Sophie Hannah - A Game for All the Family

“Is Ellen with you?” she asks me. “I mean—sorry, of course I can see she’s not with you, but is she in school now?”

“Sorry, we had a late start this morning. Yeah, she’s there now. Did she miss a session with you?”

“No, no, it’s nothing like that. I wanted to talk to her, though. Unless . . .” Kendra tucks a stray strand of her wispy blond hair behind her ear. “Well, maybe I could . . . we could . . . ?”

“You want to talk to me instead?”

“I feel . . . I mean, I don’t want to put any extra pressure on her, but there are times when it would really help me if I could set her some work sheets for homework? You know, covering what we’ve done together that day? Like I used to?”

“That’s fine. I didn’t realize you’d stopped.”

“I know I’m supposed to wait until she’s finished this story she’s writing for English, but—”

“What?”

“She’s writing a story? A murder mystery, I was told.” Something about the way Kendra says it suggests that the person who told her wasn’t Ellen.

“You were told?”

“Yes, by Mrs. Griffiths. She said you don’t want Ellen getting other homework until she’s finished her story. Is that not right?” Kendra’s forehead creases in concern.

It’s certainly not right—I said no such thing—but I’m keen to avoid the torrent of apologies that would follow if I set her straight. I smile and say, “It’s no problem. I’ll talk to Lesley about it. But yeah, from my point of view, I’m happy for you to set Ellen some maths to do at home.”

“Fantastic!” Kendra beams. “I’d better scoot—can’t keep the little darlings waiting!” She gives me a cheery wave and rushes on ahead of me.

My phone buzzes in my coat pocket. I pull it out to see if I want to answer, half-expecting to see the words “Anonymous Lunatic” on the screen. Thankfully, there’s no evidence as yet that the loon knows my mobile number.

It’s Alex. “Oh,” I say, caught off guard. “I wasn’t expecting you to call so soon.”

“Your text made it sound important. Everything okay?”

“Um . . . I think so, but . . . Look, can I call you back later?”

“What’s going on, Justine?”

“Nothing. How’s Berlin? How’s it all going?”

“Great. All’s well my end. What about you? Has something happened?”

“No, nothing. Look, you must be busy, and I’m . . . out and about. Let’s talk tonight.”

“I’m not busy. I’ll be busy later, and you sound shifty. What aren’t you telling me?”

The same thing I asked Ellen less than an hour ago. I know how infuriating it is to be fobbed off.

“Don’t make it sound like some kind of conspiracy,” I say, feeling guilty.

“Don’t try to put off telling me, hoping you can sort it out on your own and pretend there was never a problem.”

I sigh. “All right, just . . . I hope you’re in a patient mood.” I sit down on the wide stone steps in front of the school, and start listing all the things I’m worried about: unjustly punished George Donbavand, Ellen’s best friend in the whole world that I hadn’t heard of before today; the peculiar family tree and story fragment; George’s strange-sounding parents; Ellen’s suspicion that his sister Fleur is also about to be unfairly expelled; the weird misunderstanding about Ellen’s homework; 8 Panama Row—or Germander, as I suppose I ought now to think of it—and my inability to push it out of my mind.

That’s a long enough list for the time being. Plenty to be going on with.

“I’m at school now,” I tell Alex. “Why don’t I talk to Lesley, then call you back?” I can hear another country’s traffic in my ear, and plenty of it. It’s distracting.

“The homework thing’s pitifully obvious, isn’t it?” Alex says. “No mystery there. El’s keen on this story assignment. She doesn’t want to waste her time on anything else, so she fibbed to ward off boring maths homework.” He chuckles. “Ingenious. I suppose we’ll have to come down hard on her about it.”

Did we make a mistake? Choose the wrong school? Most would require a note from a parent in a matter of this sort. Only at an eccentric private school like Beaconwood would they take a child’s word for it if she told them she wasn’t to be given any homework. In my first conversation with Lesley Griffiths, I asked her if Beaconwood was a school that made exceptions—that could be flexible. “I can’t do anything ,” I warned her, “so Ellen needs to go to a school that asks nothing of me—literally, nothing. I can’t make Viking costumes, or send tins of soup for the harvest festival, or bake cakes for a fundraiser, or manage a stall at the Christmas fair—nothing. And Ellen might turn up without her gym bag one day or her school bag or homework—that all has to be okay. Whatever I say is okay, with regard to my daughter, has to be fine with you. Any other regime’s going to be too stressful for me.”

Like Ellen’s current school , I thought but didn’t say, where I’m made to feel like a reprobate by the head and the other parents, because I’m too busy and keep messing up all the things mothers are expected to get right, and I can’t take it anymore.

“You don’t need to worry at all,” Lesley Griffiths chuckled. “We’re about as eccentric and family accommodating as it’s possible to be. Examples: we have one family that goes to Denmark for a long weekend every single week. There’s a lonely and infirm grandparent situation, and so the children don’t come to school on Fridays or Mondays. We accept that.” She shrugged. “There’s also—between you, me and the gatepost—a mother who drops her child off every morning, then comes back just before lunchtime to inspect the food we’re about to dish out and check that it’s nutritious enough and appetizing enough. I’ve offered to let her see our menus in advance, but that won’t do—she wants to see each day’s lunch with her own eyes and monitor how much her child eats. Really, you’re likely to be one of the least unusual families at Beaconwood if you do come here.”

I found this reassuring. Alex didn’t. “Everyone there sounds like an oddball,” he muttered as we left. “Everyone everywhere is an oddball,” I reminded him. “Think of Ellen’s current school—the parents, I mean.” He rolled his eyes. I didn’t need to say any more.

“Why does this story matter so much to Ellen?” I ask him now. “I’ve seen her write stories before. This one’s different. She’s password-protected it on her computer. And why didn’t she tell us about this George ages ago? If he’s her best friend—”

“Her male best friend,” Alex cuts in. “We all know what that means. Hopefully young George will soon be given his marching orders, and Ellen’s next love interest will be someone able to provide his own clothing.”

“I’m glad you think it’s all so funny,” I say as if I don’t mean it, though in fact it’s true: I am glad. Alex’s levity makes me feel better. “I read a bit of her story, not only the family tree. It was creepy, and I don’t mean it’s a scary story. It’s . . . you’d have to read it to understand. I can’t believe she made it up.”

“You think she copied it from somewhere?”

“No. That’s the strange thing. I don’t think she’d do that, but I also don’t think the three pages that I read are the product of her imagination. And those are the only two possibilities, aren’t they?”

“I wouldn’t have thought so, no,” says Alex cheerfully. “There are always other possibilities, ones you haven’t thought of.”

“Even the names . . . Especially the names.” I shake my head, convincing myself once again that something’s wrong. Can I convince Alex? “There are three generations of the same family: a married couple, Bascom and Sorrel Ingrey, with three daughters called Lisette, Allisande and Perrine. Then Lisette’s got two children called Garnet and Urban. Do those sound like names Ellen would have chosen to put in a story?”