Page 18 of Seven Reasons to Murder Your Dinner Guests
It was nearly midnight by the time she got home. All she wanted was a nice long soak in the bath and then to climb into bed, but Bill pulled out his diary and tiny golf pencil for their monthly “scheduling meeting.” Watching him peer through the glasses perched on the end of his nose (from whence hair abundantly sprouted), she wondered where this old man had sprung from. She’d met Bill when she was twenty-five. He’d been a charismatic forty-year-old with a teenager’s sex drive, a sprinkling of salt-and-pepper hair, and a muscular frame thanks to a lifetime of sports. Now, at nearly sixty, he was an old, overweight man with barely enough energy to climb the stairs, let alone anything else, while Janet was only just reaching her prime.
“The baby’s christening, May sixteenth?” he asked.
“Fine,” she mumbled. Plenty of time to think up a last-minute meeting and get out of it.
“August at the villa?”
“Yes, Bill, just like every year. Do we really need a meeting about this?” she snapped.
“Then there’s your birthday—your forty-fifth. Rather a bigone,” he said. “What shall it be this year: a spa weekend with your friends, a city break, or shall I plan a surprise?”
Bill, for all his faults, had always made a fuss over her birthday. In the early years of their marriage, he’d taken her to Paris, Rome, even Bali once. He smiled benignly at her then, waiting for his instructions, but the mention of her birthday sent instant cramps across her middle, and she was forced to dash straight to the loo.
“Must have been a dodgy oyster at dinner,” she told him afterward. “Let’s talk about my birthday another day.”
“OK, dear, but don’t leave it too long. It’s your big day, and we wouldn’t want you to be disappointed.”
Janet plodded upstairs and drew herself a bath, Bill’s words still in her ears:Your forty-fifth… Rather a big one.She wanted to scream at him, What if I don’t live that long? just to see the look on his stupid face. Lately, she’d been picturing her life after Bill’s death, but perhaps fate had other ideas and it would be Bill who was left behind. As she soaked in the warm water, popping the bubbles with her toes, Janet’s mind drifted back to Serendipity’s, to those words:You will die aged forty-four. The other guests had dismissed it as a PR stunt, but when she thinks back, the evening had been so vivid: the flames from the fire reflected in Matthew’s dark eyes; the rich flavors of the food and wine; the scent of the burning candles, dripping their wax down the candelabras. There had been nothing fake or contrived about any of it. And the number on that card had instantly felt real to her. She’d hoped the panic she’d felt at the dinner party would pass, but it hadn’t. Rather, it had settled in her body like a rumbling volcano, heat slowly rising, waiting for theright moment to erupt. As she patted herself dry and pulled on her favorite silk pajamas, Janet told herself she was being silly. She just needed a good night’s sleep and to throw herself into preparing for the big Sophia’s Whisper show the following week. She’d always loved the event, her models splashed across the papers, online sales soaring, and the baskets of champagne and expensive chocolates that always landed on her desk.That’swhat’s real, she told herself. Not some random number at a tacky dinner party.
Unfortunately, the show hadn’t exactly gone to plan. Just before the grand finale, the director, Marcel, had lost track of the real-gold bustier the singer Lila Daze was supposed to wear. He’d screeched Janet’s name backstage, but she’d been otherwise engaged. Poor Marcel had gotten the shock of his life when he opened a storage cupboard to find Janet on her knees in front of the financial director. She’d just about managed to keep her job. The worst of it was, she’d only gotten herself in that situation after she’d gone overboard on her expenses one too many times, and the FD had made it clear he would brush them under the carpet in return for certain favors.
Janet’s blushes were only just fading when Melvin’s message popped up. She rolled her eyes as she skimmed over his hopeless attempts at investigating the dinner party, but then gasped when she read about Stella. Her hands shook as she clicked on the news website and scanned the report. Janet thought of the last time she’d seen the girl at Serendipity’s, standing so close to Matthew. Stella had met her eye for the briefest of moments;“I won,”her look had said. And now she was dead, and Janet felt the sweetness of revenge washing through her. The girl had fallen under a tube train at astation near Janet’s office. It could have happened to anyone, she supposed.
Then the volcano inside her rumbled.The numbers.She couldn’t remember Stella opening her envelope at the dinner party, but what if her number had been twenty-three? Quickly, she typed a response to Melvin’s message. Shehadto know what Stella’s number was. Because if it was twenty-three, then forty-four might indeed be hers. She scanned over Gordon’s message, doubted he had anything useful to tell them but nodded to herself at his suggestion of meeting up again. From then on, she counted the days down to the funeral. When news of Stella’s trolling broke, she read it over with only mild interest. So there had been more to Stella than a beautiful face and an eye for fashion. Janet wouldn’t have admitted it out loud, but the trolling actually made her like Stella a bit more.
When Janet bumped into Matthew outside the church, she hoped he’d put her mind at rest about the numbers, but he behaved so strangely. He didn’t meet her eye as he halfheartedly reassured her and became jittery when she spoke of Stella. Honestly, he’d been all over Janet at the dinner party, but today he seemed to recoil when she merely took his arm.
In front of the others, Janet did her best to play down her panic. But then that smug doctor tossed Stella’s envelope on the table. Now, looking at Stella’s name, that overpowering nausea creeps up on her again.
“Janet, are you OK? You’ve gone very pale,” Vivienne says.
“I need a minute,” she gasps, standing up. “Don’t anyone touch that envelope while I’m gone.”
Melvin
Melvin registers only the odd word from the conversation going on around him.Melodramaticfrom a sighing Matthew,illogicalfrom a frustrated Gordon, a mutteredupsetfrom quiet Tristan. He’s focusing instead on the message that has just popped up on his phone:
Can’t wait for tomorrow.
Our first date! X
Beaming despite himself, Melvin sends a quick response, then puts his phone back in his pocket.
“What’s made you smile?” Vivienne asks him.
“Sorry, just a text from a friend,” he says, pushing the smile away.
Come on, Melvin. It’s the day of Stella’s funeral, for goodness’ sake, and you’re a police officer—you should know how to act in the face of grief.And that means not grinning like an idiot. That poor girl was just twenty-three, barely an adult, only just making her way in the world, perhaps marriage or children in front of her, and it had all been snatched away. While he is an old man by comparison, nearing retirement, and yet, incredibly, about to embark on a whole new life. That dinner party, two short weeks ago, had been the catalyst for this change.
“Did you do it?” Janet asks, suddenly standing too close to him, leaning over to whisper in his ear.
“Erm…” he mumbles, aware of Vivienne’s head turning incrementally toward them, ears practically twitching. “Tonight, all being well.”
Mercifully, she doesn’t say more and goes to sit back down.When he’d suggested going out for another drink with Janet, he hadn’t planned to spill his guts, but the whiskey loosened his tongue and all his woes came tumbling out, right at Janet’s feet. Melvin suddenly feels his hands sweat as he remembers the things he said to her. It felt safe, confessing it all to a stranger in a strange bar. He pictures Janet’s leonine eyes looking earnestly into his own.
“You must tell Mary,” she insisted. “She deserves your honesty. And you deserve to start living your life. Who knows how long any of us have?”
Stella had had less than two weeks…
