The Dinner Guest Page 7

  I arrived at Kensington Police Station just under half an hour later. I marched through the doors and instantly saw Titus on some seats in the corner away from the counter, sitting next to a blonde woman. I went over and, without saying anything, embraced him, pulling him close into my arms. ‘I’m fine, it’s OK,’ he said. ‘They didn’t really hurt me.’

  I nodded, feeling tears rising behind my eyes, relief flooding my mind and body. As I let him out of my arms and looked at him, my eyes took in the blonde-haired woman next to us.

  ‘Rachel?’ I said, confused, wondering if there was something I was missing. ‘Why … why are you here?’

  ‘She was amazing,’ Titus said before Rachel had a chance to speak. She stood up and offered me a slightly shy smile.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I’m glad you’re here. You must have been so worried. But he was so brave.’

  ‘I don’t think I was brave; you were the brave one,’ he said, looking over at her, then back at me. ‘Dad, Rachel saved me. She really did.’

  Rachel waved her hand in an it-was-nothing gesture. ‘It wasn’t that impressive. The lads who were bothering Titus were cowards anyway. I’m just so glad I was passing and could give them a piece of my mind.’

  I tried to compute all this. ‘Wait… You saw the mugging? And, what, stepped in?’

  She nodded. ‘Yeah, I was just out on a stroll, saw this group of lads trying to take this boy’s phone and so I just … just told them to sod off, basically. And it turned out the boy was your Titus, here.’

  I looked back at Titus who was now grinning. I could see a slight graze on his cheek and noticed his school uniform was all scruffy. It was a more reassuring sight than the visions of blood and bruises I’d imagined, but still… I hated the thought of someone being rough with him.

  ‘I think the police will need to speak to you. I’m surprised they haven’t already come over. They’ve been really good, though.’ She nodded at me, as if trying to make me feel better, but I felt a slight jab of annoyance about the way she said it. As if she were the responsible parent, here at my son’s side, and I was still playing catch-up, late to the game, secondary to the event. Which, in some ways, I was.

  ‘Sure,’ I said, ‘I’ll speak to them now.’ I turned back to Titus. ‘Have you got through to Dad yet?’

  He shook his head. ‘Haven’t you?’

  ‘No,’ I said, glancing at my phone. ‘He still hasn’t replied.’

  ‘Must be a busy day at work,’ Rachel said in a jollier voice than I thought appropriate for the situation.

  I gave a vague nod, then put my phone back in my pocket and went to speak to the police officer on the desk.

  I hadn’t really wanted to give Rachel a lift; I found her presence in this worrying ordeal more than a little awkward, similar to when I had found her nosing about upstairs. It was like she’d been helicoptered into the personal side of our lives. More than just friends, within the space of a month or so. She was being woven into the fabric of our family, and this little event seemed to make those threads tighter and more resolute.

  We drove in silence for a little while, then, in lieu of anything else to say, I asked, ‘So, how are you finding London?’ I had a suspicion either I or someone else had asked Rachel the same question at our book-club meeting, but I didn’t really care. After all, maybe her opinion on the place had changed since moving here.

  ‘Oh, I love it,’ she said. ‘It’s … it’s so big. Of course, Yorkshire is vast, but in a different way.’ She gave a little laugh after this, probably aware she was stating the obvious.

  ‘Have you had time to explore anywhere nearby?’ I asked, turning the car onto the Chelsea Embankment, bringing the Thames into view, glittering in the dying evening sun.

  ‘Yes, I have. It’s all I do, really. Walk about and listen to books as I go. I really need to find a job but I can’t seem to find anything I’m very employable for.’

  There was something strange about her whole story that didn’t quite ring true. Who moves from the North of England down to London, rents a place in one of the most expensive postcodes in the country, and doesn’t have any urgency to find employment? Of course, I know people who do just that – but they’re living in townhouses and have assets, like sprawling country estates, and live off their inherited wealth. But Rachel’s choice of a flat in a council estate with a history of gang violence and street crime suggested she didn’t have a bottomless well of money. Maybe she just liked a simpler existence, but all the same, there was something a bit odd about her situation. Something she was choosing not to divulge.

