Vicky (50)

I don’t understand why we’re here.  I don’t like these people, they’re just too London.  So judgemental.  

I thought Jack would know normal people like me.  He was incredible on holiday, but now he’s so precociously pointless. 

Everyone here is dancing on eggshells around that blonde girl.  The tension burns.

Paul (100)

I knew the other couple on the train would be joining us.  They’re exactly the sort of people Andrew would invite: well-dressed, French cigarettes and champagne. 

I shouldn’t be so hostile.  He’s Alison’s friend and Mona’s very charming.  What does she see it that dullard? 

He never says anything or nothing real anyway.  Instead, he obsesses about the class war.  Hypocrite!  All that downtrodden roots rubbish when his wife’s vowels shred glass and they live in a Georgian mansion block flat.  His hands never broke brick.  A tormented childhood spent labouring?  Just a fiction. 

Learn to deal with being middle-class.

The Dinner Party (pt 1): Andrew (200)

My palms always become damp before they ring the doorbell.  I stiffen my nerve with a sharp nip of cooking brandy which burns my gut.  Mona pecks me on the cheek and compliments the smells emanating from the stove.  Three years and I still tingle at her shower-fresh touch, all almonds and honey.  She makes me guilty.  It was a long time ago; fleetingly nothing. 

Paul had been working for months on the other side of the world.  Alison and I were drunk and lonely.  Sometimes you ache for another.  It was a mistake we’d buried, but at night it resurfaces.  I dream her so vividly: warm breath on my neck, the sound of her heart pounding, salt on my lips.  Occasionally, Paul looks at me and I swear he knows.  Not what exactly, but he knows we’re avoiding something.  That we’re pretending. 

I catch her eye and am unsure if I see want or regret.  I can’t trust myself to be alone with her and so I always invite another couple to act as padding. 

Mona doesn’t know.  I’d break if I lost either of them.  The mushrooms need more salt.  Mona calls greetings.  I didn’t hear the bell.