Page 19 of Seven Reasons to Murder Your Dinner Guests

“Oh, actually she’s been unwell, had to have another round of chemo, unfortunately, but doing better now,” Melvin mumbles before excusing himself to go to the mens’ room.

“Any sign of those canapés?” Vivienne asks.

Tristan watches her search the room. It’s midday now, and he knows she has her breakfast at 6:30 a.m.—a bowl of granola with a handful of berries on top—so she’ll be peckish (her word) by now.

She looks up and gives him a proud smile; she’s thinking about how smart he looks in his shirt and trousers, he can tell.

Honestly, it’s like he’s picked up a second mother in these last few months.

When Vivienne asked him about blogs following Stella’s funeral, he was sure she was only looking for a freebie IT lesson.

He opened his mouth to tell her he was too busy, but then she said something that stopped him: I fear the modern world is leaving me behind .

She’d been so cold when they first met in the street, all edges and ice, but she thawed a little before his eyes, and he glimpsed a side of her that he suspected she usually kept hidden.

He’d handed over his card and, before he knew it, he was sitting opposite Vivienne in a stuffy little café in Waterloo.

He’d dreaded it and yet, once they got going, something unexpected happened—he started to enjoy himself.

Vivienne was an eager and conscientious student; she asked insightful questions and picked up new ideas easily.

And when he talked, she really listened, her pale-blue eyes wide, absorbing each word.

They’d met up every Sunday since, and now Tristan found he looked forward to his afternoons with Vivienne.

“A little help, if you don’t mind?” Janet snaps, holding a silk-gloved hand out to Tristan, who steps off his own seat. She hooks her heel over the bar at the bottom of the stool next to him and then attempts to pull herself up.

“Come on now, put your back into it,” she says, gripping his hand tightly as he bears the brunt of her weight.

At this close proximity, Tristan can’t help but notice that the woman is considerably larger than three months ago.

He hears a grunt from Gordon’s direction as Janet’s hand starts to slip out of the glove that Tristan is clutching.

He looks up to meet Vivienne’s eyes, which are wide with mischief.

Then, slowly, Janet starts to keel sideways. Her hat flops to the floor, the veil flailing in its wake.

“I’ve got you,” Melvin says, suddenly appearing on Janet’s other side and easily lifting her onto the stool and retrieving her ludicrous hat.

“Thank you, Melvin,” Janet says. “These damn slippery gloves! I wanted to wear my leather pair, but I could only find one.” She pushes the offending gloves into her bag and pulls out a small mirror in which she checks her hair.

At Janet’s words, Vivienne’s head snaps up. She looks shocked as she stares at Tristan. What? he mouths in response.

But then a waiter appears, holding a tray of smoked salmon blini, followed by another bearing a tray of tall champagne glasses.

“Don’t mind if I do,” Janet says, helping herself to three blini and two glasses. “Be a darling and fetch some lunch menus too?”

Gordon clears his throat.

“So now we have more evidence,” he begins, shaking his head at the waiters, who turn away from them and head over to the next table, where the “weeping widows” are sitting.

“Evidence? Are you referring to Matthew’s tragic suicide?” Melvin booms.

“I am. Stella’s number was correct, and you have confirmed that Matthew’s number was indeed twenty-nine…” Gordon says.

“I thought Matthew didn’t open his envelope,” Vivienne cuts in.

“That’s what he told us at the wine bar, but after you all left, he admitted to me that he’d seen his number—and it was twenty-nine,” Melvin says gravely.

“I knew it!” Janet screeches, wobbling on her stool, not unlike a giant Weeble.

“What else did he say?” Vivienne asks.

“Poor kid was terrified,” Melvin says. “I tried to reassure him, but it looks like the depression had already taken hold.”

“He must have been tortured by the thought,” Tristan murmurs, picturing Matthew up on the roof.

Tristan’s eyes drift over to the table of “weeping widows.” Eight of them!

Tristan isn’t sure he’s even spoken to eight beautiful women, let alone dated them.

Why couldn’t Matthew have been happy with just one?

Tristan was more than happy with Ellie—her gap-toothed smile, her wild curls, her cackling laugh.

He gave her everything. And yet it wasn’t enough.

He’d spent hours trying to answer his mother’s question: “What did you do to chase her away?” The only answer he could find was that he’d loved her too much.