  This was the first time I’d driven deep into the Churchill Gardens Estate. Even though I had lived in Pimlico for years, practically just around the corner in St George’s Square, I was shocked at how different everything could become by just turning down a few streets. Three hooded boys, one on a bike, the two others leaning up against a wall, watched us as I parked the car in front of the entrance of her block. They were smoking, and when Rachel opened the passenger door I could hear the tinny beat of music pulsing from their general direction – probably from their pocketed phones.

  ‘Thank you so much for the lift,’ she said as she went to get out of the car.

  ‘Thanks for everything,’ Titus said, turning round in his seat. It was the first time he’d properly spoken since we left the police station.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ I said.

  ‘I’d invite you both in but it’s all a bit of a mess, and the size of a cupboard.’ She laughed, again a little awkwardly.

  I eyed the boys by the door, still overtly watching us (or the BMW X6 we’d arrived in). ‘Are you OK to, er…’ I felt compelled to ask if she was OK walking in alone, whilst being painfully aware this could sound both judgemental towards the boys and patronising towards her. I think she understood both my concern and dilemma, and smiled. ‘I’ll be fine. Well, I’ll see you at the next book-club meeting. Matthew messaged me the details the other day.’

  He did, did he? I wasn’t sure why, but the fact he hadn’t mentioned this to me felt slightly hurtful. Secretive, almost, as if he knew I had a ‘bit of a thing’ about Rachel being part of our lives and had chosen to keep the subject at arm’s length, all the while sending friendly little messages to her on WhatsApp. I stopped myself continuing down this rather silly mental avenue in time to smile back at Rachel and wish her goodnight as she walked the short distance towards the entrance to her block of flats. The boys watched her go in, but didn’t react or move.

  ‘Are we going?’ Titus asked when we’d been sitting stationary for a little while, my mind whirring.

  ‘Oh, sorry. Miles away.’

  I took off the handbrake and drove through the tight roads of the estate and out onto the main road. The rest of the drive home was filled with me questioning Titus about exactly what had happened. He remained frustratingly silent for the most part – not grumpy or surly exactly, just reliant on one-word answers and seemed more interested in staring out of the window. I tried not to be offended that he’d apparently seemed perfectly fine to talk to Rachel about the incident at the police station, but seemed to want to clam up now it was just him and me. She had been there though, I thought to myself. She was more than a kind ear during his moment of distress; she was a vital part of it. His saviour.

  When we got in, I turned my attention to another pressing concern: my missing husband. Jane, who should really have gone home an hour ago, was just carrying a basket of laundry up the stairs when we walked in. She greeted us warmly, then said no, Matthew wasn’t at home and she hadn’t heard any messages come through to the answerphone. I checked it, regardless, even though neither of us ever used it these days, relying almost entirely on our smartphones. Just as I was starting to feel panic unfurl within me again, the buzz of an incoming call caused my pocket to vibrate.

  ‘What’s happened? Is he OK?’ Matthew immediately started talking very fast as soon as I’d accepted the call.

  ‘Whe
re are you?’ I replied, rather than answering this question. It was probably bad of me, but I was pissed off that in an hour of stress and concern he had vanished into thin air.

  ‘I’ve been stuck in traffic. I had to go and see this professor in Margate. There was a nasty accident on the way home and I was stuck in the jam it caused. Is Titus OK? Is he in hospital?’

  I let out a breath of relief, then almost laughed at the thought of Titus being in hospital when in fact he was now lying on the sofa, pointedly perusing the Domino’s menu. I’m not sure what it was – the light-headedness that comes with knowing things are all OK, or a natural high that follows a tense couple of hours of anxiety – but I suddenly felt happy and free. ‘He’s fine. He’s completely fine. He’s sitting here now. We’re at home. Do you want to speak to him?’

  I gave Titus the phone and he took it.

  ‘Dad, I’m fine,’ he said, rolling his eyes a little.

