Sophie Hannah - A Game for All the Family

“You can’t,” Bascom told her. “Without my cooperation, your plan won’t work. I simply won’t go along with it! You need me, and you’d realize that if you weren’t so stubborn. Do you want to ruin all of our lives?”

“You know what I want.” Sorrel’s voice was weary now.

“Darling,” said Bascom, still sounding strict but not quite so angry. “Listen to me and try to keep an open mind. Let’s try my way first. If it works, you won’t want to have your turn afterward. If you still want to, that will mean that my method hasn’t worked. Then, I promise you, you will have my full cooperation and we can do it your way without destroying our family. You know it makes sense.”

“I hate sense!” Sorrel protested. “I’m not sure I can bear to wait!”

“Deep down, you know it’s the right and fair thing to do,” said Bascom.

“Oh, stop being so . . . wise !” Sorrel snapped at him.

Lisette, Allisande and Perrine knew that their mother had given in. Soon the only thing that could be heard through the locked door was kissing and affectionate murmurs. There was some more crying, but it was “Wasn’t that horrible?” crying rather than “I hate you” crying.

About twenty minutes later, the bedroom door started to creak open. The three girls sprinted across the landing and leapt down the stairs so as not to be caught eavesdropping. They pulled open the fridge door, grabbed random soft cheese triangles and slices of ham and stuffed them into their mouths to make it look as if they were getting supper on their own.

Their parents appeared in the kitchen in the fullness of time. They were smiling and holding hands. “Girls,” they said, “we have an announcement to make.”

5

Nobody is dressed. Dressing, moving, would require deciding what to do, and we don’t know how. Our drinks—one coffee, one hot water with lemon and honey and one orange juice—sit untouched in front of us.

By now, if all were well and this were a normal weekday morning, Ellen would be in her forest-green school uniform and on the bus, almost at Beaconwood. Alex, in torn jeans and a sweatshirt, would be asleep on a train from Berlin to Hamburg, en route to his next German concert.

I should be the only one in pajamas, sitting at the kitchen table. Instead it’s all three of us, which feels horribly wrong. We can’t all drop out of life and do nothing. The idea terrifies me. I need to sort out this mess so that Alex can go back to singing and Ellen to school. Not Beaconwood. Somewhere else. Somewhere sane.

Which school will George Donbavand go to next? I’ll send Ellen there. I need the phone number of his new school, now, and I’m furious that I don’t have it.

It’s selfish of me, but I’m panicking—on the verge of tears because I haven’t got the house to myself and don’t know when I next will. I want to be able to do nothing alone, in this enormous house that I bought for that specific purpose—or lack of purpose—without anybody in my way. I can’t have Alex and Ellen milling around here too. I’ll have to . . .

What? What will you do? It’s their house as much as yours.

I need to be with nobody as much as I need to do Nothing—for several hours a day at least. I didn’t know this about myself until this morning.

Maybe I’ll pretend to get a job—go out and spend all day Monday to Friday sitting on a bench somewhere far from home. I can do my relaxing obscenity-meditation anywhere; it doesn’t have to be at Speedwell House.

Now that my former career is not my only source of anger, I can add a new verse to the mantra: fuck Beaconwood, fuck Lesley Griffiths, fuck Craig Goodrick, fuck George Donbavand’s mother who caused the trouble in the first place by being the kind of person who can’t be told about a lost coat. Oh, and fuck my anonymous caller.

Ellen still insists it’s someone from school. I asked her about it again last night while we waited up together for Alex to come home. “Mrs. Griffiths has a grudge against the Donbavands,” she said. “It has to be her.”

I lost count of the number of times I pleaded, “ What has to be her? But why ?” like an irritating toddler.

Because they’re a difficult family.

I don’t believe that’s the explanation. Every school is used to dealing with nightmare families by the dozen, surely.

“Ellen, talk me through the chronology of all this,” says Alex. Within seconds of arriving home, he was asking why I hadn’t sorted out a clear “timeline” for the George Donbavand business. The word made me shudder. It’s only ever used by busy people who need to be efficient.

I’d better face facts: I’m going to have to become that brisk, capable person again, at least for the foreseeable future, if I want to get my old life back. My old new life, that is: the one in which my daughter was happy and her best friend in the whole world had not been expelled.

I feel sick when I try to imagine what might be required of me. I was efficient for too long—most of my life—and it nearly broke me. How can I go back to that? I can’t bear the thought of having Things To Do—things that matter. I spent most of last night lying awake fantasizing about starting a new new life. Not in Devon; nowhere near here. Remotest northern Scotland, perhaps, or Florida.

And abandon poor George Donbavand to his fate?

You’ve never even met the boy. Forty-eight hours ago, you hadn’t heard of him.

Look what happened when you stuck up for Ben Lourenco: nothing. It made no difference.

“Ellen?” Alex prompts. “Can you tell me what happened when, starting from the beginning?”

“Do you want exact dates and times?” she snaps. Her eyes are red, with semicircles of purple-gray shadow beneath them. She came downstairs looking like a ghost, carrying her laptop under her arm.

She’s been awake all night, crying and writing her story.

“Don’t jump down my throat, El,” Alex says. “I’m on your side. I just—”

“Then why are you asking about chronology, like a policeman who doesn’t believe my alibi? You don’t believe me, do you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“We both do,” I tell her.

“We also believe there’s something very strange—strange and wrong on every level—going on at your school,” says Alex. “That’s why it’s important that you tell us everything that’s happened from your point of view, and when it happened. I want to get to the bottom of this mess.”

“It didn’t happen ‘from my point of view.’ ” Ellen’s voice vibrates with anger. “It happened from everybody’s point of view. It objectively happened.”

“We know that, El.” I reach over to squeeze her hand. She pushes me away.

“George is real,” she says, blinking away tears. “He’s as real as the three of us. Two days ago he was expelled. Mr. Goodrick’s lying. Mrs. Griffiths is making him lie. She’s probably threatened to sack him if he tells the truth about George. She’s evil.”

No, she isn’t. That can’t be the answer.

“She’s the head. The other teachers would do what she told them.”

“So George was in on Tuesday?” asks Alex. “Was Tuesday his last day at school or his first day not at school?”

“His last day,” says Ellen. “He told me he’d been expelled and wouldn’t be in again. And he was right. Yesterday, the day Mum drove me in, he wasn’t there. There was no sign he’d ever been there. The bits of the wall displays that he’d done, with his name on them—his impressionist painting and his photo of a kingfisher—they’d gone. And all the others had been moved around.”

Alex shakes his head. “Unbelievable,” he says. “No, I don’t mean I don’t believe it, I mean what the fuck. Sorry. Five quid in the swear box from me.”