Page 49 of Seven Reasons to Murder Your Dinner Guests

“He was an unusual little boy, really. Jim and I worried about him all his life. The two of us, we’re not ones to talk about our emotions much.

We just get on with things. But Tristan was always having one emotional outburst or another.

One minute he’d hate me, the next he’d be clinging to me.

I found it embarrassing sometimes,” says Susan, still talking to Vivienne’s reflection in the mirror.

It seems like she finds it easier to look there than straight at Vivienne.

“I can imagine that would be difficult,” Vivienne says, keeping her voice low, mindful of not breaking this strange spell that the alcohol and mirrors have created, willing the door not to swing open.

“You know, he wasn’t ours. Jim and I had tried for a baby for years.

I suffered miscarriage after miscarriage, and it nearly ended our marriage.

Jim even moved out for a few months. In those days, no one talked about these things.

Jim said he’d be happy with just us, we didn’t need a child, but I did.

I ached to hold a baby in my arms. It was all I could think about,” she says.

“I’m so sorry,” whispers Vivienne, thinking of her own baby, snatched away before it was strong enough to live, followed by those unspoken years of wanting and wishing for another child to love.

“Then, one night over dinner, Jim told me about a friend of his, who was a hospital porter and had found a baby boy just left in the foyer. The mother had given birth to him and then just scarpered. Can you imagine? Jim was just talking about it like a bit of office gossip I might be interested in, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the baby, motherless and abandoned,” says Susan, her eyes now wet, her chest rising and falling with the weight of her story.

“What happened?” Though Vivienne could guess the rest, she wants to hear the words from Susan.

“I begged Jim to get us that baby, told him I needed to have it. I’m so ashamed now, but I even said our marriage was over if he couldn’t do this for me.”

Her head is now bowed, mortified by her past desperate self.

“And somehow, he did it—don’t ask me how. Two weeks later, the baby was in my arms, and we called him Tristan.”

There’s silence as Vivienne is lost in Susan’s world and can practically feel the joy—the relief—of the weight of a baby in her arms.

“You clearly loved him very much,” says Vivienne.

“I did. I hope he knew that. He suffered badly from colic as a baby, but I never minded him crying through the night. I was just so happy, holding him for hours on end until he was ready to sleep. If only he’d been so easy to comfort as he got older.”

“How did he get on at school?” Vivienne asks.

“Oh, he was academically brilliant but a bit of a loner. He did find his way in the end and made some friends. In fact, he’d be with a different group practically every week.

One minute he dressed in all black like the heavy metal kids; then it was baggy jeans and asking for a skateboard,” she chuckles.

Her smile disappears as another memory pops up.

“I don’t know if he told you, but a few years ago—when he moved home for a while—he found out about the adoption. It was the worst day of my life. I’ve never seen him so angry. He moved back into his own flat soon after. We eventually made peace, but I’m not sure he ever got over it.”

“He didn’t say anything to me,” Vivienne admits.

“One night, he rang the house very late, sounded like he’d had a few drinks, and started rambling about how he’d found his real mother and didn’t need me anymore. I was devastated, but the next day he denied it all, tried to laugh it off as a joke.”

“I know he had some difficult moments, Susan. I wouldn’t read anything into that,” Vivienne says, giving the woman’s shoulder a squeeze.

“Thank you,” she says. “Oh dear, I think I’ve had too much port. Please don’t repeat what I’ve said. No one else knows. I know I can trust you; you looked after my boy when I wasn’t around.”

“Of course. I won’t say a thing.”

Susan turns to leave and then stops, reaching into her bag.

“Oh, I have this for you. I found it in Tristan’s flat,” she says, handing Vivienne a small white package with her name on the front.

Her heart galloping, Vivienne takes it off her and pushes it straight into her own bag.

She watches Susan disappear out the door, back into the fray of the mourners.

Vivienne waits a few minutes and then walks out of the restroom and straight out the pub door.

“Hold up, will you?” a voice calls behind her, just after she hears the door swish closed.

“Just walking to the station,” she says over her shoulder, but that doesn’t stop the man from dashing after her. She curses her old bones for preventing any kind of swift exit.

“Are you getting the train?” the man asks. “I’ll walk you there.”

Vivienne looks to her left and sees it’s Tristan’s dad, Jim, his top button now undone above his tie, cheeks and large bulbous nose bearing the telltale rosy glow of a regular whiskey drinker.

“In the hospital, I thought you looked familiar,” he says, his words coming in short, breathless bursts.

“Really?” Vivienne responds, wishing she managed to get away before well-meaning Jim had seen her.

“Yes, and then Susan started talking about Tristan’s friend Vivienne and it clicked,” he says. “Do you remember me? It’s been many years, but I hope I haven’t changed that much.”

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 end up 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 her eyes, 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.