Page 50 of Seven Reasons to Murder Your Dinner Guests
One day, he crawled under his parents’ bed and pulled out an old shoebox. Easing the lid off, he found a series of photos of himself he’d never seen before. For some reason they hadn’t made it into the dozens of photo albums on the bookshelf. Tiny Tristan lying on an ugly orange bedspread, naked apart from a cloth diaper;another shot of his mum proudly cradling him as she sat in the old rocking chair; then both parents standing together wearing their Sunday best as his father awkwardly held him in both hands. As Tristan lifted out the photos one by one to place them carefully on the carpet, a piece of paper was suddenly revealed. The words had been typed on an old typewriter, the letters not quite aligned, thesand thetnot properly formed. It was clearly one page of a longer document, but the content was clear:hereby relinquish full custody of the child and agree to no further contact.Adoption papers. Tristan’s adoption papers. He dropped the letter and searched through the rest of the box, but there were no other papers like it. Then he looked again at the baby pictures. His mother’s tummy was surprisingly flat in her yellow twinset, given the fact she’d recently had a baby. His father’s hold on him was unnatural, as if he was not a baby but an unexpected parcel he’d just discovered on the doorstep, a gift from someone…
Tristan grits his teeth and repeats his mantra.
You can do it, you can do it.
“The second factor that affects one’s longevity is the environment in which they live. By that, I mean access to clean water and sufficient food, good health care and living conditions. I’d like to think we all benefit equally from these things in 2017.” Professor Goodacre nods amiably at the hundreds of eager faces smiling back at him.
“Dr. MacMillan had turned his attentions to this environmental factor, specifically nutrition and exercise,” says the professor.
Then Tristan had spotted a handwritten letter among thephotos. It was addressed to his father, in confident looping script. In places, the words were blurred and smeared, but Tristan was able to make out most of it. A woman had written to his dad to say she was pregnant with his baby. The date was February 1974, two years after his parents had married. The year Tristan was born.
“Dr. MacMillan had presented me with his research. Some of it, to my traditionalist eyes, was indeed rather unconventional, but he certainly raised some interesting questions. What roles do calorie intake, exercise, and social interaction play in longevity? I’m sure that my accomplished colleague would have gone on to publish his findings. Tragically, his research was unexpectedly curtailed…”
A sob bursts from the front row, and Tristan looks over at the two women sitting side by side, holding hands. He finds himself thinking back to the row of beautiful girls at Matthew’s memorial. Yet there is nothing staged or insincere about the grief of these women; you can tell that from just the backs of their heads. One woman has brown hair streaked with white, her shoulders narrow and fragile looking, her tiny frame leaning into the younger woman next to her. Taller and broader, Dr. Gordon’s daughter holds her reddish-blond head high to listen to Professor Goodacre while clutching the other woman’s left hand with both of hers. Tristan glances at Vivienne, whose terrier-like head is also raised as she takes in the two women and then turns sad eyes onto him. He tries to keep his face neutral as he looks back down at the leaflet, unable to conjure an expression of sorrow he does not feel.
“She had a lucky escape,” Tristan hears Melvin murmur,followed by a small chuckle from Vivienne and then, “Shh.”
Flipping through the leaflet again, Tristan forces himself to focus on each individual word and reads the lineDr. MacMillan is survived by his wife, Elizabeth, and daughter, Louisa.It strikes Tristan how odd that expression is, “survived by.” As if the three of them had been clinging to an overturned boat. While Gordon had sunk beneath the waves, Elizabeth and Louisa had managed to swim to the shore. Professor Goodacre’s words cut through Tristan’s daydream.
“I want to leave you all with this thought. The longest-ever study of human development, by my colleagues at Harvard University, concluded that the one factor which consistently increased longevity and happiness was not exercise, a certain diet, or a particular set of chromosomes,” he says, slowing his speech down to leave a full second between each word. The room is totally silent as they wait for Professor Goodacre’s big reveal.
“It is the quality of human contact,” he says and a treacly wave of “Ahh” travels through the lecture theater. It makes Tristan think of those unbearable TV talent shows his mother loves so much, featuring young children with heart-wrenching back stories, all perfectly engineered to move the audience to tears. Tristan rolls his eyes at the professor’s self-satisfied expression. He has more in common with Dr. Gordon than he probably realizes.
