Page 38 of Seven Reasons to Murder Your Dinner Guests

“Not gonna lie to you, Viv, I haven’t thought about that yet,” Melvin says, hoping that his number will save him from that conversation, at least. He orders another two glasses of red wine from the bar.

Student standards, so not the best, but Melvin isn’t fussy.

It is one of Christian’s (many) complaints about him.

As Melvin waits for his drinks to be poured, he marvels once again at the craving people all seem to have to hear happy endings, to tie stories up in a neat little bow.

He managed to present his mess of a life as an almost fairy tale, with an impossibly happy ending.

Mary had suspected all along. She’s upset but she’ll get over it, and Christian and Melvin will live happily ever after in their Brixton flat .

The End. But of course, that’s not quite the truth.

Real life is never tied up in a neat little bow.

As he looks down at the pale line on his finger where his wedding band used to sit, Melvin remembers that night.

That dreadful night. Thinking of it now feels like touching a recent wound, so fresh it’s still aching and itchy, getting used to the stitches keeping it together.

People talk about time standing still in those big moments, when a crime is committed, when an accident happens, when a baby is born.

Well, on that night, it wasn’t so much that time stood still—it was as if it disappeared altogether; they entered a vacuum where there existed only them and their memories.

As if they were in a darkened cinema watching a show reel of their life together, and Mary had control of what was shown.

She’d bring up one “clip” and then slow it down, rewind and fast-forward, searching in the background for clues.

“What about our wedding day? You and the best man went out for a smoke, you were gone for over an hour…”

“Those Six Nations rugby trips with your mates, you always came back looking so guilty…”

“When we went to Crete and stayed at that spa hotel, you were always chatting with that bloke by the pool, what was his name… Was something going on with him?”

Mary threw accusation after accusation at him like poisoned darts.

Sitting at their old, stained dining table, tiny elbows propping her moon-shaped face up as tears freely rolled down without being caught in a tissue or pushed away.

She wanted Melvin to see those tears, to take responsibility for them.

“Of course not. I loved you. I still love you. I was so happy to be marrying you.” It didn’t matter how many times he told her that there were no other men, no previous indiscretions, her anger and hurt only escalated.

“Did you only stay with me because of the cancer?” she asked him at around 5:00 a.m., the rising sun pushing a sliver of light through a gap in the curtains. Melvin stood, walked over to the window, pulled the drapes together, and was silent.

“You were going to tell me that night, weren’t you?

” she screamed in a surge of energy that shocked Melvin.

“You made lasagna and bought some nice wine as if you were trying to seduce me. I thought you were just being nice, but you were going to tell me about Christian then, weren’t you?

Well, I’m sorry my cancer got in the way of your good time.

” Bitter words that seemed so strange coming out of Mary’s mouth.

Finally, at 7:00 a.m., exhaustion won them over and Mary plodded to bed as if she were sleepwalking while Melvin let his eyes close as he sat on the sofa.

When he came around, he glanced at his watch and saw it was 11:00 a.m. A mug of hot coffee had been placed on the table in front of him, and he looked up to see Mary standing by the window in her old fluffy purple dressing gown.

“You should move out,” she said, her voice cold. “I’m sure Christian will find room for you at his place. There’s only one bedroom, but that won’t be a problem.”

“Mary, please,” were the words that shot out of Melvin’s mouth. He didn’t even know what he was pleading for, what he wanted her to say, but it wasn’t this. Not this coldness, not this rejection.

***

“Here you go.” The student offers him his change as Melvin shakes his head and hands Vivienne her glass.

“So how’s Mary doing now?” Vivienne asks, taking the glass from him.

“Thriving without me,” he admits. “She’s still line-dancing, planning a girls’ holiday to Ibiza, got a cracking new haircut.”

Despite everything that has gone on, Melvin is proud that he and Mary have managed to piece together a tentative friendship. They talk once a week on the phone, and about once a month, they meet for a Sunday roast, sometimes back at the old house.

“New haircut for a new man perhaps?” Vivienne wonders aloud.

Melvin starts. Yes, of course that’s it. Mary has a new man. He hasn’t been able to put his finger on what had changed lately. Her spark was back.

“Well, congratulations,” Vivienne says, holding her glass up.

“For what?”

“You’ve done it. You’ve told the truth, and you’ve found the man of your dreams.” She smiles. “Surely if any of us have managed to change our destiny, it’s you.”

Melvin smiles and takes a big sip from his glass.

When he was with Mary, and fighting his passion for Christian, he’d pictured this alternate life they would lead.

Melvin, free at last from the shackles of his suburban heterosexual marriage.

He’d soar through the sky with Christian by his side, enjoying new experiences every day, exploring a world he hadn’t known existed.

But in practice, it felt like he’d just swapped one marriage for another.

He’d swapped the 1930s semi-detached house he’d shared with Mary for Christian’s cool Brixton flat at the top of a town house.

