Sophie Hannah - A Game for All the Family

I pull a chair over from the side of the room and sit down opposite her. “You don’t think this woman’s going to attack me and my family if we don’t leave Devon immediately, then?”

“No, I wouldn’t say so.”

Damn. It would have been nice to be able to tell Alex, “The police advise us to run for our lives. If we stay, it’ll be at our own risk.” I’m confident that I could turn abandoning Devon into as much fun as abandoning work.

Is it weird to glean so much pleasure from booting troublesome things out of your life?

I say, “What about the red flag of this woman knowing where we used to live and what my job used to be? What about ‘I don’t want to have to hurt you’?”

PC Hilton’s face twists in sympathy. “That’s a horrible thing to hear, but it doesn’t mean she’s going to do anything. Honestly, for most of them, the calls are enough to give them the buzz they’re after.”

“Are there lots of unhinged anonymous callers in this part of Devon?” I ask. “You talk as if you meet hundreds of these people every day.”

She laughs. “No, not at all. It’s very rare, this kind of behavior.”

“Then how—”

“I’d expect the calls to stop fairly soon. That tends to be the pattern with people who do this. If it continues, obviously come and see us again.”

“It already has continued. From one phone call to two—that’s a continuation.” I didn’t want to come here, but I did, to please Alex; now I’m getting angry on his behalf, knowing that Phoebe Hilton isn’t saying any of the things he’d want her to. “Couldn’t you try to trace the calls? I might not be quivering with fear and in imminent danger, but it’s still harassment. People get prosecuted for this kind of thing, don’t they?”

PC Hilton nods. “If the calls continue, we’ll certainly look into tracing them,” she says. “To be honest, it might be easier if you were to have a think about who it could be, and maybe try and talk to them? Confront them. Not alone, obviously, and as diplomatically as possible. Perhaps your husband’d go with you?”

Inside my head, all movement stops for a few seconds. Did I not explain myself clearly enough?

“If I thought I could work out on my own who’s doing it, I wouldn’t be bothering you,” I tell her. “I’m here because I’m certain this is nobody I know . It’s a voice I’ve never heard before.”

“People can distort their voices,” says PC Hilton.

“I told you: this wasn’t a distorted voice. A distorted voice sounds muffled or altered, or . . . This woman was speaking in a perfectly ordinary, clear voice, with a slight lisp, though not the usual kind—not th for s .”

“You said it sounded as if she might have had something in her mouth?”

“I don’t think she actually did—I was trying to describe the lisp. It’s more likely her tongue was catching on her teeth as she spoke. The point is, I’d have recognized her if she were someone I knew. She isn’t. This is no one whose voice I’ve heard before.”

“But you said she knew you used to work in the world of TV and live in Muswell Hill.”

“Yes.”

“So she must know you.”

“No. She knows of me, evidently—she knows facts about me—but she doesn’t know me because I don’t know her. I can’t believe I need to say it again, but it seems I do, so please listen carefully this time: the person making these calls is a stranger to me.”

PC Hilton blushes and writes something down in her notebook. I hope it’s the words “Note to self: stop being a dick immediately.”

“All right,” she says, looking up. “So you can’t think of anyone you might have offended? Any incident that might have sparked this off? Obviously, if you do think of anything or remember anything, let me know.”

“Are you serious?”

“Without meaning to,” she adds quickly. “I’m not saying you’ve deliberately intimidated anybody, but people can take offense at the strangest things, can’t they?”

“They can, yes.” It’s important to sound conciliatory. Three words of mollification: that’ll do. “But you’re missing the point. These phone calls aren’t about me or anything I’ve done or not done. Yes, of course I’ve upset people from time to time—plenty of them.”

“Exactly.” PC Hilton sounds relieved that at last we are in agreement. “We all have.”

“Yes, and if I thought there was any chance this caller was one of the people I’ve annoyed over the years, I’d tell you. But she isn’t. She’s a complete stranger. Look, she might have gotten a few details about my life right, but there’s a lot she got wrong. She thought I should know who she was and what she was talking about, and I didn’t. She’s confused. She thinks I’m a different person, someone who’s involved in . . . some kind of ongoing situation with her that I know nothing about! You’re not going to find her by looking at my life. Trace the calls if you want to know who she is.”

“If it continues, we’ll look into doing that,” says Phoebe Hilton. “Justine, you have to understand that in my job, so often I’m hampered by people withholding the details that would enable me to help them most effectively. While it’s understandable that people are embarrassed or ashamed to share certain pieces of personal information—”

“I’m neither embarrassed nor ashamed. I’m irrelevant.”

“How do you mean?”

“Whatever’s going on, it has nothing to do with me. It’s about her, whoever she is. I can’t help you beyond what I’ve already told you. You’re the one who can help me. You can get the calls traced. Taking action to protect civilians from threats is your job, not mine. I don’t have a job.” I can’t help smiling as I say this. “I’ve done my bit. I’ve reported the threatening phone calls. Over to you.”

“Leave it with me,” she says.

And you’ll do what? I want to ask. Don’t I have a right to know? When can I expect to hear from you?

Instead, I do what a nonpushy person would do: I thank her, exactly as I would if I were grateful for something, and leave.

This time I head straight for the school: no dawdling to admire the beauty of the grounds. I park the Range Rover and march up the path, fixing my eyes on Beaconwood’s pink decorated façade, as if by keeping it in sight I can prevent the building from vanishing into thin air.

If it can happen to a schoolboy, why not to a school?

I know what I believe and I am eager to be proved right or wrong. I believe that, until very recently, a boy called George Donbavand was a pupil here. He must have walked up this path every weekday morning, heading for the big wooden door as I am now.

I believe it because Ellen says it’s true and she isn’t a liar. Not usually, anyway. Only about homework.

One person who’s willing to tell me the truth—that’s all I need.

The school’s door has an arched top and a large iron knocker that parents have been asked not to use because it’s too loud. I press the less disruptive buzzer, remembering Alex’s and my first visit to Beaconwood. We heard the scrape of the key in the lock, followed by the creak of ancient-sounding hinges, and Alex whispered, “A rotund, red-cheeked monk will emerge any second now.”

I giggled.

“Brown robe, shaved circle on top of his head, pint of foaming mead in his chubby hand,” said Alex.

Instead, the door was opened by the same woman who opens it now: Helen Minchin, the school secretary. Today she’s wearing gray wool trousers with a mustard-colored cowl-neck sweater. Pearl earrings and necklace, black shoes with ornaments on the toes featuring more pearls. She looks out of place in a ramshackle country-house school like Beaconwood, where there’s usually a pair of muddy boots or two, or sometimes as many as ten, lined up along the front and side walls. The idea of Helen and muddy boots inhabiting the same universe is jarring. She ought to work in a sleek glass and metal building with lifts that speak several languages.