Page 33 of Seven Reasons to Murder Your Dinner Guests
Janet hails a passing taxi, which slows down in front of them. She pulls the door open and suddenly feels pain in her elbow.
“Ouch,” she gasps.
Melvin is gripping her arm as he guides her into the car. Just as he’s about to close the door, she grabs hold of his hand.
“So we’re still in the closet, then?” she chuckles.
Melvin looks down at her hand, quickly spins his arm around, and squeezes her wrist, hard. He pulls her toward him. The fragile bones beneath her skin ache under his mighty grip.
“That’s none of your business,” he spits into her ear. “And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep your mouth shut.”
Then he releases her. She sits back in the seat and looks down at the red mark on her arm.
She swallows and turns back to him. She’s not afraid now. Of anything.
“Oh, I won’t say a thing, darling. I’ve embarked on enough affairs to spot one a mile off. Enjoy it. It won’t end well…” she tells him with a smile. She pulls the door closed and waves him off, bejeweled fingers wriggling.
“See you in hell,” she says with a smile.
Melvin
Melvin makes his way slowly back to the table. He looks down at his hands, bewildered by what they’ve just done.Where did that come from?Despite his size, he’s never been a fighter. He’s always been the one breaking up fights, defusing situations. And to grab a woman like that, to threaten her? What was he thinking? At his age, you’d think he’d know himself, but lately Melvin is surprised to find himself doing things he’d never imagined. His hands are a good example. Fresh from a manicure, he doesn’t recognize them. When Christian had commented on his “tradesman hands,” Melvin just laughed. Hands were for doing practical things with: driving, eating, fixing things, and so on. Mary had always admired how good he was with his hands. He’d never thought of them as decorative, something that should look nice. But Christian kept dropping hints about male grooming and in the end went ahead and booked Melvin at a trendy salon and asked for “the works.” Stepping back onto the street afterward, Melvin felt pleased with his new shorter haircut, his all-over wax, and “mani-pedi” (a termthat—despite having the wordmanin it—was possibly the least manly thing he’d heard in his life) but also hoped he wouldn’t bump into one of his colleagues, particularly one of the “old-school” coppers.
What he said to Vivienne earlier wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth either. Christianwashis colleague andhadgiven him a makeover. Maryhadbeen poorly again. But that wasn’t the whole story. After Stella’s funeral, Melvin had every intention of telling Mary the truth. He rustled up his speciality lasagna, which controversially includes sliced boiled eggs and bacon, and got in some decent red wine (Argentinian—he’d remembered Janet’s comment at the dinner party). Banoffee pie was chilling in the fridge. Once they polished that off, he planned to explain his feelings to Mary in the gentlest terms possible. But halfway through the lasagna, Mary pushed her plate away, insisting she was full. For the first time in a while, Melvin looked closely at his wife and noticed the purple crescents under her eyes, how pale she was.
“Do you feel OK?” he asked, a wave of dread creeping through him.
“Not really Melvin,” she admitted. “I haven’t felt right for a while now, so I went to see Dr. Kershaw last week. She did some tests, and it seems the cancer is back.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? I always come to your appointments with you,” he cried, reaching across the table to hold her tiny hand.
“I didn’t want to worry you if it was just a cold or something,” she sighed, flicking away the hair that had just recently grown back.
“What did Dr. Kershaw say?”
As Mary told him about the chemo, which was to start as soon as possible, followed by radiotherapy, Melvin’s mind wandered to Christian. He would be waiting for the call to say Melvin had come clean to Mary and to make plans for their first date. Then Melvin looked at Mary, listened to her clear voice explaining the treatment that would cause her more pain, more anxiety, more uncertainty. He knew that he couldn’t do it to her. He couldn’t leave her when she needed him most.
“Iknewyou wouldn’t go through with it,” Christian snapped when Melvin phoned him late that night after Mary had gone to bed.
“I’m so sorry, Christian. Once she recovers, I’ll speak to her. I promise,” Melvin babbled, but Christian was too angry to listen, accused him of being a coward before hanging up. And that’s where it should have ended. Melvin resolved to speak to the station boss the following day, request a transfer to another department, and focus entirely on looking after his poor wife. But that’s not how it turned out. Christian was waiting for him outside the station when he got to work the next morning, asking to talk. After work, they went to the Dog & Partridge—a quick pint in the pub with his colleague, what was wrong with that? But one quick pint turned into several, and Melvin ended up back at Christian’s modern flat in Brixton. They kissed for the first time and ended up having the best sex of Melvin’s life. And so, Melvin found himself having an affair with Christian as his wife battled cancer for a second time.
