Sophie Hannah - A Game for All the Family

“So. Here we are,” Alex says: a not especially helpful public service announcement.

“It must be half past nine by now. Is it, Mum?”

“I don’t know.” I haven’t worn a watch for years. “Maybe not quite. Another few minutes.” When I worked, my BlackBerry was never not in front of my eyes. I was never not staring at its screen, trying to calculate whether I could spare the time to notice what time it was.

“I know neither of you is expecting to see him,” says Ellen. “You don’t believe he’s real.”

“If he’s real, it can easily be proven,” says Alex. “Which makes me wonder why school would pretend never to have heard of him.”

Shut up, for God’s sake.

“If they’re lying, it’s going to become obvious pretty bloody quickly. Why doesn’t that worry them enough to stop them?”

“So they must be telling the truth?” Ellen says bitterly.

“I believe you, El,” I say.

“Look!” She’s staring hard at the river. Something’s happened.

What? What has she seen? Is George Donbavand about to come out of the water in a wetsuit and climb over our garden wall?

Please don’t let Ellen be crazy. Please let George be real.

I stare at the river. Alex does too. Counting down without numbers, without words. It’s like waiting for a magic show to start. Where is the magic element going to come from?

I see and hear nothing that surprises me, only boats and birds: an orange sail tied to a mast; a seagull sick of having to repeat itself.

No George Donbavand.

“There it is!” Ellen points out over the water. Standing beside her, I can feel her excitement. “Lionel’s boat!”

Lionel—never referred to with a surname attached—is a well-known local painter with a booming voice who has a tendency to finish his sentences with the words “Are you with me?” He exhibits his wares in pubs and cafés, hoping to sell them for between £40 and £90, depending on their size. Lionel has considerable skill as an artist, but his pictures are stomach-churningly awful. He paints attractive Devon scenes and landmarks—Budleigh Salterton beach, Exmoor, the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth, Torre Abbey—then spoils the beauty he’s created by painting a caricature of himself, complete with broken-veined nose, tufty white hair and tobacco-stained teeth, over the landscape in a completely different cartoon-like style that clashes horribly.

All his paintings have titles that begin “Lionel Woz Ere”: Lionel Woz Ere At Wortham Manor , Lionel Woz Ere On Burgh Island —those were two I particularly enjoyed leaving behind at the Anchorstone Café in Dittisham to put people off their food until the end of time. Lionel’s pictures don’t sell, and so end up being exhibited relentlessly, forever, by owners of establishments who tolerate and even encourage him because he’s “a character.” His paid work is to pilot his boat The Kingswear Treasure , a large wooden dinghy with an outboard motor, from Kingswear to Dartmouth and back again dozens of times a day, seven days a week. God knows when he finds time to paint.

“What’s Lionel’s boat got to do with George?” I ask Ellen as The Kingswear Treasure chugs over to our side of the river.

“George’ll be on it when it goes back across to Dartmouth. The Donbavands live on the other side. His dad always took him and Fleur to school on the boat. Now he’s been expelled, only Fleur needs to be taken, but George’s dad would never leave him in the house alone and his mum always leaves for work at about five thirty in the morning to avoid rush-hour traffic. George will have gone across on the boat with his dad and Fleur. He must have!”

I see what she means. “Lionel’s boat leaves for Dartmouth on the hour and the half hour, so given that they’d miss the nine o’clock because school only starts at nine—”

“They’ll be on the nine thirty,” Ellen completes my sentence.

I can’t help smiling. It’s funny to talk about “the nine o’clock” and “the nine thirty” when we’re talking about the same battered wooden vessel, steered by the same white-haired windbag.

“Isn’t Fleur in sixth form, didn’t you say?” Alex frowns. “Surely she’s old enough to go to school on her own by now.”

“George’s mum doesn’t think so.” Ellen cranes her neck, nearly toppling over the wall. “I wish I could see the jetty from here. Why are there so many trees in the way? George and his dad will be on the jetty, waiting for the boat.”

“Here we go,” I say as The Kingswear Treasure slides back into view on a burst of foam.

“There he is!” Ellen shrieks next to my ear. “There—see that man with blond hair and glasses in the brown coat and red scarf? That’s his dad. The boy next to him, that’s George. George! George! ”

I step back to avoid being deafened by her screams.

Turn around, George. Please turn around.

“He’s never going to hear you over the noise of all the people on the boat,” says Alex. “Plus the water, the wind . . .”

“That’s him, Dad,” Ellen says mournfully. “I knew he’d be on Lionel’s boat and there he is—too far away to hear me!” She bursts into tears and starts to run back toward the house. Alex follows her.

I stay where I am, staring at The Kingswear Treasure .

You’re disappointed that he didn’t turn around. Admit it. You think it might mean something.

I stare at the boy who might be George as he drifts farther away. He could easily be the person Ellen described. Light brown hair. I’d call it dark blond, but it amounts to the same thing. He’s sitting with his back to me, so I can’t see if his eyes are blue.

A boy in a boat. No proof that his name is George Donbavand.

Once I’m sure that both Ellen and Alex are inside the house, I shout, “George!” as loud as I can. He doesn’t respond. Of course he doesn’t. He’s halfway to Dartmouth. As Alex said, it’s a windy day.

It doesn’t mean anything.

I’m sitting in the gazebo when I hear Alex’s car pull up on the gravel on the other side of the house. I’ve left a note in the kitchen telling him where I am.

Ten minutes later, I see him coming across the lawn with two mugs in his hand, steam rising from both. He’ll have made me tea—too strong, as always, with not enough milk. It’s a running joke. Alex calls my kind of tea “beige water.”

“What happened?” I ask as he hands me my drink.

“Nothing interesting. I dropped El at school, then drove home.”

“Did you go in?”

“No.”

“Speak to any teachers?”

“No. Let me try this again.” Alex clears his throat. “I dropped Ellen at school, and then I came home. Nothing else happened. If it had, I’d tell you.”

“Sorry.” I swear under my breath. “We should have kept her at home.”

Alex sighs. “We didn’t, though, so why have the argument now?”

“She’s knackered. I don’t think she got any sleep at all last night. She stayed up writing her story.”

“It won’t kill her to be tired.”

“We need to see that story. There’s something not right about it. It’s not what it seems.”

“Not this again. How is it not what it seems?”

“I don’t know!” The smell of Alex’s coffee is ruining the sea-salt smell that I love. I move away from him, wrinkling my nose at his mug. “If I could be more specific, I would. There’s something wrong, Alex. I thought so yesterday and I think so today, hence the repetition. Why do you think Ellen was so determined to go to school today?”

“She explained why: she can’t ruin her education just because she’s upset about George. Sensible, if you ask me.”