Sophie Hannah - A Game for All the Family

In the same file, there are three coffin catalogs, showing pictures of every conceivable kind of model: dark, shiny and expensive; plain, light and cheap. There’s a blue checkmark next to one of the priciest. An odd choice if you’re planning to murder a person, some might say, but I understand. Allisande might be hated and feared by Lisette, but she matters to her. When someone is that important to you, you don’t choose cheap.

There’s a black eyeliner pencil on the dressing table. I remove its lid and draw an “X” next to Anne’s checkmark. I start to write, “Good quality, but too baroque. I’d prefer a plainer style—okay, sis?” Halfway through writing “quality,” I give up. I don’t want to make a joke, even one that will make Anne angry. I don’t want to call her “sis” because she’s not, has never been and will never be my sister.

This isn’t funny. I can’t quip my way out of it. A delusional, dangerous woman is fantasizing about killing and burying me and I have the brochures to prove it. She’s been thorough: as well as coffins, there are hundreds of pictures of urns in the file: another two catalogs’ worth. Anne mustn’t have been able to decide at first between burial and cremation.

I take several deep breaths. She might not go any further than she has already. Maybe the contents of this file and the hole in my lawn will be enough for her.

And Figgy’s nametag, and climbing into your house when you told her she wasn’t welcome, and the anonymous calls, and the dead creature in her handbag . . .

I pull out all the drawers, one by one. There’s nothing else in the dressing table, nothing in the wardrobes.

I find two more files—one red and one green—in the drawer of Anne’s bedside table. I flip open the first and see something that belongs to me. I catch my breath. When did Anne have the chance to . . . ?

No. She didn’t. She didn’t steal it. This is her own copy of the real estate agent’s brochure. She must have seen that Speedwell House was for sale, as we did; sent off for the details, as we did.

Here’s the beautiful picture of the staircase, Ellen’s bedroom with the little mint-green door in the wall . . .

Why am I wasting time staring at something I know by heart? I close the brochure and pull out the other papers in the file: information about Speedwell House, printed off a website . . . I gasp when I see what’s at the bottom of the pile: another set of real estate agent’s details, but this time much older—fifteen or twenty years older, perhaps. The colors in the photographs are faded. Again, there’s the little door from Ellen’s room . . . Perrine’s room . . . I vow to myself here and now that I’ll paint that door a different color as soon as I can, whether Ellen agrees or not. I am coming to loathe that mint green. Why has nobody ever changed it?

Over the years, Anne has been collecting all the information she can about Speedwell House, the Ingreys’ family home. Except the Ingreys never lived there, and Anne Donbavand is not Lisette Ingrey.

I stuff everything back into the green file, shuddering.

The red file is worse. In it, there’s a list of names, email addresses, Twitter handles, workplace details and phone numbers. Bile fills my throat. I swallow it, wincing at the foul taste, then sit down on the edge of the bed so as not to lose my balance. Once the dizziness recedes, I look again.

Everyone I know or used to know is on this list. Ben Lourenco, Donna Lodge, Freddii Bausor, Dad and Julia, childhood friends, neighbors, casting directors, makeup artists, agents. Everybody who was part of my life, even a tiny part; people I followed on Twitter and who followed me, and the same for LinkedIn and Facebook.

Everyone.

Why didn’t I set my Facebook privacy settings to maximum? Why, all those years ago, didn’t I make my Twitter account private? Anne’s presence in my digital life has more than made up for my absence from it.

I could so easily have avoided this invasion. Alex gave me a little speech about digital privacy a few years ago, and I laughed at him, told him he sounded like a mad conspiracy theorist. “I’m not hiding from anyone,” I said. “I hate this obsession with privacy. It’s so much effort apart from anything else.”

Anne must have spent hours researching all my contacts. There’s a thick wad of paper here. A quick flick-through tells me that she’s thoroughly investigated each and every name on the list. Somehow, she’s found the addresses and phone numbers of more than twenty people, details I didn’t know myself, in some cases. Matthew Read from the BBC, Peter Fincham from ITV, Will Peterson from Independent Talent, my friend Cassie from primary school who tracked me down and made contact a few years ago, much to my annoyance . . . Anne has found and listed their addresses, along with assorted other details.

Obsessed with me, obsessed with my house. Which came first? It had to be the house, surely. Or perhaps a combination of that and Ellen’s friendship with George. I dared to move into Speedwell House, and then my daughter stole Anne’s son’s loyalty . . .

Here’s my dad’s mobile phone number, and here, directly beneath it, she’s written mine. Thanks, Dad. Cheers for giving my number to a maniac. I didn’t think you’d ever go one better than the family tree business, but it seems you have.

What do I do? Do I take these files straight to DC Luce? What do they prove? My name isn’t anywhere in these pages. It looks like a harmless list of names and addresses. And the other file, the coffin and urn catalogs and the inscriptions . . . there, too, my name is absent. Anne knows, and I know, that A.I. stands for Allisande Ingrey and that, in Anne’s twisted mind, Allisande Ingrey is me, but there’s nothing here that proves any of that to someone who doubts it. The abbreviation “A.I.” has other common meanings: artificial intelligence, advance information. In London, publishers constantly used to send me Advance Information sheets for books they were about to publish, in case I wanted to snap up the TV rights. Anne could plausibly tell DC Luce that she’d headed the inscriptions list “A.I.” because it contained useful information to have in advance of dying. She could—and I’ve no doubt she would—pretend that the blue checkmarks were things she’d chosen for her own funeral, not mine.

I press my eyes shut. For a few moments, I am filled with such intense fury that I can’t speak, think or move. Then I breathe it all out, all the heat and anger. With it goes my last hope of getting any help from the police. I no longer resent Euan Luce’s inability or unwillingness to help me, whichever it is. That’s just how things are.

I open my eyes and stare out of the window. There’s no sign of any cars heading toward the house. From here I’d see anything driving up from the main road, which is useful. The view from the Donbavands’ cottage isn’t as beautiful as the view from Speedwell House. It’s partly because both the ceilings and the windows are so much smaller and lower . . .

My heart jolts, stopping the thought in its tracks. Smaller, lower. Smaller . . . Lower . . .

I fumble in my mind for whatever thought just flitted past. Hand it over, brain.

Ellen’s window, the peculiar feeling I had in her room . . .

Oh my God. I know what it is. Yes. Of course.

I know what it is, but I don’t know what it means. Perrine Ingrey. Malachy Dodd. Perrine and Malachy, in her bedroom, Ellen’s bedroom . . .

I think back over my conversation with Sarah Parsons and snag on a throwaway comment she made, one I laughed away at the time, thinking it trivial.

I have to read the rest of Ellen’s story. Whatever it takes. And I need to talk to Sarah again.