Sophie Hannah - A Game for All the Family

“Julia? Are you all right?”

“I will be. I feel a bit dizzy.”

Think, woman. Economics. Help, quick. The budget. The Chancellor of the Exchequer holding up a red box. Until Alex set me straight, I thought the box was full of money and wondered why I never heard it jingle when George Osborne waved it in the air.

“Julia? Shall I get you some water? Coffee’s not the best thing if you feel faint—even decaf.”

“Water would be good. Thanks.”

He puts down his drink on the shelf next to his chair. In his hurry to get the water he hopes will cure me, he lets the blue tea towel drop to the floor and I see that his mug does indeed have writing on it—the worst kind. It’s one of those head-bashingly irritating “Keep Calm” slogans: in this instance “Keep Calm and Stop Caring.”

“Here you go.”

“Thank you.”

I take two long sips of cold water. Stephen stands in front of me, too close. He’s probably waiting to catch me if I faint.

“I’m fine now, really. Thanks.”

As he turns to walk back to his chair, I catch sight of his palms and gasp.

He whirls round. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. It’s just . . . the water’s cold. In a good way.” I smile, hoping he can’t hear the terror-drumming of my heart.

His hands are livid red and swollen. Cracked at the bottom, with mud embedded in the cracks, brown lines across his palms. On the fleshy pad beneath one of his thumbs is a wound, like a burst blister, inadequately covered by a plaster.

That’s why the tea towel. Without it, holding a mug of hot coffee would be too painful for him.

I’ve found the Speedwell House gravedigger. Not Anne Donbavand, but her husband: smiling Stephen. Or maybe both of them.

“Ouch, that looks sore,” I say. “Your hands. Did you burn them?”

“What? Oh yes. No, actually, it was digging that did it.”

How dare you, you fucker? How dare you look so jovial about it?

“Gardening? At this time of year?” My laugh comes out strangled. I’m nearly as bad an actress as I am an economist. Doesn’t matter. Now that I know Stephen Donbavand dug a hole out of my garden to scare me and my family, I’m less worried about him suspecting my true identity. He’s got something to hide, so he’ll assume he’s the only one in the room who has.

“Well . . .” He shrugs and laughs. “If it keeps my wife happy.”

My breath turns solid in my mouth and throat. He has no idea who he’s talking to, or what he’s told me. Not that I didn’t know it anyway. This isn’t a man who would dig a grave in a stranger’s garden off his own bat. Stephen Donbavand would never do that. What he would do, if he woke up one day and found himself married to a dangerous lunatic, is keep calm and stop caring. Or care, but do nothing about it.

He tries again. “Let’s talk about your proposed PhD. And, if you could give me some background about your—”

“No.”

He can’t physically attack me without using his hands, and they’re injured. If I have to fight him physically, I will. I think I could win.

“Let’s talk about your wife for a bit longer. Before she married you, she was Anne Offord, with one sister, Sarah. Yet she pretends she grew up as Lisette Ingrey, with two sisters, Allisande and Perrine. Perrine murdered Malachy Dodd. Except none of these people are real, are they?”

I’m looking at a frozen man with a colorless face. He’s not going to ask me what I mean. He knows.

“My name isn’t Julia Vowles,” I tell him. “I think you know who I am, don’t you? Who would care enough to trick you into a meeting? Who’s your wife tormenting at the moment? Who are you helping her to harrass? Any names spring to mind?”

“I . . . I think you ought to leave. I’m . . . I’m really sorry.” The last word comes out as a sob. He’s hunched in his chair, protecting himself with his arms. From words. Nothing but words.

“I’m Justine Merrison, Stephen. Your hands are sore because you spent most of the other night digging a grave in my garden—as you said, to keep your wife happy. You’re scared of her, which I can understand. George is scared of her, and I can only assume Fleur is too. From my point of view, that’s no excuse for going along with whatever she asks you to do.”

“Justine, you have to leave.” He isn’t asking; he’s pleading.

“I will, once I’ve had my say. Anne has been ringing me, calling me Sandie, telling me to go back to London or else she’ll kill me, my husband and our daughter—that’s Ellen, who’s George’s best friend. Except Anne took him out of Beaconwood, having first made the head pretend to expel him—apparently for his own good—so now he never sees his best friend anymore. What would Anne have to do before you’d think, ‘Enough is enough’? Are you waiting for her to kill someone before you take action? If so, I’d like to suggest an alternative plan. As the person she’s likely to kill first, I think it’s my right to do so.”

“Justine . . .” He raises his injured hands to try to stop me.

“What?”

“I can’t talk to you. I wouldn’t have agreed to meet you. You know that.”

“Then I’ll leave. But first I want to hear you say that you know your wife is a pathological liar and that she’s harming your children. Tell me what you’re going to do about that and I’ll go. Tell me how you’re going to stop her from causing me any more grief.”

Stephen Donbavand gets up and walks over to the window. Eventually he says quietly, “I mean you no harm, Justine. There’s nothing I can say that you’d want to hear.”

“Expect a visit from the police,” I tell him.

His face contorts at the word: a cartoon mask of horror. “No. Please, you don’t know . . . Anne wouldn’t hurt anyone. She’s not violent.”

“Are you serious?”

“You have no evidence!”

“I’ve seen your hands. And I haven’t heard you deny what I’m accusing you of.”

“Get out. Please.”

I wonder if he’s as desperate as he sounds. Desperate people will agree to anything. In my most reasonable voice, I say, “If you don’t want me to tell the police, stop your wife from doing what she’s doing. Can you do that?”

No answer.

“And tell me the truth. Where does the Perrine killing Malachy Dodd story come from, and all that stuff about the Ingreys? Is it based on something true? Or did Anne make it up?”

“Please leave. You’ve no right to . . .” He comes storming toward me, then stops suddenly, as if he’s realized that he can’t. He is a person who always can’t.

He walks over to his desk and picks up his phone. “I’ve never done this before, but I think I can have you forcibly removed from university grounds. This is your last chance to leave of your own accord.”

“All right,” I say, standing up. “I’ll give you a last chance too: to stop Anne coming anywhere near me and my family. That includes phone calls, and it includes my dog—I don’t know if she told you what she did to our puppy?”

Stephen squeezes his eyes shut. I hope he’s imagining something worse than what happened, and all the bad things that are going to happen if he doesn’t do as I ask.

“I know you hate this as much as I do, Stephen. So stop her. If you don’t want to end up in jail and your children in care, you can’t let Anne carry on the way she’s going. It’s not too late yet, but you haven’t got long.”

I slam the door on my way out.

“You’re not asleep, so . . . I’m doing this.” Alex turns on the bedroom light. It’s not what’s supposed to happen. He’s supposed to watch the rest of the film I couldn’t focus on, whose title I’ve already forgotten, and give me time to lie in the dark wondering what to do. Worrying, analyzing, trying to reconcile my disbelief—my strong urge to laugh at the absurdity of it all—with my fear, and the knowledge that, however impossible and ridiculous it might seem, it’s real. It’s happening.