Page 28 of Seven Reasons to Murder Your Dinner Guests

On his train ride back home following Matthew’s memorial, Gordon started to put together his action plan.

He marched into the kitchen, where Elizabeth and Louisa were sitting, facing each other across their kitchen table, hands encasing large mugs of hot chocolate, with a number of pink and white marshmallows floating on top.

They both looked up at him guiltily, and between them, like crime scene evidence, was a canister of squirty cream and a little plastic tub of chocolate powder.

He did a double take; those items definitely had not been in the kitchen cupboards when he’d looked that morning.

His wife and daughter must have hidden them away from him…

No matter, he had more important things to discuss.

After sending Louisa off to her room still clutching her mug as if it were an extension of her hand, he told Elizabeth they needed to talk and laid out his plans in the simplest, most concise manner.

Unfortunately, his wife didn’t respond in kind and started sobbing before he could finish.

“So you’re leaving me?” Elizabeth spluttered, dabbing her cheeks with the tissue Gordon had handed her.

“Well, yes, but I think it will be beneficial for all of us.” He attempted to reassure her with some statistics he had in hand, but she wasn’t in the frame of mind to listen.

“Is there another woman?”

“Of course not,” he cried, genuinely horrified at the thought of adding yet another stressful element to his life.

“Be honest with me, Gordon: Do you want a divorce?” she asked once the flow of tears had eased off somewhat.

“Oh, no, I think we should stay married,” he said, putting an arm around her shoulders, as he knew it would provide her with some comfort and reassurance. His research had shown that divorced men are more likely to live shorter lives.

So, as Elizabeth watched, eyes ringed with makeup smudges, he packed up his little travel suitcase and walked away from the home he’d shared with his family for more than a decade.

He looked back and saw Louisa’s strawberry-blond fringe poking out from between her bedroom curtains.

For a second, he pictured the five-year-old Louisa who had waved him off to work every day from that very spot.

But teenage Louisa just glared and then was gone.

Walking away from that house wasn’t easy for Gordon, but he was determined to stick to his plan and felt that, ultimately, the move would be beneficial to his longevity.

After a few nights in a hotel (with the highest hygiene rating he could find), he managed to secure a furnished flat within walking distance of the university.

It was in a new block, built just two years ago, and the landlord had assured him that all the furniture was brand-new.

He arrived at the flat armed with a cornucopia of cleaning products, along with new white bedsheets, towels, and some essential consumables.

He’d even bought one of those UV lights to check for stains on the mattress and carpets (all clear, thankfully).

Elizabeth had filled their home with garishly colored rugs, cushions, and various trinkets.

She favored reds, oranges, and purples (which, Gordon liked to joke, reminded him of the birth canal).

Gordon himself had always liked the color white, or—to be more precise—the shade of white.

It was clean and practical; you could see clearly if something was dirty.

So he kept his new flat entirely white and even took to wearing white coveralls when he was at home or a white tracksuit on the rare occasion he went out.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t get away with this at work, where the accepted dress code for teaching staff was a suit, but after work, he made sure to strip off in the doorway of his flat and pull on the coveralls.

Then Gordon set up the flat ready for work, with two brand-new whiteboards and two packs of whiteboard pens, one all black and one all red.

Using a black marker, he wrote Experiment Serendipity at the top of one board and Experiment 54 with a red marker at the top of the second board.

On the first board, he drew a circle to replicate the dinner table, wrote their seven names around it and their numbers next to each one.

Just Vivienne’s was missing. Next to Stella’s name and number, he wrote: Ignored .

Next to Matthew’s, he wrote: Took matters into his own hands .

And next to Janet’s: Overindulged . Then he carefully drew a line across each of their names.

On the second board, he wrote 53 at the top. Underneath, he wrote his three commandments:

I will take my number seriously.

I will fight my number.

I will not overindulge.

Inspired by the findings of Experiment Serendipity, Gordon plans to write his own paper, using himself as his main research point, aiming to beat his number of fifty-three.

To make it to fifty-four, and beyond. He reached the conclusion that the secret science group had selected him for their experiment, sent him the challenge to beat his number.

Not only would he do that, but he would use their findings to write a paper so extraordinary that it would gazump theirs and make him a star in the science world.

Then they’d be begging for him to join their group.

Gordon had already achieved his first commandment and now was embarking on the second: fighting his number.

Starting with the basics, he worked his way through the research, reading that women tended to live five to ten more years than their male counterparts, with 85 percent of people living to one hundred being women.

This was partly due to the XX chromosome, which means women are less likely to suffer from diseases associated with genetic mutations such as hemophilia, as well as testosterone, which causes aggressive behavior in men and may lead to road accidents, fights, and the like.

These elements were out of his control, but there were other factors he could control: his risk of developing cardiovascular disease by eating a nutritious diet, taking regular exercise, and cutting down on alcohol consumption.

This led very nicely into commandment number three.

Unlike greedy Janet, he wouldn’t be overindulging. He would do the opposite.

Back in 1935, a scientist found that rats with severely restricted diets lived up to 33 percent longer than previously known possible.

Similar experiments on other animals more recently backed up the theory.

By restricting calorie intake by around 50 percent, lifespans extended by up to 300 percent, as a result of reducing metabolic rates and free radical damage.

In other words, the body is healthier when it’s processing less food.

For ethical reasons, this theory had not yet been tested on humans, but Gordon has the scientific knowledge, plus the self-control, to be the perfect candidate.

His first step was to reduce his calorie intake by 50 percent, which he hopes will provide a range of benefits, including a lowered risk of developing cancer, diabetes, and heart problems. To keep it simple, he eats the same three meals every day, making up 1,300 calories.

Breakfast is a boiled egg and single slice of toast; lunch is cheese, rye crackers, and a sliced apple; and for dinner, he has salmon steak with steamed broccoli and a kiwi fruit.

His research also showed the irrefutable health benefits of weight training, so he’d invested in some weights and gym equipment for use in his flat (he had concluded that the potential risk of an accident was outweighed by the physical benefits).

When he’d lived with Elizabeth, he cycled to the university every day.

The thought of such a treacherous journey now makes him shudder.

He finds he can gain the same benefits by setting his bike on a stand and never having to leave his flat.

To make space for his new equipment, he asked his landlord to remove the dining table, and he now eats standing by his kitchen counter.

Every day after breakfast and after work, he embarks on a one-hour fitness program, alternating cycling and weight training.

After ten minutes rest, he then spends three minutes and thirty seconds performing a perfect headstand, which is known to alleviate stress as well as activate the pituitary gland and stimulate the lymphatic system.

And so far, it is working wonders, he is sure.

His skin and hair are shining, his stomach is never bloated, and he feels younger than he has in years.

Admittedly, he does seem to have lost some weight, but he’s enjoying the leaner look of his body thanks to the strength training.

He is starting to feel excited at the prospect of presenting his findings to Professor Goodacre, picturing the look of enlightenment on the man’s face.

“I must admit, I never did warm to Janet,” Vivienne says, as if this information is somehow significant. “But I was impressed when I read about the campaigning she’d done from within the company, encouraging them to hire more diverse models.”

“Yes, it seems she had a lot more integrity than she perhaps let on,” Melvin says, nodding.

“Do you think?” Gordon asks, picturing her nearly toppling off her stool, burger oil rolling down her chin, and flaunting her assets at Matthew and Melvin. That certainly didn’t look like integrity to him.

Nor did stumbling out of some man’s Notting Hill apartment in the early hours of the morning, strutting down the street in a skirt that barely covered her derriere, oblivious to anything except satisfying her own base needs…