Sophie Hannah - A Game for All the Family

Interesting that he doesn’t want to reveal his source. Particularly as I can’t think of a single other person associated with Beaconwood who would know what I did when I lived in London.

Hopefully this will work in my favor. He’ll be feeling bad, hoping to compensate by being superhelpful from now on. “Mr. Fisher, I like you.”

“I . . . I beg your pardon?”

“I approve of you. You teach my daughter about narrative perspective. I think you’re a decent man. And recently I’ve been treated pretty indecently by some of your colleagues.”

“Indecently?”

“Yes. Lesley Griffiths and Craig Goodrick have both lied to me about George Donbavand.”

“Oh.” Mr. Fisher hard-blinks at me.

“George was expelled for stealing a coat he didn’t steal. I know he didn’t, because the coat was Ellen’s and she gave it to him as a present. When I tried to talk to Lesley Griffiths about it, she told me there was no such boy. She said George Donbavand didn’t exist, had never been at Beaconwood, had never been expelled. Craig Goodrick said the same thing. They’re both lying, aren’t they?”

“Huh.” Lachlan Fisher looks down at Figgy. “This is kind of awkward.”

“It’s okay. You won’t be giving anything away if you tell me George Donbavand exists. I bumped into a kid on my way in today and he told me. I asked him directly.”

“Justine, that’s not true.”

“What isn’t true?”

“I’m not allowed to discuss it, but . . . you’re wrong.”

“Wrong how? George isn’t a real boy? He wasn’t expelled?”

“He wasn’t expelled.”

I turn away. I can’t stand to look at another lying face. “What about his sister, Fleur? I suppose you’ll say she wasn’t expelled either.”

“Most definitely not.”

“So she’ll be in her classroom now, will she, if I go and look for her?”

Mr. Fisher opens his mouth. No words come out.

“You know Fleur’s not at school today, or else you’d have said, ‘Yes, why don’t you go and look for her?’ Why isn’t she at school?”

“Justine . . .” Lachlan Fisher clears his throat. “Sometimes, with the best will in the world . . .”

I wait.

“You see, it’s complicated.”

“That’s okay. I can talk about complicated things. I’m forty-three. I’ve had lots of practice. Don’t gawk at me like a shell-shocked goldfish. Will you at least admit that George Donbavand is a real boy, who until recently was a pupil at Beaconwood?”

Mr. Fisher stares down at his hands. His interlocked fingers clench and relax, clench and relax, as if trying to mimic a heart pumping blood.

“Lachlan, I have a distraught fourteen-year-old daughter who can’t understand why her friend’s been expelled for something he didn’t do, even after she and he both explained to the head that he didn’t do it. How do you think she feels when I tell her that same head teacher is now flat-out denying the existence of the boy she describes as ‘my best friend in the whole world’? Is it the mission of this school to fuck with its pupils’ heads until they can no longer distinguish between illusion and reality?”

“No. No, it isn’t. Justine, I’m terribly sorry about all this. I really am.”

“Then tell me the truth. What’s going on?”

“I . . . Can you leave it with me?”

“No. Tell me now.”

“That’s impossible. I’m so sorry, but . . . if I could explain, you would understand. Truly.”

“I think that might be the most irritating statement I’ve ever heard.”

“Yes, I can imagine. Look, I promise—you have my solemn word—I’ll do my best to sort this out. As soon as I’m able to, I’ll be in touch. Hopefully later today. Do we have your current contact numbers in our records?”

“Yes.” I want to scream at him and pummel him with my fists, but I’ve got to be practical. He’s my best chance of finding out.

“I should get back to my class,” he says. “Tell you what: I’ll call you this evening either way.”

“No,” I say. “Only call me if you can tell me the truth. Come on, Figgy.” Let’s get around this corner and then we can smash our fists against some walls. Well, I can.

“Justine!”

I stop. “What?”

“George is real. He was a pupil at this school until a few days ago. He and Ellen were best friends.”

I close my eyes for a second. “Thank you.”

“Justine? The kind of friends they were . . . are, I should probably say . . .”

“Yes?”

“I’ve never seen anything like that between two secondary school students before. Between two people before,” he amends. “It was . . . well, I suppose I can’t say what it was , as an outside observer. But it seemed more intense than any relationship I’ve ever seen between adults.”

Chapter 8

Remove All Sharp Items, Chop Down All Trees

Bascom Ingrey blamed himself for the death of the flaky-eyed bumcracker, whose name turned out to be Jack Kirbyshire. Lisette and Allisande saw that there was no doubt in either of their parents’ minds that Perrine had murdered him, and so they didn’t doubt it either. It was now undeniable that those who found themselves in close proximity to Perrine were likely to fall to their deaths from high windows.

Bascom took this latest tragedy harder than hard. It half-destroyed him. He was unable to teach, and Sorrel took over all subjects. Every lesson, from maths to geography to science, consisted of watching videos and eating marshmallows. Sorrel had evidently stopped worrying about relevance. There had been three days of nothing but Cagney and Lacey , for example. To say that class discussions were no longer intellectually challenging was an understatement. Lisette was really worried. She knew she wouldn’t get into Cambridge University on the strength of her ideas about why Harvey Lacey was always in his pajamas.

Officially, Jack Kirbyshire’s death was recorded as an accident, but the local police knew the truth as well as all the Ingreys did. They just couldn’t prove it.

The mood in Speedwell House was a dark one. The bumcrackers no longer sang, joked or listened to the radio. Bascom and Sorrel weren’t sure if any of them suspected Perrine of murder. None of the family had said anything to them, of course, but Perrine was so obviously an alarming child that anyone intelligent would suspect her, they thought.

“We can’t let her out of our sight,” Sorrel told Bascom. “Any of the bumcrackers might try to kill her now. We must remove all sharp and heavy items from Speedwell House and chop down all trees from which nooses might be dropped.”

“Would it be so terrible if a bumcracker tried to kill Perrine and succeeded?” said Bascom.

“You can’t mean that!” Sorrel was shocked. “You don’t want to give up on her, do you?”

“But what if she’s evil? The sort of evil for which there’s no hope.”

“Well, then you ought to give up on her for sure.”

“She can’t be evil,” said Bascom in anguish. “I refuse to believe it.”

He stopped in his tracks. “Oh my sainted stars!” he whispered.

“What is it?” asked Sorrel. “Have you thought of a plan?”

“Music!” Bascom exclaimed. “We forgot music! The girls need to learn it. They did at school, though the lessons weren’t up to much, were they? A few halfhearted choruses of ‘The Windmills of Your Mind’ while bashing some cymbals and a triangle.”

Sorrel frowned. “I don’t quite see what you’re saying.”

“Bach, Beethoven, Mozart—proper music lessons! That’s what the girls need. That’s what Perrine needs. That child has a soul, and I’m determined to find it. Music is the way. The pathway to the soul! Or it could be. I can’t believe I forgot about music when I was devising their homeschooling curriculum. I know why I did: it’s because I’ve got a tin ear. I’m musically illiterate, but I’m no philistine. I know how important music is. Obviously, it’s not a subject I can teach . . .”