Page 52 of Seven Reasons to Murder Your Dinner Guests
“I’ve got too much to lose,” she says. “I’m not ready to go yet.”
They hear a sob from farther down the bar and look over at Gordon’s wife and daughter, talking quietly.
“I do wonder, though, if the numbers were supposed to be a warning. Maybe there’s still time to change them—if we change ourselves,” Vivienne says, more quietly now. “Do you remember Gordon saying we shouldlearn from them? Perhaps that’s what he was getting at.”
“Viv, honestly, it doesn’t matter to me if I’ve got one year, ten, or thirty.” He shrugs.
“I’d like to think we still have control over our own decisions, over our own lives, no matter what these numbers say,” Vivienne tells him.
Then Melvin feels his phone buzzing in the pocket of his tight trousers (“skinny jeans,” Christian calls them, two words Melvin never thought would describe something he’d wear). Relieved to have an excuse to drop this intense conversation, Melvin steps off the stool and pulls out his phone. Maybe it’s Mary inviting him over for dinner. He’d give anything for one of her lamb roasts right now. He sighs when he sees the name flashing up.
“Melvin! Where have you got to?” Christian demands before Melvin has even said hello. From those three words, Melvin can deduce that Christian is angry with him, also that he is a little drunk and in the company of people he’s desperate to impress. None of this is new to Melvin.
“I’m still at the lecture,” Melvin tells him, stepping toward the glass doors at the entrance. Looking out onto the campus, he’s sure he can see Tristan’s slim back racing away. Strange…
“Just catching up with Vivienne. She’s quite upset about the doctor’s death,” Melvin says, glancing over at Vivienne, who grins back at him.
“Really? I thought she couldn’t stand dull Dr. Gordon,” Christian snaps, and Melvin wonders if he’d ever said this to him. They drink so much lately that he often can’t remember what he’s told Christian about the dinner party and the numbers.
“Um, I don’t think so,” mumbles Melvin, looking down at his bright-red Toms, a gift from Christian. Whoever thought canvas was a good material for footwear? Ridiculous.
“I’m with Horatio and Bob at Bugo’s. We’ve been waiting an hour for you,” he says now. Melvin can hear the restraint in his voice, the forced softening. Oh, so he’s in Richmond with good old Horatio and Bob. Their names as ill-matched as they are.
“Sorry, time got away from me,” he says, glancing at his watch. Then he feels a fresh wave of guilt wash through him when he realizes he isn’t sorry and has no desire to be knocking back overpriced wine at Bugo’s with London’s most pretentious couple. “You boys go ahead and eat. I’ll catch up with you later.”
“Oh, Mel, I was looking forward to seeing you. We’ve been like ships in the night lately.” Christian is whispering now. Melvin knows he hates the thought of Horatio and Bob believing their relationship is anything but perfect. “Melvin and I, we’re like chips and gravy,” he likes to tell people, although Melvin would be astonished if Christian had ever sampled the northern delicacy. But he’s right—in the last few weeks, Melvin has worked late and made excuses each time Christian invited him out with his friends.
“We’ve got the whole weekend together,” Melvin reassures him now, trying to ignore the tightness squeezing his stomach at the thought of yet another weekend with Christian in his Brixton flat. Because, really, the flat will always be Christian’s. Yet that’s not where the trouble lies. If only it was.
After promising Christian he’ll take him “somewhere nice” (i.e., expensive) for lunch the next day, Melvin hangs up the phone and goes back to Vivienne. Despite her intensity, Melvin finds her easy to talk to, easy to confide in. She raises one eyebrow at him now and waits to hear the latest from the drama that is Melvin’s life.
“That was Christian,” he says, feeling his jeans squeeze his thighs (and everything else in that region) as he sits back up on the stool. “We live together now. It all came out in the end. Mary knows everything.”
If Vivienne is shocked, she doesn’t let on. She nods slowly, inviting Melvin to continue his tale. He takes a deep breath. It’s hardly a story that covers him in glory, it must be said.
“You know I told you that Mary and Christian had become friends,” he says. “Well, they ended up organizing a surprise party for my sixtieth birthday last September. I’m not one for a lot of fuss, but they got a bit carried away. They hired the upstairs of a bar in Battersea, filled it with balloons, and laid out a ton of party food. Invited half of London; most of my colleagues were there, Mary’s family, rugby pals I hadn’t seen in years…”
Melvin remembers the moment when Christian led him up the stairs of the bar, having promised him a quiet birthday drink—and then they were greeted by a wall of noise, of gruesomegrinning faces, including his wife’s. He just about managed to stay on his feet, dizzily pinballing from one old friend to another. Nausea rising in his body, behind his rigor mortis smile and repeated exclamation of, “I had no idea!” The evening was an endurance test, which he thought he’d passed until the end of the night. Most of the guests were gone, most of the food eaten; Melvin was chatting with a retired copper, the man’s rheumy eyes reminiscing about long-dead police colleagues, when he heard two (very familiar) raised voices. He hurriedly excused himself and rushed over to the banquet, where Mary and Christian were squaring up to each other, each clutching a half-eaten plate of cheese cubes.
“They were both three sheets to the wind, and you won’t believe what they were arguing about,” Melvin tells Vivienne.
“What?” she asks, her eyes wide as if she’s watching a Christmas special of her favorite soap.
“Well, Mary was adamant that I only ever ate mild cheddar and wouldn’t even touch medium cheddar, let alone anything stronger, while Christian was just as confident that my rule was ‘the smellier the better’ and Camembert was my number one,” he says.
“So who was right? Do you prefer mild cheddar or smelly Camembert?” Vivienne asks, her face serious enough to quiz Michael Gove onQuestion Time.
“That’s the funny thing, Viv—they were both right. I only ever ate mild cheddar with Mary and Camembert with Christian, so I didn’t know what to say,” says Melvin, picturing the look of abject betrayal on Christian’s face when he had hesitated.
“What happened then?”
“Well, of course, Christian couldn’t help making a sarcastic comment, something about my tastes changing since he came along, and then Mary burst into tears. It turned out she’d suspected something ever since I’d started talking about Christian and embarked on those ‘ridiculous waxes’ but hadn’t known how to broach it with me,” says Melvin, his hands moving from his eyes to his temples as he brings back that night. Thankfully, there hadn’t been many guests left to witness this extraordinary scene.
“Oh, poor Mary,” Vivienne sighs, and Melvin is pleasantly surprised to hear no blame in her tone.
“I know. We talked it through, and in the end, decided I should move out. I stayed in a grim B and B for a bit. Now I’m living with Christian.” Melvin’s hands touch the silver phoenix he wears around his neck, another gift from Christian (“You’ve risen from the ashes of your marriage; now we’ll fly together”).
“So are you and Mary getting a divorce?” Vivienne asks. “You and Christian could get married.”
