Page 13 of Seven Reasons to Murder Your Dinner Guests
That night, her sleep was filled with gold lettering, penguin waiters, and a nonspecific sense of unease. She woke up with the words on Janet’s card swimming through her mind. When Vivienne had left Serendipity’s, she planned to leave the evening behind, but the mystery just wouldn’t let her go—it trailed after her like a ghost through the following week. She didn’t take the little black envelope out of her handbag, which went everywhere with her. Often, she thought of it, wondered about the number inside. Yet Vivienne’s instinct at Serendipity’s had been to leave the envelope sealed, and the memory of Janet’s terrified face, the suffocating atmosphere of that room, had stayed with her, casting an oddly superstitious spell over it.
Then, last Friday, she’d set off for home after work, walked down the steps at Oxford Circus tube station. The next thing she knew, she was sitting on a train heading to Heathrow Airport. She glanced at her watch: almost 11:00 p.m. She’d lost five hours. Her legs and back ached, her head throbbed. Thankfully, her handbag was still on her shoulder, with her purse and phone still inside. She managed to get a taxi at Hounslow station, which took her safely home, where she dropped gratefully into bed. But the following morning, she awoke feeling shaken and exhausted. Luckily, it was a Saturday, so she stayed in bed, let her mind drift back to the last time she’d experienced a fugue state. Just eighteen years old and enduring the most traumatic moments of her life. It was no wonder that her brain had decided to check out. Vivienne rolled onto her side, clutched the loose skin of her tummy, and allowed the tears to come. She’d never discussed that time with anyone, not even her mother, who had witnessed it all. Her mum had died twenty years ago, so it was only Vivienne who held the memory now. As she tried to find rest in her old queen-size bed, the questions didn’t stop: Why on earth had a fugue state happened again after all these years? Had something about Serendipity’s sparked it off? At that, Vivienne’s eyes sprang open. She pushed off her covers and walked on wobbly feet across her bedroom floor to the pile of clothes she’d tossed aside the night before. She picked up her trusty old handbag and threw her phone, purse, tissues, notebook, and pens onto the bed. Her hands circled the lining of her bag. She sat back down next to her things as the realization hit her. Her envelope was gone.
Now, looking at Stella’s perfect smile, frozen in time, Viviennethinks of her standing by the fireplace at Serendipity’s, her eyes sparkling as she basked in Matthew’s attention, and she shivers despite the stuffiness of her office. When Vivienne had left that place, she never expected to see those people again, and yet something irresistible has taken hold. Despite a dark sense of foreboding, Vivienne decides to go along to Stella’s funeral the following Saturday.
Matthew
Stepping back onto the pavement, Matthew curses as his patent leather shoes are splashed by a huge black limousine gliding toward the church. Then he’s jostled by a pair of teenage girls, who giggle as he glares at them. He grips his umbrella and wipes at a trickle of sweat on his forehead. This isn’t what he expected at all. People—actually, mostly teenage girls—are standing on either side of the road, some clutching teddy bears that in turn hold red love hearts, others with single red roses, many wearing cowboy boots. A gaggle of photographers has set up their huge cameras in a semicircle around the church entrance. The arrival of the car sends a surge of energy through the pack as they strain to see who will emerge. The smartly dressed driver gets out, walks around to the back of the vehicle, and opens the door. One long bronzed leg with a spiked heel appears, followed by another, and a tall woman with cropped blond hair totters out, wearing an incredibly short dress with barely there straps.
“Matthew, you came!” Janet cries, suddenly appearing in front of him, practically falling into his arms.
“Where didyouspring from?” he says, reluctantly returning the hug. Janet’s floral perfume fills his nostrils, making him feel lightheaded.
“Can you believe this has happened?” Janet gasps, stepping back and almost tripping a photographer who is rushing toward the stunning woman, holding his camera up as if it’s a weapon.
Matthew conjures his best mourning face. It takes more concentration than it should.
“What a tragedy. Poor Stella,” he says.
“She was twenty-three, wasn’t she? I wonder if that was her number. Did you see if she opened her envelope? I know you two left together,” Janet prattles, pulling down her own umbrella and stepping under Matthew’s.
Suddenly, Matthew is struggling to breathe; his lungs seem to have filled with Janet’s overpowering perfume, and there’s no air. He turns his head, forces himself to take a deep breath, to will his galloping heart rate to slow. Thankfully, Janet hasn’t noticed his panic.
“No, I didn’t see her open it,” he manages to say. “Didn’t you read the news report? It was an accident. It has nothing to do with the envelopes.”
“Do you really think so?” Janet looks up at him with pleading eyes.
Matthew nods and thinks back to that night. He’d thought none of the others had heard him invite Stella back to his for “coffee.” Clearly, he hadn’t been as discreet as he’d hoped. None of it had gone as he’d hoped, come to think of it. Stella had seemed pleased enoughat the invitation but had gone quiet as they walked up the stairs to his penthouse apartment, seemed nonplussed when he opened one of his most expensive bottles of wine, even looked a bit bored when he described his latest million-pound deal at work. When he asked about her background, she talked for a good ten minutes about her barrister father’s peerage, her boarding school where students compared diamond-encrusted gifts from home, and her own two-thousand-square-foot apartment in Kensington, and he realized she wasn’t his usual type. They’d had sex in the end, but it was a depressingly lackluster event, and she called a taxi ten minutes later. Just before she walked out his door, she turned, gave him an apologetic little smile, and said, “Maybe we can catch up again soon—unless my number’s correct.” He laughed and heard her chuckle as she made her way down the stairs and out to her waiting cab.
Matthew is silent as they watch a second limo arrive. The photographers burst to life again as the hosts ofThe Morning Showstep out and walk solemnly toward the church. He vaguely remembers Janet and Gordon talking about one of them at the dinner party. God, it seems like months ago, not just two weeks.
“So what about you and Melvin?” he says, keen to change the subject. “I saw you two leaving arm in arm.”
“I was barking up the wrong tree with that one,” she guffaws, a hysterical tone to her voice, causing some nearby mourners to turn and stare.
“You’ve got lipstick on your teeth,” he tells her and then tries not to cringe at the squeaky sound she makes as she rubs her teeth with her finger.
“Who’d have thought it—the macho copper with a wonderful wife has an eye for the boys.” She chuckles, weaving a hand into the crook of Matthew’s arm.
“Oh, look, here comes Vivienne and—what’s he called—Trevor or something,” Matthew says, relieved to escape the suffocating umbrella bubble.
Janet shrugs but steps forward to greet them.
“Such a tragedy,” Vivienne says, raising her head to brush her cheek against Janet’s.
“Poor Stella,” Janet responds.
“Incredible turnout, though,” Matthew says before kissing Vivienne’s dry cheek and nodding at the bespeckled bloke. Tristan, that’s his name.
“Looks like she had lots of fans,” Tristan observes. Is he really wearing a “Stairway to Heaven” T-shirt?
“Where’s Gordon?” Janet asks. “I wonder what hisimportant informationis…”
Then a shiny black Land Rover drives quickly down the road, causing an errant photographer to jump out of its way. It screeches to a halt in front of the church.
“Howdareyou?” a woman screams as she bursts from the car. She has Stella’s heart-shaped face and wears a fitted black dress cut low at the front, huge sunglasses, and a black scarf wrapped around her head. Stella’s mother. Has to be.
“Naomi,” a tall man in a well-fitted charcoal suit calls, exiting the car on the other side and marching after her. Presumably Stella’s father, Lord Cooke.
