Sophie Hannah - A Game for All the Family

Anne shakes her head violently.

“Yes, you do. You also remember—I know you do—that on the morning that everybody was invited to the house to see Perrine arrested, no breakfast was taken up to Perrine’s room. Think back to that day: Mum and Dad were in the kitchen, and so were we. Mum was preparing the breakfast buffet and told us to get out from under her feet. She said Dad would bring us our breakfast in the drawing room, which he did, but he never took up any breakfast to Perrine. Neither did Mum. I could hear her in the kitchen the whole time. Dad didn’t go upstairs—we’d have seen and heard if he had. If Perrine had been alive upstairs, why wouldn’t Mum have sent breakfast up to her like she’d taken supper up to her the night before?”

Anne’s mouth is hanging open: a tunnel to the land of lies, everything inside it dark and dead.

“Sorrel didn’t take breakfast up to Perrine because she knew she was dead by then,” I say. “Dead, and tucked up in her bed on the jetty. Murdered during the night, by Bascom.” It’s comforting to tell the story. Silence would be worse.

I try not to think about how we’re going to get Anne out of Olwen’s house once this is finished. What if she won’t go? What if she’s not any kind of recognizable person anymore at the end of all this?

“I’m ashamed to say that I threatened Lisette,” Olwen tells me. “I said that if she spoke out and incriminated our parents, I’d kill her. I was wrong to do that. I cast suspicion onto Lisette, made sure the police suspected her and believed she’d fled Devon to escape punishment. That was terribly wrong of me too. And . . .” Olwen lets out a jagged sigh. It’s convincing.

She’s still Olwen. Nice, trustworthy Olwen.

“What Mum and Dad did was terrible, Lissy. I’ve been trying not to let myself believe that, all these years, but . . . Mum and Dad are old now. I don’t know how long they’ll be around, and once they’ve gone, you’ll be my only family—my only sister. I don’t want to be estranged from you for one day, hour, second longer than I already have been.”

That line was my idea: day, hour, second. Olwen laughed when I first suggested it. Then she said, “If you insist. You’re the one with the background in drama.”

“Please forgive me, Lissy,” she says now. “I’m so, so sorry for everything I’ve put you through.” She stands and picks up the smallest of the three dogs in the room. What’s this one called? Holly Bears the Crown, I think—Holly for short.

No. Don’t give her a dog. This wasn’t part of the plan. Olwen’s improvising, and it feels dangerous. My stomach twists.

Slowly, Olwen walks over to Anne and places the Bedlington on her lap. “She’s yours if you want her,” she says. “A peace offering. Her name’s Holly.”

“Holly,” Anne repeats in a toneless voice. Then she smiles. Something about her eyes has changed.

“No . . .” I start to say.

“Sweet little doggy,” Anne whispers. She puts her hands around Holly’s neck and squeezes. Olwen whimpers.

Anne’s going to kill Holly unless I stop her.

I lunge across the room and grab her by the shoulders. Seconds later we’re both on the floor, my head banging on the stone fire surround once, twice—a sharp corner nearly close enough to slice my eye. I twist my face away from the wide, wild eyes above me, the lips curled back in what I’d like to call a snarl, but it isn’t. Anne’s smiling. I can’t stand to look. She thinks she’s going to win, which means she thinks she’s going to kill me.

Olwen howls. She sounds farther away than I need her to be.

I can’t lose. No one can stop Anne apart from me. I growl and swing my body around. My elbow cracks against her head. Then I’m on top of her.

Where’s Holly? Did Anne hurt her? Dogs are barking, circling us, but I can’t tell if Holly’s one of them. Olwen’s screaming.

I wave my right arm around, trying to catch hold of something I can use as a weapon, and knock over the fire irons stand in the fireplace. There’s a loud crash, and more barking.

Fire irons. That’s good, that’s what I need.

I grab something with my free arm. It might be a poker. I raise it as high as I can and bring it down. Over and over.

Anne’s head. I must stop doing what I’m doing. Must stop. Before . . . no, not before it’s too late. It’s already too late. And I don’t want to stop. I want to bring down the poker again and again, crack Anne’s head open, see the gray sludge of brain where all the lies were stored, watch the blood seep out . . .

Finally, sickened by the mess, I stop.

Olwen is sobbing. Not screaming anymore.

This is not part of the story. Except now it is: a true part. It feels made up, though. Unreal.

Anne wanted to kill me. Not the person claiming to be her sister Allisande; not Olwen. Me. Now that she’s dead, there’s no possibility of finding out why.

It’s not only the “why” that I’ll never know, it’s also the “who.” Anne would have been my killer if I’d let her, but who, in her mind, would she have killed? When she flashed her bare-teeth grin at me and fantasized about ending my life, who was it she wanted dead? Justine Merrison? Allisande Ingrey? Mother of Ellen the son-thief; owner of Speedwell House?

I let the poker fall from my hand. “Is Holly okay?”

Olwen doesn’t answer. I turn so that I can see her. She’s nodding: yes. Holly is safe.

Thank God.

“It’s over,” I say. “They’re both dead now: Anne Donbavand and Lisette Ingrey. They’re gone.”

To: Ellen Colley and family

18

Mum, Mum! There they are.” Ellen leans to her right, stretching her neck to point her head at the boys she wants me to notice. She doesn’t want to look at them in case they detect her interest. “Declan and Sam. Which do you think is cuter?” We’re in a crowded function room at Exeter University, surrounded by smartly dressed people eating spinach and ricotta pastry parcels and salmon vol-au-vents. I wonder if they’re mostly the parents of George and Ellen’s classmates. I find it hard to believe that Anne had friends, or even colleagues that didn’t loathe her.

Stephen Donbavand is on the other side of the room, standing with his back to me. We haven’t spoken or made eye contact since Ellen and I arrived. Now people are starting to leave. I can hear Stephen thanking them for coming—so much; it would have meant the world to Anne.

“Mum!”

“Sorry. Are they in your class, those boys?” I ask.

“Uh-huh. Sam and George are good friends. Declan, not so much. George thinks he’s got no substance.”

A lot has changed since Anne’s death. Disappearance, I should say; her body has never been found—well, not much of it, anyway. George started back at Beaconwood almost immediately after she went missing, as did Fleur.

“George doesn’t mind if I think his friends are cute,” Ellen tells me. “He’s not jealous at all. He knows it’s just their looks I like. Every other boy is so boring to talk to compared to him. To be honest, I’m the jealous one, now that he’s got other friends and they go around to his house and everything. I’m not the only person in his life anymore. But . . . that’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I say with a heavy heart. “Ellen—”

“Dad knows, by the way.”

“What? Since when?”

“I told him this morning. Well, Anne gave the game away about the marriage part the day she climbed in through our window. But now I’ve told Dad George is gay—I’ve explained the whole situation.” Ellen smiles. “You were too scared to tell him, weren’t you? You always would have been.”