Instead of roast beef at the dining table on Sundays, he had sushi from a conveyor belt.

Where he’d watched Midsomer Murders with Mary, now he watched foreign films at the Everyman with Christian.

Yet just three nights ago, when he and Christian were at a club, Christian stepped outside for a cigarette and Melvin found himself having sex with a stranger in a toilet stall.

Bareback too. Afterward, still smelling the man’s floral aftershave on his skin, mixed with Melvin’s own guilt, he asked himself, Why?

Because the stranger had offered himself up and Melvin had needed to feel his heart race, his senses alight?

Or because he couldn’t bring himself to say no?

And it wasn’t like that was a one-off; these moments of betrayal were becoming more and more frequent.

“You know, I’m sure I saw Tristan running away just now,” Melvin says, keen to move the conversation away from himself and his “happy ever after.”

“Running away? He was just walking his friend out; he’ll be back in a minute. We’re supposed to be going out for dinner.” Vivienne frowns, turning her head toward the direction of the glass doors.

“Strange,” Melvin sighs.

Distracted now, Vivienne pulls her phone from her bag and starts to type a message. Melvin finishes his drink and is about to make his excuses when a shout from farther down the bar makes him turn.

“No, Mum!” the girl cries, followed by a panicked “shush” from the older woman next to her. Vivienne looks up from her phone, glances over, and then meets Melvin’s eye. It’s Dr. Gordon’s wife and daughter. The mother’s face is flushed and streaked with tears, her head shaking and shaking no.

“Louisa, please. You can’t say that about your father,” she sobs, her voice low but trembling with desperation.

“But it’s the truth. He was a self-centered bore, a hypocrite, and an embarrassment by the end. It’s better that he’s gone,” she fumes, anger magnifying her voice so that the bar is totally silent as her words sink in.

“That’s not fair, Louisa. He was your father, and he loved you. He’d just lost his way; he wasn’t well,” says her mother.

“It’s his fault I’m the way I am about my body. He just wouldn’t stop going on about empty calories and cellulite,” she says. “He got worse after he moved out. As if he had license to be an even bigger idiot than he was before.”

“Louisa, I really think we should carry on this conversation at home,” Elizabeth mutters weakly.

“Don’t worry; I’m going anyway,” Louisa says. She hops down from the barstool and marches away from her mother without a backward glance.

The ten or so people left at the bar are all watching Louisa as she pushes through the glass doors and marches up the hill in the same direction Melvin had seen Tristan running.

Behind them, Elizabeth’s slim body slumps over even more, her shoulders moving up and down in rhythm with her silent tears.

“Oh, love, don’t take it too seriously. Her dad’s just died. She’s clearly hurting. I’m sure she’ll come around,” Melvin says, standing from his stool and resting his hand on her slim shoulder.

“Thank you,” Elizabeth sniffs, lifting her head to reveal streaks of mascara down her face. “But I don’t think so. They’ve never got on. She blames her dad for her body issues; he was very forceful with his advice. It didn’t make for an easy homelife.”

“Yes, he was quite the preacher,” Vivienne mutters, and Melvin shoots her a frown.

“But he was fighting his own demons,” Elizabeth says, instinctively defending her husband. “He had an eating disorder, you know. Bulimia. It’s what sparked our separation. He refused to get help. He seemed to think it was normal.”

“None of us are perfect,” Melvin says gently, noticing the three empty wineglasses in front of the woman, her slim frame.

“Mrs. MacMillan,” a confident voice calls over, and they look up to see Professor Goodacre strolling easily toward them. “Let me escort you to the college brasserie for a bite to eat.”

The man nods at Melvin and Vivienne, and then scoops Elizabeth away, who is dabbing at her face with a tissue and looking up at the professor as if he’s just saved her life.

Perhaps he has, ponders Melvin as he watches them walk away, their legs perfectly in sync like runners in a three-legged race.

“Dr. Gordon was bulimic?” Vivienne whispers.

“Remember how strange he was with his foie gras at Serendipity’s?” Melvin says, picturing him snatching back his plate when Janet had offered to take it.

“You’re right,” Vivienne says. “And it explains why he ate a whole pie in one sitting.”

Melvin sighs. He’s had enough of Vivienne’s theories, her prodding, her accusations, her desperation for the truth. He’s tired of it all.

“I think I’ll head off now. I’m already late to meet Christian,” Melvin says before finishing off the last of his red wine, standing up, and performing an exaggerated bow for Vivienne.

“Oh, to be young and in love.” Vivienne laughs, slipping off her own stool, a pained grimace briefly crossing her face.

“I think I’ll stick around and see if Tristan shows up. Just promise me you’ll think about what I said? There are only three of us left, and we need to watch out for each other.”

Melvin nods and walks away from Vivienne, her words young and in love echoing in his mind. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his mobile to check for the next train into town. Then he switches his phone off and wonders what tonight will bring.