A Game For All The Family (26 page)

I don’t dislike him. How I could I fail to like a boy who’s so lovely and complimentary to Ellen, and so charming to me? I fled because I was upset for him—too upset to stay and endure any more of his weird conversation, to watch him set off for what passes for home and his god-awful parents, knowing there’s nothing I can do to help him. If I can’t solve a problem, I don’t want to be around it.

You’re a coward.

I unlock the front door and open it. Figgy rushes into the house ahead of me, only to be jerked back by his leash. I unclip him and he goes racing toward the kitchen to find his food bowl.

“Is that you?” Alex calls out from the family room. “I was about to send a search party.”

“Sorry. I had an important call to make.” It’s not the sort of thing someone who does Nothing should be saying, but I’m too tired to worry about my life plan having drifted off course. “Where’s Ellen?”

“In her room iPod-ing. Or Instagram-ing, or Video Star-ing. George left about an hour ago. Come and tell me about the call, which I assume was George-related. Bring alcohol if so inclined.”

I pull off my raincoat, hang it up in the hall, and swap my soaked socks and running shoes for my indoor flip-flops.

Alcohol. Excellent idea. On my way to the fridge for tonic water to add to my gin, I stop in front of the kitchen window, raise the blind that George lowered, and stare out. All I can see in the blackness is moonlight bouncing on the water and small, square patches of gold from across the river: the windows of the cottages opposite.

One of those houses belongs to the Donbavands. Which one? I’m not close enough to see what’s going on in any of the rooms, though I can see flickers of movement. Perhaps with binoculars . . .

I don’t have any, and I doubt there’s anywhere nearby where I could get some. When I lived in London, if I didn’t have something I wanted, I went out and bought it. Since we’ve moved here, I’ve adopted a different attitude: anything I haven’t already got, I accept that I can’t have. When the view from your every window is leaves and water, it seems a sensible and hassle-free approach to take. If I ever wake up and find a department store on my lawn, I’ll rethink my policy.

Alex has made a fire in the family room, the only one with a working fireplace at the moment. All the others need attention before they can safely be used. Personally I’d rather manage with just the one than have to call a chimney sweep, but Alex might disagree strongly enough to sort it out himself.

I pass him his whisky and tell him I’ve hired a private detective.

“
What?
You’ve done what? Tell me you haven’t!”

“I have. Don’t worry, it’s a reputable firm. They’ve got coverage all over the UK, a website, thousands of Twitter followers.”

“Justine, are you demented or something?”

“Not when I last checked. Why? Do I seem it?” I sit down on the floor in front of the fire with my drink. Figgy dashes in from the hall and plonks himself down in my lap. Great. Another soaking from his wet fur.

“Is there such a thing as a reputable private detective?” Alex asks. “Aren’t they all crooks?”

“I’ve no idea. Neither have you. We have no experience of that world.”

“True, but—”

“Let’s not waste time arguing. It’s done. I’ve paid upfront. He’ll either prove useful or he won’t. I thought it was worth a try.”

“So you asked him to find out who’s making these phone calls? I think there was another one while you were out, by the way. The landline rang. When I picked it up, there was breathing, then they hung up.”

“I mentioned the calls, yes, but we mainly talked about George.”

“Why? There’s no mystery about George anymore, is there? He’s real. I assume Lesley Griffiths explained to you why she expelled him?”

“She didn’t expel him. She only pretended to.”

In between sips of gin and tonic, I tell Alex everything that happened at Beaconwood this afternoon. He listens without interrupting. When I’m finished, he says, “So you’ve asked this investigator to find out . . . what? The Donbavands’ original name, before they changed it?”

“Not only that—also where they used to live, what happened to make them want to run away, who’s after them with a view to harming them . . .”

Alex is wrinkling his nose dismissively. “Can he find out any of that stuff? How?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t sound fazed by it at all. He said, ‘Yeah, should be able to get something for you,’ as if I’d asked him for a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit.”

“I can’t think how he’ll do it,” Alex says.

“That’s because you’re an opera singer and not a detective,” I say impatiently. “I assume he has methods that he uses regularly, if his firm’s been in business for thirty years.”

“Maybe.” Alex sounds unconvinced. “I hope he’s not planning to break any laws, making you an accessory.”

