Sophie Hannah - A Game for All the Family

If you’d asked me six months ago, I’d have said I was a suspicious, cynical misanthrope—especially after the Ben Lourenco business. Now I realize how trusting I am, without wanting or meaning to be, purely because the truth matters to me, and logic and reason matter just as much if not more. If you value verifiable facts and good sense, it’s hard to conceive of someone as eager to avoid both as Anne Donbavand.

“Why do you want me to read Ellen’s story?” Olwen asks me. “I’m happy to, but—”

“Because you get everything right. You’ve never given me bad advice. You gave me a dog I didn’t want, and it’s been completely life-enhancing. Turns out I want and need Figgy more than almost anything—we all do. The one part of this puzzle that I’ve already solved, I worked out thanks to you. And . . . I drove past your house and knew it would save me, and it did—here I am. It’s my safe haven.”

“Mum, you’re embarrassing everyone.” Ellen sighs.

I believe in you, Olwen, to a level that defies logic. You’re my lucky charm. Something made Alex draw your house to my attention that day—something that knew I was going to need you.

“So you think I’ll read Ellen’s story and . . . what?” Olwen looks skeptical.

“You’ll read it and you’ll know who murdered Perrine Ingrey,” I tell her. “That’s what I’m hoping, anyway—because if it doesn’t happen, my brilliant plan’s a nonstarter. I’m relying on you, Olwen.”

To:Anne Donbavand a.donbavand@exeter.ac.uk

From:Justine Merrison justine4PI@gmail.com

Dear Anne,

There’s probably not much point in me writing you this letter. I’m hoping you’ll be curious enough to read it instead of deleting it immediately when you see it’s from me.

I know how interested you are in me and have been ever since I moved to Speedwell House. You’ve got a thing about that house—it’s the house you pretend you grew up in. How dare I come along and live in it for real, right? And then my daughter and your son started to develop a close friendship. No wonder you targeted me for harrassment.

I know the story you’ve told your family about your life as Lisette Ingrey, before you changed your name. I know you have files full of information about me—all my friends and old work contacts that you’ve pulled from Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn—and I know you’ve chosen my coffin and my gravestone inscription. I found the relevant files when I broke into your house. (Yes, I smashed your living room window. Feel free to tell the police if you want to.)

Usually when you pay that much attention to someone, part of you hopes they will reciprocate, so here I am. I’m not sure if you’ll be pleased or displeased to learn that you’ve succeeded in making me as interested in you as you are in me.

I would love to know if you genuinely believe that you were once called Lisette Ingrey and that you grew up in Speedwell House, the eldest daughter of Bascom and Sorrel Ingrey, with two sisters: Allisande the life-threatener and Perrine the murderer. I’m not sure if you know on every level that none of this is true, and it’s just a barefaced lie you’ve been telling your husband and children. Maybe you know deep down that it’s not true, but you’ve persuaded most of your conscious mind to believe it anyway? The third possibility is that you believe the Ingrey story completely and are genuinely unaware that you invented it.

It’s not true, Anne. You were born Anne Offord, eldest child of Martin and Denise Offord. You have one younger sister, Sarah. I’ve met her once and spoken to her twice.

Here are some of the things I’ve Googled since I started to take an interest in you: pathological lying, compulsive lying, pretending to come from a different family. You might suffer from something called mythomania or pseudologia fantastica, explained here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudologia_fantastica. Anne, you need to seek urgent psychological help. Also, have you heard of Freud’s “family romance” theory, about the delusion of belonging to a different family? Here’s a link if not: http://www.answers.com/topic/family-romance.

I can’t pretend to care about you, so don’t let the advice I’ve just given you mislead you on that score. If you died in a ditch tomorrow, I wouldn’t be sorry. Every time I think about what you’re doing to your children, I feel the urge to beat the crap out of you. That’s why I’m writing this letter—for Fleur and George’s sake, not yours. They’re the ones I want to help. You’ve told them their aunt was an evil triple murderer as well as a murder victim, without a care or a thought for how it might feel for Fleur and George to carry around this heavy burden of family guilt and harm. You have, additionally, made them believe that their other aunt would kill them, and you and Stephen, if she succeeded in tracking the four of you down. You have used this pretend danger to cripple Fleur and George’s lives in the name of safety, and prevent them from having a normal childhood. Interestingly, George—while apparently having fallen for your lies about your and his family’s history—doesn’t seem remotely afraid of anyone outside of his family. He understandably seems to prefer strangers to his close relatives. He very evidently doesn’t for a moment believe that I’m Allisande Ingrey, his psycho-murderous aunt. Did you not tell him that part, about you making me Allisande?

I think what you’ve done to your family is unforgivable. Or rather, it’s only forgivable if you’re crazy and not responsible for your actions, but when we met, I had the impression that you knew exactly what you were about. If you’re sane, clever and in control, then your lies are evil.

Your name is not and never was Lisette Ingrey. It’s important that you face up to that. And my name isn’t Allisande Ingrey, nor was it, ever. My name is and always has been Justine Michelle Merrison. I grew up in Northenden, Manchester. I am not your sister who threatened to kill you if you didn’t leave Devon, or if you told the truth about Perrine’s murder—a murder that didn’t happen, since Perrine is a figment of your imagination. And, just to avoid any ambiguity, Allisande/Sandie is also someone you invented. Speedwell House was never the home of anyone called Ingrey. The last two owners, before my husband and I bought it, were called Ainscough and Rutherford. Before that, the house belonged to the Deller family, having been passed down through the generations since 1765. No Ingreys. This has been checked and double-checked. (I hired a private detective—if you look at the email I’m sending this letter from, you’ll see I’m writing to you from an address that begins “Justine4PI”—this isn’t my normal email, it’s an account I set up solely in order to correspond with a private investigator.)

Before I sat down to write this letter, I had a long telephone conversation with your mother, Denise Offord. She said she didn’t see much of you these days, and sounded strangely unemotional about it. Also weirdly incurious. She wasn’t eager to find out why I was interrogating her. It was as if I were asking about some glove or sock she’d mislaid in the late 1980s and not thought about since.

Maybe she’s not particularly imaginative. From the Ingrey story you created, it appears that you’re the opposite. I would guess that part of your reason for drifting away from your parents might have had something to do with this. They weren’t on the same wavelength or intellectual level as you. But what about your sister, Sarah? When I met her, she seemed bright and interesting. I think you don’t see much of her for a different reason. You’re holding a grudge from childhood—against her and your parents.