Sophie Hannah - A Game for All the Family

Sorrel (you will not be surprised to discover) strongly disagreed. She thought that parents who insisted on routines and tried to control what their children did were neurotic loons whose offspring would probably end up hating them while struggling to shake off anxiety disorders. Sorrel thought that as long as you loved your children, fed them (whatever they want to eat, especially crisps!) and provided a happy and secure home for them (even a really messy one), everything would work out okay. But when she tried to say this to Bascom, he always contradicted her and said, “That’s all very well if you want to bring up a troop of gamblers and jazz musicians. I’m afraid I don’t.” Sorrel laughed at him when he said things like that.

Do you remember I mentioned that Bascom and Sorrel Ingrey were brilliant at compromising? Well, this is how they solved the dilemma of how to bring up their children. “Let’s have two,” Sorrel suggested. “We’ll bring up the first one your way. I will help, even though I think your way is crazy. And then we’ll bring up the second one my way, and you will participate enthusiastically even though you disapprove.”

Bascom agreed, but he made another suggestion too. “What would be really fascinating,” he said, “is if we then had a third child, and brought it up using a blend of our two approaches—exactly half and half.” Sorrel liked this idea. “It would be so useful to be a family of five instead of a family of four,” she said. “Just in case the your-way child always agreed with you about everything, and the my-way child always agreed with me, the both-ways child could have the casting vote.” “Only when it’s eighteen and old enough to vote,” Bascom pointed out. “Oh, don’t be so stuffy!” Sorrel teased him. “As soon as he’s old enough to voice his wants, he can have a vote.”

But the third Ingrey child, as we know, was not a “he.” She was Perrine the murderer.

Lisette and Allisande came first, of course. Lisette had a strict timetable, set by Bascom, which she followed from the day she was born. Sleeping, eating, music lessons, reading, homework, physical exercise, helping with housework—Bascom had made a special chart with boxes for all the time slots in the day, and he wrote in each one which activity Lisette was supposed to do between these times. Allisande had no such routine. From the minute she was born, she was allowed to mill around doing whatever she wanted. She could watch TV all day long if she fancied it, and no one ever told her to do her maths homework, practice the piano or finish her green vegetables when all she wanted was a chocolate Mini Roll. Allisande could have crammed a whole packet of Mini Rolls into her mouth while lolling around in her pajamas at six o’clock in the evening if she’d wanted to—neither of her parents would have stopped her.

At this point, I hope you are asking yourself who you would rather be: Lisette Ingrey or Allisande Ingrey. I would much rather be Allisande, because there is nothing more annoying than being bossed around by a parent who thinks they know best.

If Sorrel and Bascom Ingrey hadn’t loved her as much as they did, Allisande might have felt neglected, but they did love her, and she knew it. So she was very happy to have so much more independence than most children. Lisette was also happy. She’d had a stimulating and interesting routine to follow since birth, and it was one that allowed her to do everything she wanted to do without worrying about when she was going to do it. There were no decisions to be made, so she could concentrate on enjoying all the activities in the boxes on Bascom’s chart without having to arrange them herself. Freedom was something she had never had, so she didn’t know she ought to want it. She had no desire to sort out her own life. And Allisande never felt the need to have a full schedule like Lisette’s. She liked making her own decisions far more than she would have liked any number of music lessons or gold stars for getting her homework in on time (Allisande never did her homework, always got in trouble, and didn’t care), and so she regularly decided to do as little as possible, and she never regretted her decision.

If you’re waiting for me to tell you that the two sisters hated and resented each other, prepare to be disappointed. Each one was content with her lot in life, and neither one ever said, “Why aren’t I doing what she’s doing? Why is it different for me than it is for her?” Don’t forget, these two girls grew up in a home that could have been a museum of difference! They were used to seeing their father sitting at the dining-room table eating homemade roast beef with roast potatoes, carrots and peas, while their mother ate pears and wheels of camembert from a horizontal position on the sofa. Lisette and Allisande grew up seeing their parents do everything differently and never envying each other, and so they followed this example. Such was the brilliance of Bascom and Sorrel Ingrey’s strange parenting that each girl believed she had the far better deal ! Imagine that!

The really strange and interesting thing is this: although they were brought up in completely opposite ways, Lisette and Allisande Ingrey were startlingly similar. They did not fill their days with the same activities, but their basic characters were like replicas of one another. They were both happy, polite, nice girls with relaxed temperaments, and everyone who met them liked them. And for years and years and years, they liked and loved each other. Even when trauma and horror struck their family, when their little sister Perrine killed poor, lovely Malachy Dodd, Lisette and Allisande remained close and the best of friends.

It took the murder of Perrine herself to split them apart and tear their sisterly love to tatters.

2

There’s a text from Alex on my phone when my alarm goes off in the morning: “Soz I didn’t call yest. It’s mad my end. Talk later? A ”

Lying in our bed, my eyes not yet fully open, I send him a quick reply: “All fine here. Speak tonight. J xx.” I don’t have the energy for more at the moment, only for the easy white lie: all fine . Will Alex continue to believe that even after he’s heard everything I need to tell him?

Which is what, exactly? Ellen’s too wrapped up in herself? She wrote a story with a family tree in it, and the characters’ names were strange? So what?

Nothing is quite significant enough in itself; I have nothing concrete to point to. All my instincts tell me something is wrong and has been since . . . No, not since the day we moved here. My reaction to seeing 8 Panama Row was an aberration. Our first month in Speedwell House was idyllic. Then . . .

Then what?

Something happened, and it changed everything. To Ellen . I’m convinced of it. But what? What could that something be?

I climb out of bed and pull on my dressing gown, wondering what time I finally fell asleep. I remember hearing distant church bells at four A.M., so it must have been after that. And now it’s six thirty, and I could sleep for nine hours straight, but I have to go and haul Ellen out of bed, which gets harder each school-day morning.

Swallowing a yawn, I head downstairs, thinking about hot water with a slice of lemon and a spoonful of honey in it—my new morning drink now that I have given up coffee, the favored fuel of those with too much to do—and what to put in Ellen’s packed lunch. This will be the biggest decision I’ll make today: tuna mayonnaise or roast chicken and pesto? Once that’s sorted, I’ll have the whole day free to do what I want, and, as luck would have it, I don’t want to do anything.