Sophie Hannah - A Game for All the Family

“I’ve no idea. Neither have you. We have no experience of that world.”

“True, but—”

“Let’s not waste time arguing. It’s done. I’ve paid upfront. He’ll either prove useful or he won’t. I thought it was worth a try.”

“So you asked him to find out who’s making these phone calls? I think there was another one while you were out, by the way. The landline rang. When I picked it up, there was breathing, then they hung up.”

“I mentioned the calls, yes, but we mainly talked about George.”

“Why? There’s no mystery about George anymore, is there? He’s real. I assume Lesley Griffiths explained to you why she expelled him?”

“She didn’t expel him. She only pretended to.”

In between sips of gin and tonic, I tell Alex everything that happened at Beaconwood this afternoon. He listens without interrupting. When I’m finished, he says, “So you’ve asked this investigator to find out . . . what? The Donbavands’ original name, before they changed it?”

“Not only that—also where they used to live, what happened to make them want to run away, who’s after them with a view to harming them . . .”

Alex is wrinkling his nose dismissively. “Can he find out any of that stuff? How?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t sound fazed by it at all. He said, ‘Yeah, should be able to get something for you,’ as if I’d asked him for a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit.”

“I can’t think how he’ll do it,” Alex says.

“That’s because you’re an opera singer and not a detective,” I say impatiently. “I assume he has methods that he uses regularly, if his firm’s been in business for thirty years.”

“Maybe.” Alex sounds unconvinced. “I hope he’s not planning to break any laws, making you an accessory.”

“I don’t care if he breaks every law known to man if he gets me the information I want,” I say. “I’ve given him Anne and Stephen Donbavand’s email addresses and suggested he hack their accounts.”

Alex throws his head back in despair. “That’s idiotic! That could land you in jail. What did he say?”

“He said hacking emails was against the law. He didn’t say he wouldn’t do it.”

“Good on him. Justine, I’m worried about this.” Alex slides off the sofa, landing on the floor next to me. It’s hard to deliver a stern lecture while reclining with your feet up. “It’s not only the possibly dodgy detective and the legality issues, it’s the chance that you might find out. Lesley Griffiths’s approach is the one I’d favor: something fucked up and dangerous is going on, therefore keep as far out of it as you can.”

“For as long as George and Ellen are intent on doing their Heathcliff and Cathy bit, we’re involved whether we like it or not, Alex.”

“Don’t be daft. George popping around once in a blue moon when he can escape from his parents isn’t going to put us at risk, but—”

“Isn’t it? Are you sure? George was pulled out of school by his parents because of Ellen— because, after years of loneliness, he made a friend. His mother doesn’t want anyone getting close to him. Lesley said so. All right, maybe someone’s out to get the whole family. Maybe. If so, it’s made Anne Donbavand paranoid and she’s decided to take it out on George. And on us.”

Shall I go further and risk being wrong? I can’t keep it in. “I think she’s the one making the threatening calls.”

Alex makes a weary face. “You’ve no proof of that.”

“Which is why I said ‘I think.’ I’ve never heard her voice. She didn’t answer the email I sent her—neither did her husband. But now we know Ellen’s friendship with George bothers her. To her disturbed mind, it must look as if our arrival here meant she had to take her kids out of Beaconwood. So, yes, when I think about who might want to call me and say, ‘Go home or I’ll kill you and your family,’ she’s at the top of the list. She is the list.”

“Did you tell your detective you suspect her?”

“Yes. I told him everything.”

“Darling, you don’t know this man from a bar of soap.”

“Oh, so what? He’s doing some work for me, that’s all. We don’t need to be blood brothers.”

We sit in silence for a while. I stroke Figgy’s chin with my knuckles and he makes a sound I’d call purring if he were a cat. Do dogs purr, or is there a different word for it?

“I’m going to make another phone call you’ll disapprove of,” I tell Alex. “To Olwen Brawn. I thought about asking her when I was at her house but I chickened out.”

“Asking her . . . ?”

“If she’s heard of the Ingrey family.”

“The . . .” Alex’s baffled expression gives way to wide-eyed disbelief. “Seriously? You’re proposing to ask a random dog breeder if she knows some fictional characters invented by your daughter, and you’re calling Anne Donbavand disturbed?”

“Ellen’s imagination didn’t produce what was on the pages I read. It was her handwriting, but not her creation. You have to trust me on that.”

“Well, I don’t have to,” Alex mutters apologetically to his whisky glass. “I could disagree with you instead. I could say, ‘Does anyone know what another person’s imagination is capable of?’ ”

George Donbavand’s imagination, for example . . .

I swallow the last of my drink. “The anonymous caller called me ‘Sandie.’ On the family tree attached to Ellen’s story, there’s someone called Allisande Ingrey. Sandie could be short for Allisande.”

“Justine, stop.”

“On the same family tree, there’s somebody called Ellen—sound familiar?—who appears to be married to one Urban Ingrey. He’s Allisande’s nephew, son of her older sister Lisette. Lisette and Allisande had a younger sister called Perrine—”

“Darling, these people don’t exist!”

“Perrine murdered a boy called Malachy Dodd and was then murdered herself. If the Ingreys are a real family, that means Lisette and Allisande suffered two fairly severe traumas—severe enough to explain Anne Donbavand’s neurosis.”

“All right,” Alex says slowly, thinking. “So your theory is what? Ellen’s story isn’t made up, it’s the true story of Anne Donbavand’s childhood? Told to Ellen by George, I suppose.”

“Maybe. I think it’s possible.”

“Lisette Ingrey is Anne Donbavand? Urban Ingrey must be George if he’s married to Ellen on the family tree.”

“It’s exactly the sort of thing Ellen would do,” I say. “It’s obvious she worships George. She’s making a family tree of his family, and she writes herself in as his future wife.”

“Let’s assume that’s true,” says Alex. “Lisette Ingrey has a—presumably equally traumatized by childhood events—sister called Allisande, but that isn’t you .”

“Of course it’s not me. Though remember Ellen burst into tears when she heard me say, ‘My name isn’t Sandie’ to the anonymous caller. And later she asked me if I’m really who I claim to be.”

“Fuck.” Alex shakes his head.

“That makes perfect sense, doesn’t it, if George has told her all about his mother’s past? Sandie—Allisande—is evidently a force for darkness in the story—a threat, a danger to Lisette and her family. Ellen hears that I’ve been addressed as Sandie and panics. Thinks, ‘What if my own mother is the person out to get George and his family?’ And before she thought that, she thought it was someone at school making the calls. That’s why it seemed plausible to her that Lesley Griffiths might maliciously expel both George and Fleur. Maybe she thought Lesley was Anne Donbavand’s dangerous sister? Remember she asked you how old Lesley was?”