Sophie Hannah - A Game for All the Family

“Yes. They’re over the top and weird. Sounds exactly like a fourteen-year-old’s invention to me.”

“I’d agree if the names were, I don’t know, Florentina and Star, but Bascom Ingrey? Urban Ingrey? They’re so austere and Victorian. I keep telling myself I’m making a fuss about nothing, and then I think of those names and I know it’s not right. They live in our house.”

“Who does?”

“The Ingreys. Except they don’t and never have, only in Ellen’s story. I’ve Googled. There’s definitely never been a family called Ingrey at Speedwell House. Our home is officially an architectural treasure, so there are online records going back to the year dot.”

The next words I hear are quiet and German. They fade quickly. Someone walking past, no doubt.

“Please tell me your paranoia isn’t veering toward the supernatural,” says Alex. “Is that what you’re hinting at? Speedwell House is haunted by a ghostly family called the Ingreys, and their spirits have infiltrated our daughter and made her ghost-write—ha, get it?—their family history?”

“Don’t be daft.” At least now I get a turn to sound like the sensible one.

“Then I don’t see what you’re worried about. Is this going to be another weird obsession that drags on, like 8 Panama Row?”

“Who can tell?” I say breezily.

“Darling, don’t jump down my throat, but how sure are you that all this obsessing over trivia isn’t some kind of stress hangover from the Ben Lourenco business?”

I feel either sadness or a sort of amused disbelief when I hear Ben’s name these days, not boiling anger. I’m over it. I hope he is too.

“Very sure. All Ben Lourenco stress was blissfully canceled out when I decided never to work again,” I say.

“Good.” Alex sounds doubtful. “I suppose there’s a common theme: Ben, like this George Donbavand, was unfairly maligned and accused. Look, either Ellen’s written this story herself, and thought of the names herself—Googled ‘unusual Victorian names’ or whatever—or she’s copied it from somewhere. Ask her.”

“I tried. She was cagey as anything. Oh, she’s put her own name on the family tree too, so there’s an Ellen in the story. Urban Ingrey’s wife is Ellen.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” says Alex emphatically. Of all the not-worrying things I have told him, he has identified this one as the least worrying. “Writing’s a kind of fantasizing, isn’t it? Ellen’s probably cast herself in the heroine’s role. Look, I’d better go. Dieter and—”

“Wait.” I wasn’t planning to tell him the rest, but it seems crazy not to. I don’t want to alarm him; on the other hand, he is as anxiety-proof as it’s possible for a human being to be. “I’ve had two threatening calls. One this morning and one yesterday.”

“What? Threatening how?”

I take him through the two conversations word for word.

“Jesus, Justine! You’ve wasted ten minutes on Victorian character names when you’re being pursued by a fucking psycho? Why didn’t you tell me straightaway?”

“Alex, calm down. I’m hardly being pursued—”

“Twice in two days, threatening to hurt you if you don’t go back to your old life in London? I call that being pursued. Please tell me you’ve told the police.”

“No, I—”

“Right. I’ll get off the phone and let you do that straightaway while I book a flight home. Tell them—”

“Book a flight home?” I cut him off. “You can’t come back. You’ve got concerts.”

“Justine, we need to take this seriously. Promise me you’ll call the police, and look after yourself and Ellen properly until I get back. Okay?”

“All right, but . . . please don’t cut short your tour just for this. I agree, it’s worrying, but I don’t think we need to panic.”

“I don’t intend to panic, but I’m also not going to swan around Germany singing Die schöne Müllerin while a psychopath eyes up my home and family with a view to attacking them,” says Alex impatiently. “I hope you’ll agree that’s reasonable?” In a kinder voice, he says, “I can’t help being a heroic man of action. I’ve got my own coat and everything. Bought it myself. Didn’t have it given to me by a girl.”

I smile. “Well, if I can’t talk you out of it . . .”

“Text me when you’ve spoken to the police. I’ll go and get this flight booked. See you soon.”

I smile as I put my phone back in my pocket. I’m pleased Alex is coming home. If there’s any danger at all, I decide, it will now sense that my husband is on his way and beat a shamefaced retreat.

All of which means the police can wait half an hour or so. First, it’s time for school.

Lesley Griffiths, a chunkily built woman in her late fifties with waist-length silver hair, welcomes me into her office with chalk all over her clothes and a cake tin stuffed under one arm. She neither explains nor apologizes for her appearance—which I’m used to by now—and radiates the sort of confidence and authority I would expect from the CEO of a multibillion-dollar company. Each time I see Lesley, she resembles a scarecrow that’s had random objects stuck to it; last time she was holding a potted cactus in one hand for no discernible reason.

“Justine! This is a nice surprise. We never see you! That’s the school bus for you—never see the bus parents! Sit, sit.” Lesley points me toward the chair opposite her desk, and I hurry to seat myself as quickly as I know she wants me to. She’s a clever and efficient woman who can often anticipate where things are heading, and her tendency is to try to speed them toward their final destination. I’ve been physically pushed down into this same chair before when I dawdled for too long. The challenge today will be to remain in Lesley’s office long enough to get answers to my questions. I’ve let her hustle me out into the corridor prematurely on previous occasions, then had to knock on her door twenty seconds later and say, “Sorry, me again. I did have one other thing to ask . . .”

Above Lesley’s desk there’s a framed collage of holiday photos, mainly taken at her house in the south of France. Most are of her husband and three children messing around in their pool, but two are of Lesley in a green kaftan, reading in a deckchair. The kaftan looks much worse in one picture than in another—torn and faded. I suspect about ten years passed between photograph one and photograph two.

Apart from the collage, Lesley has nothing on her office walls apart from framed hunting and shooting pictures, which look like illustrations from old books. It’s odd to see so many images of guns in a head teacher’s office. Beaconwood is an eccentric school. I used to think this was a good thing.

I’m wondering where and how to start when Lesley says, “How’s your girl getting on with that creative writing project of hers? I’m going to have trouble keeping her teachers at bay if she doesn’t get some speed up. Has she hung a sign on her bedroom door: ‘Do Not Disturb, Genius At Work’?”

“I wanted to ask you about that. I bumped into Kendra Squires on my way in. She seems to think I asked for Ellen not to be given any other homework until she’s finished her story.”

“That’s right. Parents’ orders.” Lesley sits down at her desk and looks at it as if something’s missing that ought to be there.

“In that case, there’s been a misunderstanding,” I say. “I’m Ellen’s parent and I haven’t ordered anything of the sort. It’s fine for her to be given other homework. Especially maths, where she needs all the practice she can get.”

Lesley squints at me. It’s as if, by saying what I’ve said, I have made myself less visible somehow. “You didn’t say no other homework while she writes this story?”