“I don’t care if he breaks every law known to man if he gets me the information I want,” I say. “I’ve given him Anne and Stephen Donbavand’s email addresses and suggested he hack their accounts.”

Alex throws his head back in despair. “That’s idiotic! That could land you in jail. What did he say?”

“He said hacking emails was against the law. He didn’t say he wouldn’t do it.”

“Good on him. Justine, I’m worried about this.” Alex slides off the sofa, landing on the floor next to me. It’s hard to deliver a stern lecture while reclining with your feet up. “It’s not only the possibly dodgy detective and the legality issues, it’s the chance that you might find out. Lesley Griffiths’s approach is the one I’d favor: something fucked up and dangerous is going on, therefore keep as far out of it as you can.”

“For as long as George and Ellen are intent on doing their Heathcliff and Cathy bit, we’re involved whether we like it or not, Alex.”

“Don’t be daft. George popping around once in a blue moon when he can escape from his parents isn’t going to put us at risk, but—”

“Isn’t it? Are you sure? George was pulled out of school by his parents
because of Ellen—
because, after years of loneliness, he made a friend. His mother doesn’t want anyone getting close to him. Lesley said so. All right, maybe someone’s out to get the whole family.
Maybe.
If so, it’s made Anne Donbavand paranoid and she’s decided to take it out on George. And on us.”

Shall I go further and risk being wrong? I can’t keep it in. “I think she’s the one making the threatening calls.”

Alex makes a weary face. “You’ve no proof of that.”

“Which is why I said ‘I think.’ I’ve never heard her voice. She didn’t answer the email I sent her—neither did her husband. But now we know Ellen’s friendship with George bothers her. To her disturbed mind, it must look as if our arrival here meant she had to take her kids out of Beaconwood. So, yes, when I think about who might want to call me and say, ‘Go home or I’ll kill you and your family,’ she’s at the top of the list. She
is
the list.”

“Did you tell your detective you suspect her?”

“Yes. I told him everything.”

“Darling, you don’t know this man from a bar of soap.”

“Oh, so what? He’s doing some work for me, that’s all. We don’t need to be blood brothers.”

We sit in silence for a while. I stroke Figgy’s chin with my knuckles and he makes a sound I’d call purring if he were a cat. Do dogs purr, or is there a different word for it?

“I’m going to make another phone call you’ll disapprove of,” I tell Alex. “To Olwen Brawn. I thought about asking her when I was at her house but I chickened out.”

“Asking her . . . ?”

“If she’s heard of the Ingrey family.”

“The . . .” Alex’s baffled expression gives way to wide-eyed disbelief. “Seriously? You’re proposing to ask a random dog breeder if she knows some fictional characters invented by your daughter, and you’re calling Anne Donbavand disturbed?”

“Ellen’s imagination didn’t produce what was on the pages I read. It was her handwriting, but not her creation. You have to trust me on that.”

“Well, I don’t
have
to,” Alex mutters apologetically to his whisky glass. “I could disagree with you instead. I could say, ‘Does anyone know what another person’s imagination is capable of?’ ”

George Donbavand’s imagination, for example . . .

I swallow the last of my drink. “The anonymous caller called me ‘Sandie.’ On the family tree attached to Ellen’s story, there’s someone called Allisande Ingrey. Sandie could be short for Allisande.”

“Justine, stop.”

“On the same family tree, there’s somebody called Ellen—sound familiar?—who appears to be married to one Urban Ingrey. He’s Allisande’s nephew, son of her older sister Lisette. Lisette and Allisande had a younger sister called Perrine—”

“Darling, these people don’t exist!”

“Perrine murdered a boy called Malachy Dodd and was then murdered herself.
If
the Ingreys are a real family, that means Lisette and Allisande suffered two fairly severe traumas—severe enough to explain Anne Donbavand’s neurosis.”

“All right,” Alex says slowly, thinking. “So your theory is what? Ellen’s story isn’t made up, it’s the true story of Anne Donbavand’s childhood? Told to Ellen by George, I suppose.”

“Maybe. I think it’s possible.”

“Lisette Ingrey is Anne Donbavand? Urban Ingrey must be George if he’s married to Ellen on the family tree.”

“It’s exactly the sort of thing Ellen would do,” I say. “It’s obvious she worships George. She’s making a family tree of his family, and she writes herself in as his future wife.”