When they first met, he’d read the books she loved, listened to her favorite folk bands, even let her pick out clothes for him, like linen shirts and one particularly loud tie-dye shirt.

When it was the two of them, it was perfect.

It was just when other people got involved that things went wrong.

Ellie’s sister was chronically unwell, and she was forever in and out of the hospital.

Ellie’s phone would ring and then she’d dash off at a moment’s notice.

And her colleagues at school were constantly dragging her out for drinks after work.

At first, she’d ask Tristan along, but he shudders even now when he pictures her teacher friends laughing at their in-jokes.

The creepy way the headmaster watched Ellie, even with his glamorous wife and young child in the room.

After a while, Tristan started to make excuses whenever she’d invited him out with her work friends.

“Don’t you like them?” she finally asked when he’d cited a migraine on the night of the headmaster’s birthday party.

“I just don’t trust them—and I don’t think you should either,” he admitted.

“I know you’re just thinking of me, but sometimes you can be quite suffocating,” she told him. “It’s like you see the worst in everyone.”

Tristan promised to step back, to give her friends another chance. They went on a make-or-break holiday, which he thought went well, but she ended things the following week.

“I’ll have the arancini balls for starters—actually, make that two portions—followed by the burger and chips with a side of onion rings,” Janet tells the waiter. Vivienne and Melvin both order sandwiches, and Gordon impatiently waves the waiter away.

“I wonder if any of Matthew’s family are here,” Vivienne says, glancing around the room.

Tristan looks for an older couple or a sibling who shares Matthew’s dark eyes. But there’s only the weeping widows, some smart-suited colleagues, and them.

“Perhaps they weren’t close…” Gordon says with a shrug.

“That’s no excuse,” Vivienne snaps.

Then Tristan pictures his own parents attending their only child’s funeral.

His dad’s stocky shoulders shoehorned into an old suit that had stopped fitting him years before.

He couldn’t imagine him crying; no, he’d be more likely to hit the bar and hope to drink his sorrow away.

His mother would have bought a new dress especially for the occasion—probably with a garish floral design—and the tears would be freely rolling down her face.

But then Tristan cuts short this line of thought.

After what he discovered in the box, perhaps they wouldn’t react in that way at all.

Perhaps they would just see his death as a blip and their lives would continue as before.

And what about Ellie? Tristan wonders whether his ex-girlfriend would turn up at his funeral.

Perhaps that would be the shock she’d need to finally realize she made a mistake by ending things with him.

That, like Robyn said of Matthew, he would have made a fantastic husband.

It would be too late then, though. Suddenly, Tristan’s heart is racing.

Adrenaline rushes through his body. He can’t sit there any longer.

“I’ll just be a minute,” he mumbles, practically falling off his stool and heading for the door.

Outside, he turns right, nearly crashing into a large plant, its palmlike leaves spiking his shoulder but also hiding him from view. Crouching, Tristan covers his eyes, starts to count.

“Are you all right?” a voice asks from the darkness. Tristan feels a hand on his shoulder.

“Get off,” he snaps, pushing it away, hard.

“All right, pal, take it easy,” the man says, apparently undeterred by the shove. Tristan detects a strong northern accent, a strange mix of Geordie and Lancashire. “I’ll just stay here until you feel a bit better.”

Tristan takes seven deep breaths and then reluctantly uncovers his eyes and glances at the man now crouching alongside him.

He’s not looking at Tristan, just staring ahead, apparently lost in his own thoughts.

The man looks to be around Matthew’s age, dressed in a suit, but it’s too broad on the shoulders and made from a cheap-looking shiny material that would have horrified Matthew.

His hair is slicked back from his face, giving it a plastic effect.

Tristan has an irrational urge to reach out and touch it.

The man’s trousers have ridden up, and Tristan notices that one sock is black and one is navy blue.

“Thanks. I’m fine, really,” Tristan says. “Sorry about that.”

“No worries,” the man says, flashing a row of little pointy teeth. “Gareth Atkinson.” He sticks out his hand. Tristan shakes it, trying not to turn away as the strong smell of beer hits him.

“Did you know Matty very well?” he asks Tristan.

“Erm…not really,” Tristan mumbles, but it’s clear that Gareth isn’t listening; he’s just looking for an opportunity to talk about “Matty.”