Sophie Hannah - A Game for All the Family

“And then what? When could we come back?”

If we leave, the harassment will stop, and the police will stop investigating it, assuming they ever started. However long we waited before coming back, the malicious campaign would start again as soon as we crossed the threshold of Speedwell House.

No. No way am I going to let anyone drive me out of my home.

“Are you going to question Anne and Stephen Donbavand?” I ask Luce. “Will you carry on trying to trace the calls?” I make sure not to look at him as I speak. I want him to know I’ve given up on him, that I’m asking only to highlight his inadequacy.

“Yes to the latter. If you really want me to talk to Steve and his wife, I will, but—”

“I do. Tell them I’m not prepared to put up with their antics indefinitely. I’m going to fight back, and they won’t like any of the things I do.”

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.” Luce frowns. “Making threats is inadvisable, and that sounded like a threat.”

“Did it? Good,” I say. “Your job is to make sure the Donbavands believe I really mean it.”

Ops, who has no idea that this is how I and my family refer to him, calls me on my mobile at noon. “Justine? That you? I can hardly hear you.”

“Yes, it’s me.”

“Shall I call back when you’re somewhere less noisy?”

“No, please . . .” I can’t say Please talk to me now. It would sound too desperate. “Wait, I’ll cross the road and get away from the beach noise.”

I’m in Torquay with Figgy, on the promenade. I did some internet research and found a sensible-sounding website that said nothing bad would happen to a puppy taken for a walk before its second set of vaccinations as long as it didn’t come into direct contact with other dogs.

I decided to believe it. I needed—need—to be in a crowded, busy place, not hidden from the rest of the world by a screen of trees so that no one would see if something happened to me. And Figgy’s safer here than at home.

Alex and Ellen have gone to the cinema. They also didn’t want to stay at Speedwell House, staring out of the window at the grave in the lawn.

We can’t go on like this. Can’t get into bed every night wondering if we’ll wake up to find a second grave in our garden, then a third. Ops has no idea how much I need his help. Please, please, let him give me something I can use.

“Can you hear me better now?” I ask, once I’m across the street and tucked into a shop doorway.

“Yeah, a bit. I’m afraid I’m going to be awkward.”

“How?”

“I’m not going to tell you what you’re expecting to hear.”

“I’m not sure what I’m expecting.” I close my eyes and cover my free ear with my hand. I don’t want to be distracted by the hundreds of faces and voices. Is Torquay always this busy? It’s like central London, except here people look annoying in a completely different way.

If Ops has found something out that helps me—really helps—I’ll ignore the reply I had from Stephen Donbavand this morning saying he’d be happy to meet my economics-expert alter ego. I won’t go and meet him under false pretenses.

“All right, first off the bat,” Ops launches in. “No Bascom and Sorrel Ingrey, or their kids or grandkids. All those names you gave me, the whole family—not a trace of them. So unless they’ve successfully erased all evidence of their existence—unlikely if they aren’t in witness protection . . . and even when the police are involved in identity concealment—there are still trails you can follow, generally, if you know where to look. I’ve been in this business thirty years, and if you want my honest opinion? You’re looking for a family that doesn’t exist. Didn’t you say you found these Ingreys in a story? I think they’re fictional.”

Or they’re real but you didn’t find them because Ellen changed their names to disguise a true story as invention.

“On to the Donbavands,” says Ops. “They do exist, you’ll be glad to hear. Stephen Donbavand, born 1968 in Edinburgh. Only child. Father a chemist, mother a dance teacher—”

“Wait. What was his name?”

“Whose name?”

“Stephen Donbavand. What was he called when he was born?”

“Unsurprisingly, he was called Stephen Donbavand.”

“No, it is suprising.” My heart pounds as I try to figure out what it means. Has Ops forgotten what I told him? “Remember, Lesley Griffiths, the head teacher of my daughter’s school, said that the Donbavands had changed their names?”

“Because someone was after them, right? Based on what I’ve got in front of me, I’d dispute that. There’s nothing to suggest either Stephen or his wife Anne did anything that would have generated that level of ill-will, or that they took on new IDs. Both their lives are well documented all the way, and there’s no controversy in either. He had an ordinary upbringing in Edinburgh, went to Durham Uni, PhD at Leeds where he later got his first job.”

Ops swallows the yawn that crept into his voice toward the end of his last sentence. Finding out the truth about people must get dull after three decades. “He left Leeds after four years for the Economics Department at Exeter, where he is now. His wife was born in Totnes. Maiden name Anne Offord—that’s O-F-F-O-R-D. One sister: Sarah. Parents Martin and Denise. They’re still in Totnes, got a kitchen design business they run together. He does the building and fitting, she does the design and accounting. Anne was a bright spark at school, went to St John’s, Oxford, then to Pembroke, Cambridge, for her postgrad. First job in Leeds, where she met her husband. Then Exeter—they both moved at the same time. She was made professor three years ago. Two kids, Fleur and George—seventeen and fourteen respectively.”

“Tell me about the sister,” I say.

“She was married to a Gregory Parsons. They subsequently divorced.”

Sarah Parsons the artist. With an “estranged” sister, Anne.

“She’s a painter,” says Ops. “Apparently Anne doesn’t have much to do with her family, though. Christmas and birthday cards is about the extent of it.”

“One sister living,” I say. “What about dead ones?”

“Are you thinking the substance of your daughter’s story might be true but the names altered? Sorry to disappoint again. Anne Donbavand—Offord as was—has only ever had one sister.”

“But did you—”

“Give me a chance,” he says wearily. “Yes, after I got your last message I looked into the history of Speedwell House near Kingswear. No murders or unexpected deaths associated with it, going back the last two hundred years. Nor with any of the families who’ve lived there. I double-checked to see if Anne was adopted by the Offords as a baby—I thought that might point me in the direction of this other family containing a murderer, but it was a blind alley. Anne wasn’t adopted. So . . . how far do you trust this headmistress?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“Well, she’s the one who’s fed you this line about the Donbavand family changing their name and being in hiding, isn’t she? That doesn’t sit right with me, after looking into it. As I say, Anne and Stephen Donbavands’ pasts look conventional and uncontroversial.”

I think about the word “estranged.” It implies a rift—something more dramatic than a gradual drifting out of touch.

“People that good at covering their tracks don’t generally turn up in their safe haven of choice and immediately start blabbing to the local schoolteachers about their new identities and the terrible threat they’ve escaped from. It just doesn’t tie in.”

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Where does this leave me?