“Let’s assume that’s true,” says Alex. “Lisette Ingrey has a—presumably equally traumatized by childhood events—sister called Allisande, but
that isn’t you
.”

“Of course it’s not me. Though remember Ellen burst into tears when she heard me say, ‘My name isn’t Sandie’ to the anonymous caller. And later she asked me if I’m really who I claim to be.”

“Fuck.” Alex shakes his head.

“That makes perfect sense, doesn’t it, if George has told her all about his mother’s past? Sandie—Allisande—is evidently a force for darkness in the story—a threat, a danger to Lisette and her family. Ellen hears that I’ve been addressed as Sandie and panics. Thinks, ‘What if my own mother is the person out to get George and his family?’ And before she thought that, she thought it was someone at school making the calls. That’s why it seemed plausible to her that Lesley Griffiths might maliciously expel both George and Fleur. Maybe she thought Lesley was Anne Donbavand’s dangerous sister? Remember she asked you how old Lesley was?”

“But if Anne Donbavand is or was Lisette Ingrey, she must know you aren’t her evil sister Allisande. And . . . all of this sounds made up,” Alex rounds off dismissively.

I hold my breath for as long as I can, then exhale slowly. “If she were sane, then, yes, she would know I’m not Allisande. Now think about what might happen if she isn’t. She’s had a terrible childhood—a murderer sister who’s then murdered. Somehow, she and her surviving sister end up as enemies. Lisette flees to get away from Allisande, whom she’s come to fear. She changes her name to Anne Donbavand, starts a new life, but grows increasingly neurotic, fearing that Allisande will track her down. Allisande never does, but the threat grows and grows in Anne’s mind. She keeps her kids under lock and key, scared her sister might harm them when she’s not there to protect them. Then she hears George has a friend—she does the maths and works out that this friend might have a mother roughly the age of scary sister Sandie, and a delusion is born. In her mind, I’m Sandie. She’s probably got some whole crazy narrative about how Sandie disguised herself as a TV development producer and changed her name to Justine Merrison to make it easier to get close to Anne and her family without arousing suspicion. Which is why it’ll be great if this detective can find the real Sandie. Maybe then Anne will snap out of this fantasy of hers and realize it’s not me.”

“You Googled all those Ingrey people and found nothing,” Alex tells me, as if I might have forgotten. “If one of them had murdered someone called Malachy and been murdered herself, they’d
all
show up in an internet search. Guaranteed. And didn’t you say they lived in our house in the story?”

“Yes, and I know no one called Ingrey has ever lived here. But what if Ellen changed the names as a security measure? I can see George asking her to do that, can’t you? Names changed to protect the guilty and the innocent—loads of writers do it. I’ve wondered if the characters’ names might all be anagrams. They’re so . . . unnatural sounding, somehow. I tried to rejig the letters of Ingrey in my head, but got nowhere.”

“Anagrams? That sounds unlikely. I mean . . . more unlikely than everything else. Why don’t you ask Ellen? It’s her story.”

No, it isn’t.

“She wouldn’t tell me. I’ve tried. Now do you see why I called a private investigator? He’ll be able to provide me with concrete facts: where Anne Donbavand grew up, what her name was, where her sister is now.”

Alex nods. “Admittedly, facts would be useful. Though I still don’t see what Olwen Brawn has to do with any of this.”

“Probably nothing. I just . . . I looked at her house the day we moved and had such a powerful feeling, as if someone were trying to tell me something. And then more weird things happened—lots more. What if . . .”

What if Olwen Brawn is Allisande Ingrey, Anne Donbavand’s sister?

I laugh at myself. That’s so stupid and irrational, I’m not going to say it out loud. Instead, I say, “You’re right. Probably Olwen has nothing to do with any of it, but asking her if she knows the Ingreys or the Donbavands won’t do any harm, will it?”

“I don’t think there’s much point,” says Alex. “You’d be better off waiting for the police and this detective to do their jobs, and doing normal things in the meantime—like calling The Car Men and arranging for the Range Rover to be valeted. All right, joke—
joke!
—but there’s no point keeping a dog and barking yourself. Is there, Figgs? You’re a dog—you should know. Let the investigators investigate.”

Normal things. Alex might as well have suggested I fly to the moon. Normality is temporarily on hold. Hopefully not permanently.