Melvin’s phone rings. He sees it’s Christian calling, so he hops off his stool and steps away from the table.
“Are you on your way? I’ve been waiting an hour for you already,” Christian says.
“I’m still at the memorial,” Melvin admits. He glances at his watch and is shocked to see the time. He’d planned to meet Christian for an early tea in town before getting back to take Mary to the hospital for her support group meeting. This will be the third time in a row that he’s stood Christian up.
“Is it awful?” Christian asks. They’ve talked about Matthew’s suicide, the shocking rise in young men dying this way, and how sad the day would be.
“Actually, there’s quite a party atmosphere now,” Melvin reports, raising his voice above the roar of laughter coming from Matthew’s now-merry widows.
“OK, well, I hope Mary’s meeting goes well later. Ring me tonight?” Christian asks. Melvin assures him he will, feeling that familiar wave of guilt. After his initial anger, Christian was so understanding about Mary, kept reassuring Melvin that he was proud of the way he was looking after her. But Melvin can’t help but wonder just how long Christian will wait around for him. The blissful snatched hours they get together are enough to sustain Melvin, but will they always be enough for Christian?
Melvin walks into the men’s room. As he washes his hands, he gets a little shock when he faces his reflection in the mirror. He’d taken Christian’s style advice without question, and Mary had been too ill to notice, but sometimes Melvin wonders if a police officer in his late fifties with Cristiano Ronaldo’s eyebrows and a wax to match isn’t a bit ridiculous, not to mention theToad of Toad Hallsuit. And the thought creeps into his mind without warning—what would his dad think? You’d imagine, by this age, he’d have stopped worrying about impressing his father, a father who had been dead for more than forty years, but actually Melvin finds he thinks of him more as he gets older. A huge but quiet and gently spoken man whose innate ability to fix anything made him a hero with his colleagues at the steelworks. Melvin never saw his dad happier than the day his son completed training and was accepted into the Met—their chance for a fresh start in London. Just a year later, Melvin Senior died suddenly from a heart attack. He was only fifty-four, younger than Melvin is now.
Frowning into the mirror, Melvin wonders what his proud and loyal father would have made of the life his only son is living now. What would he think of the lying, the cheating, the sneaking around behind his sick wife’s back? He stares with disgust into his own brown eyes and shakes his head at his souped-up image in the mirror. Melvin knows that his dad would detest what he is doing; he knows he is not the son he would have wanted. Not ready to go back to the table, Melvin washes his hands again, turns them over under the tap, and wonders what they are capable of: more than just cheating. Last night, as he’d been adjusting the pillows around Mary’s sleeping head, an insidious thought crept up on him. If she didn’t survive cancer’s latest onslaught, then Melvin would finally be free to love Christian openly and without guilt. Watching his wife’s peaceful face, he looked down and realized he was holding a pillow between his hands, his fingers digging into its soft belly. He could end it for her now, end her suffering once and for all…andthus end his own feelings of guilt and frustration. He crept closer to her. She was so still, her incredibly thin body so fragile under the covers, her chest barely moving, almost like she was dead already. He lifted the pillow toward her face, and then she suddenly let out a low moan, tilted her head to one side. As if waking from a dream, Melvin jumped backward, dropped the pillow on the floor before picking it up and carefully setting it back down on the bed. Of course he would never do such a thing. Never.
With one last look in the mirror, he pulls off his bow tie, stuffs it in his pocket, and then takes off the jacket. As he walks back to the table, he glances over to see Matthew’s boss having an animated conversation with Robyn, who seems to have shaken off her heartbreak rather quickly. She knocks back some champagne and rests a hand on his pin-striped shoulder, which is actually lower than her own. It creates the odd image of an adult praising a child. He beams up at her, a proud son with five o’clock shadow. Melvin shakes his head and wonders once again how Matthew could have done this. At least at fifty-four, Melvin’s dad had lived some life, but you could hardly say that about dying at twenty-nine. And then his mind drifts inevitably to Mary, who is fighting with everything she has to stay alive.
