Page 69 of Seven Reasons to Murder Your Dinner Guests
Vivienne stops and stares at Jim. Or rather James. How had she not recognized him before now? Her James, the love of her life, the man who had left her pregnant and heartbroken.
“It’s you,” she splutters. Really, he had changed. Gone is the wavy dark-blond hair that had endearingly stuck out in all directions, replaced by mottled pink skin on top with very short gray coating on the back and sides, like a greyhound’s fur. His lean, athletic body has given way to a more portly frame. Then she looks a little closer and spots some hints of the man he used to be. Green eyes with brown flecks, the habit of raising one eyebrow every few words like he’s permanently suspicious.
“What a coincidence.” He grins. “After all these years, you endup befriending my son.” He shakes his head at the strangeness of the universe.
“A coincidence.” Vivienne nods. Her brain seems to have stalled, only capable of repeating the word he’d said.
“I doubt the adoption issue came up with Tristan, did it,” he says, more a statement than a question.
“No. Sorry, I just need to catch my train,” she mutters, desperate to get away from him. Once she’s sure he’s no longer following, she turns back and sees he’s gone, already back inside the pub with his floral-bosomed wife and sympathetic friends. Vivienne looks at the closed door of the pub and feels like that abandoned eighteen-year-old all over again.
Then she turns and marches as fast as she can to find the first train out of there.
***
As Vivienne’s train trundles its way back into London, she looks out the window but doesn’t see the houses, the fields, or the trees passing by. Her mind is playing out today’s events. The priest describing long talks about religious texts with Tristan, her atheist friend. His ex-girlfriend Ellie talking about anxious, sensitive Tristan’s angry moments. His friends describing Moralia as spyware, developed to help him stalk prospective girlfriends. His mother talking about Tristan’s adoption, him drunkenly telling her he’d found his “real mother.” And then James, suddenly back in her life, in the role of Tristan’s father, standing in front of her, talking of coincidences.
She planned to wait until she was home but is overwhelmed by the need for answers. For that crucial piece of the puzzle that will make the whole picture make sense. Pulling the white package out of her bag, she cradles it in two hands. Her name is written on the front in Tristan’s small, precise handwriting, each letter sitting separately next to the others. Taking a shaky breath, she carefully peels back the flap, reaches inside, and pulls out a sheet of paper she hasn’t seen for more than forty years. Tiny tortoiseshell kittens frame the writing paper. Exclamation marks and hearts are dotted around the page, and the handwriting is undeniably her own.
Vivienne’s eyes scan the words:
I have wonderful news, Jamesy—I’m pregnant!!! I don’t know if it’s “mother’s intuition” or what, but I feel sure it’s going to be a boy, just like you’ve always wanted. I really like the name Kieran, what do you think?
The letter a pregnant Vivienne wrote to her married lover. She cringes at the naivety that drips off the page. A tear falls down her cheek as she remembers the agony of James’s silence. She wondered back then if the letter had even made it to her intended; perhaps there had been a mix-up at the post office or an intervention from his furious wife. Gradually, she came to accept the most likely outcome: He read it and chose to forget about her.
But how had the letter come to be in Tristan’s possession?
Vivienne’s head drops back against the seat. She closes hereyes, remembers those terrible weeks in the hospital, the pain of childbirth, the brief moment of holding a bundle in her arms, her mother delivering the news that her baby boy hadn’t survived. Then the first of her fugue states crashing into her brain to protect her. Vivienne squeezes her eyes, trying to wring some detail from the hazy decades-old memory. She folds her arms together as she remembers the weight of the baby. He’d been light but substantial, his feet had wriggled, he’d let out a cry…
Her eyes spring open and the truth is suddenly in front of her. Her baby survived, and her baby is Tristan.
***
Back at home, she stumbles through the front door and drops heavily onto the sofa, sinking back into the familiar cuddle of the worn tweed fabric. The adrenaline that had carried her home starts to seep away, and exhaustion throbs through her body and mind. Before she allows her eyes to close, she reaches for the white package once more, turns it over, and gives it a shake. A little black envelope drops to the floor. With her last shred of energy, Vivienne bends down and picks it up. She turns it over in her hands, taking in her name on the front. How many times has she pictured finding it? How many times has she imagined the number inside? Her hands shaking, she peels open the envelope and pulls the card out.
You will die aged sixty-three.
With a yelp, she drops it to the floor, her whole body trembling.Sixty-three is her current age.
Forcing her exhausted brain to rally, Vivienne thinks back over today’s events, searching for the clues she missed during her four-year friendship with Tristan. And slowly, like a film developing, she starts to see the whole picture.
Moralia…“The earliest reference to the seven deadly sins,” the priest had said. The strange quotes Tristan would recite—“A man’s life does not consist of the abundance of his possessions”—at Stella’s funeral. He told Melvin, “Evil exists where good people fail to act,” after Gordon’s death. Vivienne had taken them as signs of Tristan’s extensive reading, but now she sees they’re ancient references to the seven sins.
She remembers her conversation with Susan, pictures Tristan living back with his parents, heartbroken after his breakup… “He’d found out about the adoption…worst day of my life.” Vivienne sees him plan the dinner party, collecting his doomed dinner guests. During her investigations, she searched for a link between them—and that link had been Tristan all along. Each of them must have wronged him in some way, thanks to their sins. She guesses he used his clever spy software—named after the text—to find out about them all, hence how he’d known Vivienne’s favorite books, TV shows, and so on. Vivienne imagines that it also helped him track all their movements.
One by one, he’d come for them. Until there was only Vivienne left.
That’s how he’d planned it. She’d been the focus all along. Tristan’s envious mother, who he believed had abandoned him at birth.
Then she thinks of the moment they fell into the Thames together. Or rather, the moment he dragged her into the water, intent on murder.
“Oh, Tristan, no!” she sobs.
Before the Dinner Party
November 2015
Four years earlier