  I took the Domino’s menu he was holding and pointed at the American Hot on one of the pictures, and he grinned and nodded. I went through to the kitchen while I ordered the pizza from the app on my phone, all the while aware I was listening out for a keyword. And before long, I heard it.

  ‘Yeah, Rachel. She was there. She was amazing.’

  Chapter Eleven

  Charlie

  Ten months to go

  When Matthew arrived home, almost at the same time as the pizza, we went through a proper post-mortem of what happened to Titus.

  ‘I can’t believe they just tried to take your phone. In broad daylight. In Kensington.’ Matthew was both baffled and angry. I couldn’t help feeling, if I had said the ‘in Kensington’ line in another context, he’d have taken the piss out of me. He shook his head, then chewed thoughtfully on a slice of pizza crust. ‘I suppose they won’t ever catch the boys.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘There’s a lot of CCTV around the Albert Hall area. They might be able to track them down.’

  ‘And Rachel was there?’ Matthew continued, looking at Titus questioningly.

  He nodded. ‘She was just walking by. It was really nice of her to help out. It was all … well, horrible, really.’

  ‘I’m sure it was,’ Matthew said, rubbing Titus’s arm. ‘Thank goodness Rachel was passing by.’

  ‘Bit odd, isn’t it,’ I interjected, ‘how she was just there, at the right place and the right time?’

  A frown creased Matthew’s forehead. ‘What do you mean? I’d say it was jolly good luck.’

  I chose my words carefully as I closed up the pizza box in front of me. ‘I just mean that, out of all the thousands of people walking the streets of London, Rachel is in that very street at the very moment when Titus is in need.’

  I could see Titus watching me now too, and I suddenly felt a tad rattled by their sceptical expressions. ‘Oh, come on, I just mean … what are the chances?’

  ‘Well, coincidences happen,’ Matthew said with a little shrug. Then he turned to Titus.

  ‘What were you doing in Kensington, anyway?’

  The look of sheepishness was as plain as day on the boy’s face. ‘Oh, well … I was … just out for a walk.’

  ‘A walk?’ I repeated. ‘With all your school things? Why didn’t you drop them back home first?’

  Titus was looking at his plate now. His lips twitched a little, like he was filtering his response, trying to think how to compose it. ‘I was … visiting a friend.’

  Matthew smiled. ‘Well, why the secrecy? Is this a friend from school? What’s his name?’

  Titus shifted in his chair, as if he couldn’t get comfortable. ‘I … it’s … she’s a she. Not a he.’

  I could see Matthew computing this and then come to the same result at the same time as me: Westminster School doesn’t have girl students in the lower years.

  ‘So, if she’s a she,’ he said slowly, ‘and a friend from school, she must therefore be…’

  ‘A sixth former,’ Titus replied, his eyes in the direction of the table.

  A few moments of silence greeted this. ‘Right,’ Matthew said. ‘Well, that’s nice.’

  ‘What’s her name?’ I asked.

  ‘Melanie.’

  ‘Since your school only allows girls in the sixth form, I presume Melanie goes to a different school?’ Matthew said.

  I saw a flash of indignation ignite Titus’s face, but he didn’t dodge the question this time. ‘She’s … she doesn’t… She’s eighteen.’

  Silence. Matthew and I looked at each other. He decided to go first. ‘Um … don’t you think … that’s a bit of an age gap?’

  Titus met his gaze with defiance in his eyes. ‘There are nearly three years between you two. Why’s this so different? And anyway, why have you suddenly presumed that we’re fucking? I didn’t say we were.’

  The shock at hearing him say ‘fucking’ hit me hard, almost like a physical force. Titus had sworn within our hearing before, but always in a comic way, or to deliberately wind us up. The use of the word in this context made it sound adult and serious, as if he’d joined a more mature and severe world without us realising it.

  ‘It’s different,’ Matthew replied, ‘because you’re fourteen years old, and we’re both in our thirties. And regarding the fucking, if we’re apparently using such language at the dinner table now, I’m sure you realise that wouldn’t just be a question of age-gap disapproval. That would be a crime.’

