R. J. Parker - The Dinner Party

Georgie nodded.

‘Then they’re not worth your time.’ What could he say when, as far as Georgie was concerned, his universe had ended? ‘I know school’s hard but, believe me, you’ll find real friends soon. Proper ones. You thought these boys were but sometimes people aren’t what they seem. Sometimes they have what we call ulterior motives.’

‘What are they?’ Georgie clearly liked the sound of the phrase.

‘Stuff they want from you but don’t tell you to your face.’

‘Like my Xbox games?’

‘That sort of thing. Point is, if your friends do exactly what Jolian says and turn on you, then they’re really not worth knowing, are they?’

Georgie looked up at him, anguish in his eyes. ‘But I’ve still got an invite to Brendan’s party.’

‘When is it?’

‘March the sixth.’

‘That’s nearly two months away.’ Two months was a long time in the social life of a child. ‘You can decide whether you want to go then.’

Georgie straightened his back in mortification. ‘But I do want to go.’

‘But remember Brendan will want to come to yours the month after. That’s when you decide whether he’s been a good enough friend.’ They’d had Brendan around a few times. He was spoilt, so Ted knew what was coming next.

‘His party will be better than mine.’

‘Why d’you say that?’

Georgie seemed to know why but clammed up.

Ted knew it was wrong, but he didn’t like Brendan. Didn’t like a six-year-old boy who still had to grow up. He was a bad influence on Georgie. Had already told him that Santa didn’t exist. At six! ‘We can do anything here you could do at Brendan’s.’

‘Yeah … I know.’

But Georgie was sparing his feelings. Brendan’s parents had a huge Georgian house with a games den. Georgie only had a playroom in the garage and that was damp and full of junk. It would be a big expense to make it properly habitable. ‘Look, I’ve got to get back to the guests now, but we’ll talk about this in the morning. OK?’

‘There’s nothing to talk about. I’ll be OK. Really.’

Ted could feel his heart starting to break. ‘It’s Friday. Two whole days of no school. Try not to worry. If you show them that what they say doesn’t bother you at all, they’ll move on to somebody else. And if they don’t, we’ll both figure out a way of making them stop. Deal?’

‘How about I take a kickboxing class?’

Ted smirked. ‘I don’t think we need to do anything that drastic. Come on, it’s past lights out.’

‘But I’ve only just started my screen time.’

‘We’ll roll it over to tomorrow.’ Ted gestured for him to climb into bed and he scrambled under the duvet. ‘We’ll work it out.’

The doorbell rang.

‘Who’s that?’

‘And don’t play for time. Football training in the morning.’ Ted kissed his hair and it smelt like he’d used too much shampoo. ‘Don’t worry about a thing, scout. It’ll be a different story this time next week.’ It probably would be, but he guessed that Jolian and Brendan were going to be the topic of many more conversations to come.

‘Night, Dad.’

He’d only recently started taking the DY off Daddy and Ted wasn’t sure he liked it. ‘Sleep tight.’ Ted got up, closed the door quietly and went downstairs. He met Juliette in the hallway. ‘Half an hour’s not too bad for the Driscolls.’

It was ‘KathRhys’ at the door. At least that was how they signed their greetings cards as a couple. The others all shared history, but Kathryn and Rhys had only moved to Basildon in 2017. Rhys worked for a petrochemical company that had relocated there and Kathryn was a recruitment consultant. Even though they lived the closest, only a five-minute drive away, they were always the last to arrive.

This rankled with Ted and more so with Jakob, even though Jakob had been instrumental in recruiting them to the dinner group. When they held up everyone else’s evening, they never apologized for being late, so Ted had taken to inviting them an hour early to exert some damage limitation. ‘Here they are!’ he exclaimed, diplomatically, when he opened the door.

‘Hope you haven’t started without us.’ Rhys’s breath clouded around his dark bearded face. He was thirty-four, a year younger than Ted but his frameless spectacles gave him an avuncular appearance.

Tall Kathryn had her dark hair in a bun on top of her head and her usual dyed Mallen Streak forelock swept across the top of her fringe. She thrust a bag containing wine bottles into Ted’s hands as if it was their ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card and kissed him on the cheek.

‘Some interesting ones in there.’ Rhys nodded at the bag.

Ted didn’t have a clue about wine, but he’d worked out that Rhys didn’t either. Rhys was enthusiastic about whichever acidic consignment he’d been sent by his wine club, but Ted always put them on the rack to gather dust. At their next visit Rhys would forget that he’d brought them previously and examine the labels with vague disdain. Ted didn’t dislike Kathryn and Rhys. They just weren’t his favourite people. They didn’t really fit in with the rest of the group, but they were Evie and Jakob’s friends and had assumed one invite to join them all for dinner in 2017 meant lifelong membership.

But when Juliette’s father died, Kathryn and Rhys had been incredibly supportive. Both spending time with her because they’d both lived through the same bereavement. More time than any of their other friends. After that Ted’s perception had changed. They were at odds with the others, but Ted couldn’t forget the sensitive side they’d shown his wife when she’d really needed it.

‘The girls are sleeping over at a friend’s, but they didn’t want us to leave,’ Kathryn said to Juliette.

Kathryn and Rhys had twins of Georgie’s age. It had taken them five years of IVF treatment to bring them into the world, so Ted understood why they handled their girls like antique china.

He took Kathryn’s dark teal cashmere shawl and it smelt overpoweringly of perfume. ‘Come through.’ That was everybody. The evening was now officially underway.

‘It’s a trust game.’ Evie gauged seven people’s reactions and didn’t seem surprised by them: attentiveness from the women and uncomfortable suspicion from the men.

‘Alexa, turn off,’ Juliette said without shifting her attention from Evie.

Ed Sheeran was cut off mid-angst. That pleased Ted, but he was still baffled as to why Alexa only seemed to obey Juliette. The sudden silence committed everyone to listen and he studied Orla’s and Connor’s expressions. Evie attempting to reconcile them was part of every get-together.

Orla and Connor were a passive aggressive couple, their Northern Irish accents noticeably stronger when they were tossing cutting remarks at each other. But now they sat among the others like two singletons. Juliette liked to mix everyone up so nobody was sitting with their partner. They’d never been that tactile but now the only giveaway that they were actually together was the occasional barked remonstration from Orla when Connor rested his elbows on the table or slouched in his chair.

Connor’s look was always the same – wiry, sweaty and harried, with three buttons opened down from the collar, his tight black curls looking as coiled as he was. But today Ted could see a shadow of something in Connor’s eyes. Orla was as skinny and tall as Connor and her straight fringe of mousy hair came exactly down to her eyebrow line. She was a pale and beautiful woman, but Ted thought the style made her look slightly deranged. Juliette had told him her eyebrows had fallen out because of a childhood trauma and that she’d always been self-conscious about them. She’d never wanted to augment them with eyeliner or get them tattooed, however, even though a large percentage of her arms were covered in ink. Ted thought she looked more frazzled than usual.