gras. But as soon as his knife touches the cracker, it instantly crumbles into an unappetizing heap on his plate.
“Bit tricky, that?” Melvin asks, smiling at Tristan.
“I’ve never eaten anything like this before. Not used to fancy restaurants,” Tristan replies.
“Me neither, so let’s make the most of it,” Melvin says, picking up a dessert spoon and scooping up some foie gras and broken crackers from his own plate.
