Sophie Hannah - A Game for All the Family

“I think so, yes. Would you risk describing your emotional pain if you thought everyone would say, ‘Oh, come on, it’s not as if you’ve had a hard life’? I wouldn’t.” Didn’t. Don’t. “Anne needed a story that’d make anyone who heard it step back and say, ‘Wow. Poor you. How you must have suffered! Have all the sympathy and special treatment!’ She created a new family to make up for the one that failed her so badly, and, again, her fantasy of being Lisette Ingrey pursued by the vengeful Allisande proves to be exactly what she needs. It enables her to imprison her children, effectively, and claim it’s for their own protection. She’s overwhelmingly invested in her lie.”

“You think she’s come to believe it?”

“If I had to guess? Yes and no. She knows it’s not true by any consensus definition of truth. At the same time, she despises that way of defining things. Her story is truer than the reality. The facts of her life are untrue. So she doesn’t feel as if she’s lying. The story she’s shared with her husband and children and no one else—her secret name, her unverifiable, unrecorded, unwitnessed life—that’s the truth of who she is.”

“I’m not sure I’m with you.”

It’s frustrating that I can’t explain it properly. I know what I mean, but it’s hard to convey to someone else. “You and I and most people—we accept that fact is fact. Anne’s different. She’s not going to allow herself to be limited by reality. If she can’t alter it to suit her needs, she’d rather destroy everything. That’s why I can write her persuasive letters from now until the end of time and I’ll never get through to her. You couldn’t either. There’s only one person who maybe can.”

“Who?”

I run through the logic of it in my mind one more time before I take the plunge.

“Allisande Ingrey. Her sister.”

“But—”

“Allisande doesn’t exist? I know. That doesn’t mean no one can impersonate her. I couldn’t do it—Anne wouldn’t accept it coming from me, when I’ve been telling her over and over that I’m Justine and not Sandie—but someone else could try to be the sister she invented.” I smile. “Someone with a tennis ball in one hand and a plastic . . . ball-throwing contraption in the other?”

Olwen laughs. “Forget it, Justine. I’m not pretending to be Allisande Ingrey. I know I suggested it, but a) I suggested you should do it, not me, and b) I wasn’t being serious.”

“It was a good idea.”

“No. It really wasn’t.”

“Will you just—”

“No, Justine!”

“Olwen, there’s no one else I can ask! It’s just one email—maybe a phone call. You’re right, it won’t work. There’s no way Anne’ll go for it, but . . .” I lose heart before I reach the end of my pitch. “I don’t know, maybe I’m as crazy as she is, but I think if Allisande removed the threat—maybe even apologized for it—that might help things. Imagine if Anne were to get an email purporting to be from Allisande, saying, ‘Please can we meet and talk? I think I owe you a big apology.’ She’d know it wasn’t me; my strategy all along has been to deny I’m Sandie. And I’ve just emailed her a long letter in which I argue that facing up to the truth is the only way forward. So why would I suddenly change tack? So, a voice Anne doesn’t recognize, claiming to be Sandie . . . she wouldn’t think in a million years it might be me.”

“Right, but equally she would know it can’t be Allisande, who, after all, doesn’t exist!”

“Maybe,” I say. “But she’d love her to be real and contrite, wouldn’t she? And if I’m right about her psychology, Anne believes Allisande is real, in the murky realm that facts can’t touch. At the level of emotional truth, Allisande is very real to Anne—more so than her living, breathing relatives, probably. Either way, would Anne be able to resist an invitation to meet someone claiming to be her nonexistent sister?”

“Meet? I thought it was just an email I was sending. What would happen at this meeting? What would I say? My answer’s still no, by the way. And to you, Good King Wenceslas—no more ball. I mean it.”

“You’d tell Anne she was right all along. That you were young and frightened. You took your fear out on her and lost a beloved sister, when you should have supported her. Together, the two of you should have stood strong, like she wanted to, and gone to the police with the truth. However hard it was. You’d cry a bit, ideally, while saying all this.”

“Cry?” Olwen tuts, as if crying is an activity she’s long disapproved of.

“Yeah. Lisette needs tears and begging—lots of both. She stuck up for what was right and fair, and she was made to feel like a traitor and a pariah.”

“Justine—”

“I know it’s all bullshit, Olwen. I still think a hefty dollop of fake contrition in her fake world might make Anne less dangerous to us all in the real world.”

“Even if I were willing, which I’m not . . . wouldn’t Anne assume I was a friend of yours trying to trap her?”

“You’re overlooking one crucial detail,” I say.

“What’s that?”

“You have dogs.”

“So?”

“Allisande and Lisette both loved Malachy Dodd, remember? Isn’t it plausible that, after Malachy’s tragic death, Allisande would decide to be a dog breeder and kennel owner when she grew up?”

“Oh God!” Olwen covers her face with her hand. “I hate to say it, Justine, but I’m worried all this is turning you as loopy as her.”

Something inside me hardens. This has to happen. I’ll find someone else to play the part of Allisande Ingrey if I have to.

“People believe what they want to believe, Olwen—all over the world, every single day. They ignore logic and evidence and basic human decency and believe whatever makes their life more bearable in the immediate short term. Anne will believe in Contrite Sandie because she’ll want to, desperately. It’ll be her perfect fantasy fulfillment.”

“Her fantasy, from what I can gather, is her killing Allisande before Allisande kills her,” Olwen points out.

“At the moment, yes—because it hasn’t occurred to her that her sister might grovel and admit that she, Anne-slash-Lisette, was right all along. I think she might go for that as an even more favorable outcome, and if she does, there’ll be no more death threats—from anyone to anyone. Isn’t it worth a try? What if all Anne needs is for someone— anyone —to take the time and trouble to apologize to her for everything she’s been through—all the pain and misery that she didn’t deserve. She might decide she doesn’t need to kill me if she hears you say, ‘I’m so sorry. You were as much a victim as Malachy Dodd, John Kirbyshire and David Butcher—a wholly innocent victim. Please tell me what I can do now to make it up to you, because there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to make this right.’ ”

Olwen sighs. “I understand the reasoning behind it, but . . . it won’t work. I hate to sound defeatist, but it just won’t.”

“All right, fine,” I say. “Let it not work. I’m asking you to try, not to guarantee success.”

“What if Anne agrees to meet and turns up with a breadknife in her handbag? You’re asking me to risk my life.”

“If she agrees to meet you, we’ll arrange it so that I’m there too. I’ll make sure nothing happens to you. She wouldn’t try to hurt you, Olwen. I’m the one she wants to harm, not you. Ellen and Alex can go to Maggie’s so that they’re out of the way. And Figgy, in case she recognizes him. You’ve got a house full of dogs that look a bit like Figgy—that could work in our favor.”