Sophie Hannah - A Game for All the Family

This is important. Indeed, it’s urgent. I would very much appreciate it if you could meet me.

Very best wishes

Anne Donbavand

I press “send.” Donna, who must hate me for walking out and leaving her in the lurch, won’t be able to resist. If she has a meeting scheduled for two o’clock, she’ll cancel it. She’ll suggest meeting Anne at Pleasant’s Café in St Gregory’s Alley—it will be the first and most obvious “somewhere private” that springs to mind. We used to joke about it being the perfect place to plan a heinous crime. It’s usually empty, being nowhere near trendy enough for the TV and media crowd, and there’s no CCTV nearby.

Now there’s evidence that Anne Donbavand made plans to come to London tomorrow—plans that had nothing to do with me—and I can forward the correspondence between Donna and “Anne” to Anne’s university email account any time I like.

I don’t feel guilty. Anne deserves everything I’ve done, and more. Live by the lie, die by the lie.

Not that anybody’s going to die tomorrow. It’s a turn of phrase.

From:jmerrison71@gmail.com

To:ellencthatsme@gmail.com

Dearest Ellen,

How I wish you were at home, at Speedwell House, so that I could come and visit you. My mother has gone to London at short notice, and I would have been able to hop on Lionel’s boat and be with you in no time at all. But, alas, it is not to be. I am disappointed, but it’s a useful disappointment, because it’s made me realize that our light signal system has a drawback. I only found out this morning at breakfast that my mother intended to go to London (my dad found out at the same time, and looked as surprised as I was. Could Mater be up to something? Fingers crossed she elopes with another man and never comes back, though I can’t think of anyone who would want her).

Where was I? Oh yes. Well, if disappearing at a moment’s notice (with a preoccupied expression all over her face, I should add) is going to be a thing that Mater does from now on, I might have sudden opportunities to visit you that I won’t know about the night before. How will I let you know that I’m on my way to see you? Do you check your emails in the morning at breakfast time? And what if you’ve already gone to school?

Do you have any ideas?

All my love forever,

George xx

From:ellencthatsme@gmail.com

To:jmerrison71@gmail.com

Just email me if you can come. I’ll get it straightaway. Now that you can email me (yay!!) I’ll obviously be checking my emails every few minutes. If I don’t reply within half an hour, that means I’m at school. I mean, I assume Mum and Dad are planning to send me to one at some point in the near future??? I assume we will at SOME point go home? Maybe not?

At the moment it’s like Mum and Dad have forgotten about my ENTIRE education. I woke up this morning and Dad whisked me out of the house for a day of shopping. He LOATHES shopping, AND he insisted on bringing Figgy with us, even though that means we can’t both go into shops at the same time—one of us has to wait outside. I asked him if something was going on and he said no with his mouth all twisted in a funny way that only happens when he’s keeping something secret. Parents!?!?!

Better go—Dad just moaned at me for being on my phone and ignoring him.

Love you NEVERENDINGLY,

E xxxxxxxxx

From:jmerrison71@gmail.com

To:ellencthatsme@gmail.com

Your parents are wonderful, dearest Ellen. I’m not sure you realize how fortunate you are in the parent department. Having said that, I agree that there is a marked lack of transparency in the older generation.

Your devoted George xx

17

I’m waiting in Olwen’s hall when the front door opens, as agreed. I hear the key slide out of the lock, then, “Go on, in you go.” Olwen’s voice, normally warm, contains no emotion.

Anne’s royal blue coat is what I see first, then the blue and brown checked bag. Anything to put off looking at the face, but I have to see it eventually. Have to be brave. I inhale as much air as I can before meeting her eye.

She’s here: Anne Donbavand. The only person I’ve ever been mortally afraid of. It’s a shock to see that my plan has worked even to this small extent: getting her here. I expected and perhaps hoped that Olwen would return alone, with a shrug and a rueful “Sorry.”

The worst shock is seeing Anne here, in my safe haven. That’s how I think of Germander. It’s not safe anymore, now that she’s here. Never safe again. You can’t wash a presence like Anne’s out of a building. I want to cry, but it’s the wrong time. I have a whole script to get through, an unwritten one, and I must remember every word.

“What’s that?” Anne asks. She’s looking at me, but I’m not what she means. The dogs, shut up in the living room, heard the door open and have started to bark.

“My Bedlington terriers. I told you I breed Bedlingtons.”

“What are you doing here?” Anne asks me. Despite the question, she doesn’t seem surprised to see me. I suppose when you agree to go home with a stranger pretending to be your invented sister, you prepare yourself for anything.

“Good question, Justine,” says Olwen, who has learned her lines more thoroughly than I have. “What are you doing here? How did you get in?”

“Oh, I have my ways. I’m good at getting inside people’s houses. Their houses and their heads. Anne’ll tell you. Anne, this woman you’re all pally with suddenly—she’s not who she says she is, you know. She’s only pretending to be your sister Allisande.”

Anne turns to Olwen. “I don’t want to see dogs,” she says. “Can’t you put them outside while I’m here?”

I walk to the living room door and pull it open. “These dogs?” I say as four of them run out into the hall.

Anne holds herself very still.

She’s just a person. Look at her. She’s not sure why she’s here or what’s about to happen. How can one person do so much harm and still look so ordinary, so vulnerable?

I remind myself of how Anne looked when she insulted Ellen’s character: the sneer on her face. That was the same person. I don’t feel sympathy for that woman who stood in my kitchen and said those things: none at all.

“Come on, Anne, you’re not scared of dogs,” I say. “Not puppies, anyway. If you were, you wouldn’t have been able to get near enough to mine to put that nametag on him. Or did you make Stephen do that?”

“Justine, I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” says Olwen. “Lisette and I need to talk.”

“Ah, Lisette .” I laugh. “Your big sister, I suppose?”

“Yes,” says Olwen. Anne says nothing.

Come on, Professor. I’m the object of your hatred. You desperately want me to be defeated, so tell me I’m wrong. Tell me Olwen is your sister Allisande.

“You’re as insane as Anne,” I say to Olwen. “I wouldn’t have believed it possible. The two of you are—sorry, dogs, no offense—barking mad.”

“Justine got her dog from me,” Olwen tells Anne.

“I’m so glad the subject of dogs has come up,” I say. “Anne, did you get my letter, the one I emailed to you, about Malachy Dodd and how I worked out that he was probably a Sealyham terrier and definitely not a person? You didn’t reply, but I think you got it.”

“Lisette, don’t listen to her,” says Olwen. “Listen to me. I knew you’d find it hard to be in a house with dogs after Malachy’s murder. I know it brings back awful memories, but I had to show you.”

“Show me what?” Anne eyes the door. She wants to leave—she knows she ought to—but she can’t. Olwen and I agreed: the condition for telling Anne anything at all was that she had to come here, to the house. Olwen promised not to talk to her at all in the car on the way. Silence until they reached Germander, apart from the basics of “My car’s over here”—that was the deal.