Page 16 of Seven Reasons to Murder Your Dinner Guests
Three months later
Vivienne
“Weeeee…” A blur of red and blue shoots past Vivienne as she peruses a rack of blouses.
“Careful!” she calls after the speeding child, who is dressed in a Spider-Man outfit, nimbly swerving around the clothing racks on a Batman scooter.
Shaking her head, she wonders when children were suddenly allowed to ride scooters around M she’d referred to herself as “Mummy.” And they had matching dimples, like brackets around their mouths.
Cat has worked for Vivienne for two years and never once mentioned that she has a son.
Charlie looked to be around three, so he can only have been a baby when she started at the magazine.
Vivienne can’t make sense of it. Why wouldn’t she tell me?
Did Cat think she would treat her differently if she knew she was a mother?
Was it because Vivienne was childless herself and Cat felt she wouldn’t understand?
Suddenly, she starts to spot clues that she’d blindly missed in the last two years.
The time when Cat interviewed a woman whose young son had leukemia, and Cat sobbed her way through the phone call.
Vivienne gave her a right rollicking afterward, lecturing her on professionalism.
The times Cat dashed off with her mobile and told Vivienne her friend was going through a rough patch with a difficult boyfriend.
Those mornings she turned up with dark circles under her eyes and Vivienne presumed she’d been out partying late with her friends.
And last week, when the editor announced that the magazine would be closing in a month’s time, Vivienne saw Cat’s crumbling face as a typical overemotional reaction.
“What are we going to do? I need this job,” Cat cried, and Vivienne dismissed her concerns.
She was in her twenties, had her whole career ahead of her.
It was Vivienne herself who was bound to struggle, at her age and having worked at the same place for years.
Now Vivienne sees that Cat has a little boy who’s dependent on her, while Vivienne just has her two cats, who mostly ignore her anyway.
Plus, the mortgage on her cottage was paid off years ago.
Closing her front door behind her, Vivienne is greeted by piles of papers on her living room floor.
Despite her meticulous system, she managed to accumulate an extortionate amount of paperwork over her many years at the magazine.
Perching on the end of her old sofa, she grabs a handful of papers and pulls them onto her knee.
As she flicks through, a yellowing photo floats to the floor.
Bending over to pick it up, she catches her breath at the image of the impossibly young version of herself, James’s tanned arm draped casually over her shoulder, the leftovers of calamari and chips on the table in front of them.
Closing her eyes, she can almost taste that moment again, the lemony, salty seafood and the start of something new, the hope that she may have found her forever.
Then she remembers the tears, the physical pain of a broken heart, of a broken body, and the catalyst for her first fugue state.
Pushing the picture to the bottom of the pile, she continues her search and finally finds what she’s looking for.
An article Cat wrote not long after she’d started at the magazine.
It is covered in Vivienne’s signature red pen, tattooed with crossings and capital letters saying things like WATCH YOUR SPELLING!
and THIS MAKES NO SENSE! Vivienne’s comments remind her of something.
Then she realizes—Stella’s parents arguing outside the church.
Her furious mother shouting, She lived for your approval and all you did was criticize .
Regardless of the wealth her father had bestowed on her, Stella had only heard his disapproval.
She’d ended up feeling inadequate and turned that negativity toward her rival vloggers.
Which—in turn—had ended in her death. Reading over her notes, Vivienne sees that she’s been “trolling” Cat in her own way.
She looks now at Cat’s writing and sees a certain flourish, an effortless style that made for easy reading.
But Vivienne’s comments didn’t refer to it—or say anything positive at all.
Slumping down on the sofa, Vivienne feels ashamed.
She’d seen herself as an inspiring mentor; yes, she was tough, but only because she wanted Cat to improve.
Now she sees that she’s been overly critical at every turn, passing on her own feelings of inadequacy to Cat and hammering down the girl’s confidence.
Cat must have been miserable at work, and then gone home to look after her young son alone.
***
The next day, Vivienne sits at her desk, watching her colleagues moving with purpose around her, filling cardboard boxes with old magazines for new portfolios, freebie beauty products, and handfuls of pens.
“Could you look at this feature for me?” the editor asks, dropping a sheet of paper onto her desk, then winking with all the subtlety of an early ’90s boy band ballad.
“Sure,” she says, giving him a small smile.
She flips over the CV he dropped and works her way through correcting spelling and punctuation mistakes.
Never in her wildest dreams did she expect to be helping Damian get a new job, but when she’d caught him mid–panic attack one night after work last week, she unexpectedly felt sympathy for him.
He explained that a rival publisher had asked to see his CV, but his undiagnosed dyslexia meant he struggled with the formal format.
His “creative mind” (as he put it) had no trouble with mood boards and layouts for the magazine but panicked over a simple CV.
Vivienne surprised herself by offering to help.
She waited for the inevitable trill of jealousy, of bitterness, to follow since she herself had had no response from the speculative CVs she’d sent around, but those feelings didn’t come.
In fact, she started to wonder if the magazine closing might be an opportunity for her to try something new.
And really, what harm could helping a colleague do?
After returning the CV to Damian—receiving a second wink for her trouble—she walks past Cat’s desk.
As the rest of the team busy themselves with packing up their desks and printing off their cover letters, having already sent their rushed jobs over, Cat is still at the center of the storm, totally focused on her screen, methodically typing away at her final article.
“Cat, could I have a word?” Vivienne asks.
“I’m nearly finished,” Cat says, eyes not leaving her screen. “I know I said I’d have it done this morning, but would one o’clock this afternoon be OK?”
“That’s fine. It’s not about the article. Shall we go to the café and get some fresh air?” Vivienne suggests.
In the café, Vivienne pays for her own tea, Cat’s coffee, and a large slice of chocolate cake to share.
“Is everything OK?” Cat asks, her hands clutched in her lap, not touching her coffee or cake.
“Fine—well…as good as it can be,” Vivienne says, picking up a knife and cutting the cake carefully in half. “Did you get up to much over the weekend?”
“Not really. Had a look around the shops yesterday.”
“Actually, I saw you…with Charlie,” Vivienne says evenly.
“Charlie?” Cat splutters, taken off guard. “He’s… He’s… I’m sure you realize, Vivienne. He’s my son.”
Despite being caught in a two-year-old lie, Cat can’t seem to help the pride shining on her face at the word son . And Vivienne can’t help smiling back. Cat should be proud; he is perfect. Albeit a reckless rider and ruthless web-slinger.