  Titus let out a low laugh. ‘Oh, come on. I’m not like a victim of grooming or anything. I thought you guys would be casual about it.’

  ‘Well you clearly didn’t think that,’ Matthew snapped back, ‘otherwise you’d have told us about her sooner, rather than us having to wait for you to be mugged outside her flat before we found out.’

  Titus got up abruptly. ‘I’m going to bed.’

  Matthew stood up too. ‘We need to get to the bottom of this. Are the two of you an item? Were her parents home? Who even are her parents? Would we know them?’

  Titus tucked his chair in under the table with a slam. ‘No, we’re not an item. She just fucks me occasionally when we both have some spare time. I’m sorry I nearly got beaten up and ruined your evening. Goodnight.’ He stormed out of the room and thumped up the stairs. We heard his door slam. Then Matthew put his head in his hands and rested his elbows on the table.

  ‘Christ,’ he said, ‘this is awful.’

  I moved round the table to the chair next to him and laid an arm over his shoulder. ‘It’ll be OK,’ I said. ‘We’ll talk to him.’

  ‘Do you think we should involve the school?’ He took his head away from his hands and looked at me.

  ‘I … I don’t know. Perhaps it would be best to handle it privately. We don’t want to, well, overreact…’ I said, treading carefully.

  Matthew moved his jaw a little from side to side, something he does occasionally when he’s thinking. ‘We would, you know … if Titus were a girl, and the eighteen-year-old was a boy. We would tell the school. So is this any different?’

  I let out a sigh. After the evening I’d had, racing across London, talking to police, getting incident numbers, not being able to get through to Matthew throughout it all … I really didn’t need another slab of drama to go with the rest of it. ‘Are you saying we’d be sexist if we didn’t?’

  It was his turn to sigh now. ‘God, I don’t know. I just feel like … like I’m failing. That he’s become a victim in two different ways, and I didn’t know. Both from that gang who could have hurt him far worse than they actually did, and now he’s being … I don’t know what … seduced by this woman.’

  ‘I think “woman” might be pushing it,’ I said. ‘She’s still a schoolgirl. She probably doesn’t think she’s doing any harm.’

  I felt Matthew tense and move away from me. ‘Again, I don’t think you’d be saying that if the genders were reversed.’

  This annoyed me. ‘Well what do you want me to say? That we should call the police and report her? I don
’t mean to sound like some sex-offender apologist, but it really doesn’t sound like he’s been coerced or forced into anything. And anyway, how old were you when you had your first experience?’

  He frowned. ‘I was fifteen.’

  I raised my eyebrows at him. ‘And the other … er … participant?’

  He didn’t meet my eye when he answered. ‘Seventeen, I think. I’m sure I told you about it ages ago.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’m of course not saying this doesn’t need sorting out, I just think we might need to pause and consider our best steps before we go crashing into the situation and potentially ruin people’s lives.’

  He continued to look back at me for a few seconds, then nodded. ‘OK. You’re right. I just don’t like it. That sound of … dismissive behaviour. Easy come, easy go. It reminds me of his…’ He stopped speaking for a moment and I finished his sentence for him.

  ‘His father. I know.’ I let my arm fall down onto his and gave it a small squeeze of support. ‘Come on, we should probably get an early night and talk to Titus about it in the morning when we’re not all het up.’

  He gave me a small nod. ‘That sounds like a good plan.’

  I was sitting in bed when Matthew said it. To be honest, if it hadn’t been for the confusion about where he was and the distraction of learning Titus, aged fourteen, was no longer a virgin, I’d have expected the conversation to reach the topic of Rachel sooner.

  ‘We should have her over to dinner. Rachel, that is.’

  I pulled my eyes away from our upcoming book-club choice, and looked over at him, adopting an I’m-just-processing-the-question look. I’d heard him clearly enough – my whirring brain hadn’t taken in any of the words on the page since I’d opened the book five minutes before – but I wanted to buy time. I had the feeling our discussion had the potential to descend into a row, and by that point in the evening, my stamina just wasn’t up to it.