stared at me in uncertain silence until I could no longer hold back the drug-fuelled grin, and they both smiled in relief.
‘Morgen has quite a unique sense of humour,’ said Jill, patting my arm, ‘but we forgive him.’
Sonia led us down a long tiled hallway to a recently renovated kitchen — all polished boards and stainless steel. Then she saw the wine cooler.
‘Oh … I’m sorry Morgen. We don’t drink wine … so we don’t have any appropriate glasses.’
Jill looked up at me coyly, imploring me to accept the dry dinner graciously.
‘That’s okay, Sonia,’ I smiled. ‘This wine is so good I could lick it out of Jill’s … navel.’
•
‘Just half a glass for me, Morgen,’ said Jill, with a glance at Sonia and Derek sitting stonily opposite as I poured into thick-lipped tumblers, which at least had the virtue of making up in quantity what they lacked in quality.
We were sitting in a candle-lit room that was obviously next on the list for renovation. The wallpaper had been stripped from the walls, but the paintings had been rehung — all dilettante originals by the look of them, with possibly one of Sonia’s? Certainly there was at least one watercolour hanging limply with exactly her shade of talentless pretension.
I offered the bottle to our hosts and their lips tightened even further.
‘Our decision not to drink alcohol is a lifestyle choice,’ Derek informed me. ‘It isn’t just an eccentric whim to be relaxed when offered wine by normal people. We believe the body is a temple.’
‘That’s fine, Derek,’ I said. ‘I fully respect your choice.’
I raised my glass, ‘To self-denial!’ and swilled down a few big gulps, allowing some of the wine to spill out either side of the glass and splash down my chest.
‘It’s not self-denial,’ said Derek, obviously struggling with his duty to be hospitable. ‘It’s no more self-denial than not drinking battery acid.’
‘You deny yourself acid? You don’t know what you’re missing!’
With an almighty effort, I managed to drag myself back from being sucked into the drug laughter vortex, from which there is no return. I knew I would get there eventually, when the acid kicked in, but the night had promise and I didn’t want the whole thing to collapse too quickly. So I straightened up and asked Derek about his work, just occasionally lapsing into a two or three-second burst of the sniggers.
Derek was a partner at one of the big accounting firms and would normally expect to have a good deal in common with someone like me, but the conversation trailed into silence and we turned to listen to the women.
‘I see relationships as a continuing metamorphosis,’ said Sonia. ‘Derek and I are at Stage 3 … which is married without children. But we’re about to move on to Stage 4: trying for children.’
She and Derek shared a nice little moment of bourgeois dinner table intimacy. Then Sonia said, ‘Mind you, there’s nothing more exciting than Stage 1: discovering your soul mate.’
And she gave first Jill, then me, this ridiculous look, which was designed, presumably, to elicit some sort of confession. Jill had the grace to look embarrassed, but shot a glance at me to see how I was taking it all.
‘Certainly Stage 1 is exciting,’ I agreed. ‘But sometimes I think it would be more romantic to morph directly from Stage 1 to Stage 9.’
Sonia looked puzzled.
‘Stage 9 … what’s that?’
‘That’s when you’re both cremated and your remains are scattered together.’
•
Eventually, I stopped laughing.
I would’ve stopped sooner if it weren’t for the ashen expressions around the table. And from the tingling under my skin and the sudden sense of impossible well-being, I could tell that the acid was at last making an impact.
The three of them had started eating their antipasto in silence while my snorting and sniggering ran its course. Several times I tried to speak, but as soon as I opened my mouth a great belch of laughter set me off again, until I slumped limp in my chair — my face wet with tears of evil joy, just trying to breathe without giggling.
At last, I managed some coherent speech. ‘Look … sorry about that. I … I guess it’s been a tough week. I had two lots of bad news today and it’s obviously affected me inappropriately. I know I must seem a bit of a dickhead but it’s nothing to do with you, Jill … it’s just my nervous response to bad news.’
There were pursed lips and steely eyes about the table, but Jill softened and attempted to explain on my behalf.
‘Morgen found out today that his boss has cancer.’
There was a further silence, broken only by another burst of giggles, which I managed to turn into a sneeze, and then a hacking cough.
Eventually, Sonia decided to accept my explanation, and, for the sake of Jill at least, allow me back within the fold.
‘Cancer is horrible,’ she said, with a tiny shudder. ‘It’s bad enough that a person’s life should be cut short like that … but cancer is slow and forces them to contemplate their mortality. I can’t think of anything worse.’
‘I can,’ said Jill. ‘They found another body in Galston Gorge today. That makes three.’
‘I heard about that,’ said Derek. ‘Wasn’t there some sort of … mutilation involved?’
‘Oh stop it, Derek!’ snapped Sonia. ‘It’s too horrible to even think about.’
There was a brief pause, but the new topic of conversation had yet to exhaust itself.
‘What I’d like to know,’ said Jill, ‘is how does the killer get so many victims without causing a scene. Someone must have noticed something. No one even knew any of these women were missing!’
‘It just shows that the killer must have been known to the victims,’ said Derek. ‘Maybe only briefly known to them, but enough to allow him … presuming he’s a man … to get close enough to … to do whatever he does.’
‘It’s too horrible,’ moaned Sonia. ‘The poor women were probably just trying to meet someone … and he turns out to be a monster! How’s any woman supposed to meet a man these days? It’s no wonder we’re all so lonely.’
‘The only solution is to sleep with friends,’ laughed Derek, glancing at me, and I rewarded his jest with a Mona Lisa smile. I never laugh at other people’s jokes.
‘Friends?’ exclaimed Sonia. ‘I’d rather take my chances with the murderer!’
They all laughed, and I said, ‘What’s wrong with sleeping with a friend?’
And Sonia was back in her dominatrix mien.
‘You must be joking, Morgen! You can’t make love with a friend … it ruins the relationship!’
I took another huge slug of my sauvignon blanc and emptied the bottle into my tumbler.
‘That’s bullshit,’ I said. ‘The transition from friend to lover is immeasurably more fulfilling than the transition from stranger to lover.’
There was a small silence as they tried to gauge whether or not I was serious.
‘I think you’re arguing in defiance of the accepted cant,’ said Derek, raising an elegant eyebrow.
‘That’s right.’
‘I could never make love with a friend,’ said Sonia. ‘It’d be too embarrassing … like doing it with your brother.’
‘That’s