“If we can learn anything from Dr. MacMillan’s tragic passing, it is that we must hold our loved ones close because they are the true secret to a long and happy life.” He glances over at Dr. Gordon’s wife and daughter with an expression that makes Tristanfeel quite nauseated, yet they nod in unison. Clearly, Dr. Gordon hadn’t agreed with this sentiment, given he’d moved out of the family home, Tristan thinks.
The white screen now flashes up a series of Gordon’s book covers, followed by a picture of his smiling face. His lips are squeezed together as if his mouth is filled with honey. Tristan watches the professor walk over to Elizabeth and Louisa with a demeanor, just the right mixture of sympathy and sorrow, as if he’s saying, “I’m 30 percent sad for the death of my colleague and 70 percent sorry for your loss of a husband and father.” Tristan notices that the professor holds Elizabeth’s hand for around three seconds too long. A blush lights up her pale face, and a genuine smile creeps onto her lips at something the man is saying to her. Tristan stands up quickly, reaching for his jacket too late, which slides to the floor.
“Refreshments in the lobby,” Melvin tells Vivienne as Tristan bends over to retrieve his denim jacket from behind the chair in front of him. By the time he gets to the stairs, a number of students has pushed in between him and Vivienne, and he sees her frizzy head disappear among the crowd of identical floppy tops with shaved sides. His feet feel heavy as he climbs the steps leading out to a large foyer. Where has Vivienne gone? He slows and stands on his tiptoes to try to get a look above the mass of heads, but then someone jostles him from behind and laughs right in his ear. He can feel his heart racing in his chest, like a fist punching against his rib cage. Stepping forward, he finds he’s suddenly blinded by the light. Sunshine streams into the foyer from the large windows in a perfect obtuse triangle. He stumbles a few more steps andaccidentally steps on the back of someone’s flip-flops, sending them lurching forward.
“Watch it,” the man in front of him barks, but Tristan propels himself forward until he’s out of the sun’s spotlight. He blinks several times and then he sees it. Sees her. A swish of blond hair, a thick fringe over catlike eyes, head tossed back, red lips open to throw out that distinctive laugh. It couldn’t be. Janet? His heart is pounding now with two fists. He can’t take his eyes off the woman sitting at the bar, taking a large drink from a glass of red wine.
“Tristan, what are you doing here?” a voice asks, and Dave is suddenly standing in front of him. He looks from the blond woman to his old friend and fights an instinct to just run. Run away from this place and never see Dave, Vivienne, or Melvin again.
“Oh, hi, Dave. How are you?” He puts out his hand, and Dave’s long fingers wrap around his own, a look of bewilderment on his face. Tristan remembers now that he’s a lecturer. In their brief text message exchanges, he’s never asked where Dave worked. It would make perfect sense for him to have found employment back at their old university.
“I’m fine, thanks. Just surprised to see you here. Did you know Dr. MacMillan?”
“Not very well, but I wanted to…err…pay my respects,” Tristan says, eyes creeping back to the bar only to see that the woman has gone. He looks around the foyer but there’s no sign of that blond blow-dry.
“Tragic, isn’t it?” Dave frowns, running his fingers over hisshort hair, a habit Tristan remembers from when Dave was still a teenager with hair down to his shoulders.
“Yes.” Tristan nods and then catches sight of the top of Vivienne’s head, straining up to look for him. He turns his back and slouches slightly, hoping she won’t spot him. Sweat starts to drip down his forehead, and he suddenly feels too hot in the foyer, the modern design and bright sunlight unwittingly creating a greenhouse effect.
“So what happened to you? I waited for an hour at the Albert,” Dave asks.
Before Tristan can think of an answer, Vivienne is standing next to him, beaming at Dave.
“I’m Vivienne,” she says, offering him her hand. “Are you a friend of Tristan’s?”
“Pleased to meet you,” Dave responds. “I’m Dave. We went to uni together.”
“Oh, yes, I’ve heard about you and your travel plans—”
“Dave’s just heading off,” Tristan interrupts. “I’ll walk you to the door.”
He steers Dave through the now-dispersing crowd, mumbling about that “confused old lady” and how she “likes a drink or two.”
“So why didn’t you turn up, Tristan?” Dave stops in front of the large glass doors. Tristan notices the crow’s-feet around his eyes, the slight paunch in his middle, but he hasn’t changed that much. Same long-limbed awkwardness that has always reminded Tristan of a daddy long legs.
