A Game for All the Family Read online

  No, I’m sorry. Never make me look at a list again. Haven’t you heard? I do Nothing.

  Apart from when I’m diverted from my chosen path by a phone call from a lunatic. Or, if not a lunatic …

  My darling husband.

  ‘Is this one of your hilarious stunts, Alex? It doesn’t sound like you, but—’

  ‘I won’t let you hurt us,’ the voice hisses.

  ‘What?’ All right, so it’s not Alex. Menacing isn’t his genre. Then who the hell is she and what’s she talking about?

  ‘I don’t want to have to hurt you either,’ she says. ‘So why don’t you pack up and go back to Muswell Hill? Then we can all stay safe.’

  I stumble and nearly lose my balance. Which seems unlikely, given that I thought I was standing still. Many things seem unlikely, and yet here they are in my life and kitchen.

  She knows where we lived before.

  Now I’m concerned. Until she said, ‘Muswell Hill’, I’d assumed her words were not meant for me.

  ‘Please tell me your name and what you want from me,’ I say. ‘I swear on my life and everything I hold dear: I haven’t a clue who you are. And I’m not prepared to have any kind of conversation with someone who won’t identify herself, so …’ I stop. The line is dead.

  I knock on Ellen’s door again. Walk straight in when she doesn’t answer. She hasn’t moved since I left her room. ‘Where is it?’ she asks me.

  ‘Where’s what?’

  ‘My … thing. For school.’

  ‘Thing? Oh.’ The family tree and story beginning. I took them with me when I ran to answer the phone. ‘I must have left them in the kitchen. Sorry. I’ll bring them up in a minute.’ I wait, hoping she’ll berate me for first reading and then removing them without permission. She says nothing.

  ‘Shall I go and get them now?’

  Er, yes? How would you like it if I took some important papers of yours and spread them all over the house in a really inconvenient way?

  It’s like a haunting: the constant presence in my mind of the Ellen I’ve lost and wish I could find. A voice in my head supplies the missing dialogue: what she would say, should be saying.

  Her real-world counterpart shrugs. She doesn’t ask me who was on the phone or what they wanted. I wouldn’t have told her. Still, my Ellen would ask.

  Who would ring me and say those things? Who would imagine I must recognise their voice when I don’t? I can’t think of a single person. Or a reason why someone might think I want to intimidate or hurt them.

  ‘I can’t bear this, El.’

  ‘Can’t bear what?’

  ‘You, being so … uncommunicative. I know something’s wrong.’

  ‘Oh, not this again.’ She lies down on her bed and pulls the pillow over her face.

  ‘Please trust me and tell me what’s the matter. You won’t be in trouble, whatever it is.’

  ‘Mum, leave it. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Which means you’re not fine now.’ I move the pillow so that I can see her.

  She sits up, snatches it back.

  ‘Are you missing London? Is that it?’

  She gives me a look that tells me I’m way off the mark.

  ‘Dad, then?’

  ‘Dad? Why would I be missing Dad? He’ll be back next week, won’t he?’

  It’s as if I’m distracting her from something important by mentioning things she forgot about years ago.

  She’s not interested in you, or Alex.

  Then who? What?

  ‘Can I ask you about your story?’ I say.

  ‘If you must.’

  ‘Is it homework?’

  ‘Yeah. But Mr Goodrick couldn’t remember when it had to be in, he said.’

  I sigh. The school here is better than the one in London in almost every way. The one exception is Ellen’s form tutor, Craig Goodrick, a failed rock musician who has never managed to get my name right, though he did once get it promisingly wrong: he called me Mrs Morrison, which isn’t that far removed from Ms Merrison. When I suggested he call me Justine, he winked and said, ‘Right you are, Justin,’ and I couldn’t tell if he was deliberately winding me up or cackhandedly flirting.

  ‘And the homework was what?’ I ask Ellen. ‘To write a story?’

  She eyes me suspiciously. ‘Why are you so interested? I’d hardly be writing a story if I’d been told to draw a pie-chart, would I?’

  Hallelujah. ‘I withdraw the question.’

  No reaction from Ellen.

  Pull that in my courtroom again, I’ll have you disbarred, counselor.

  How could I explain to anyone who didn’t know us that I’m worried about my daughter because she’s stopped pretending to be an irascible American judge? They’d think I was insane.

  ‘Does the story have to begin with a family tree?’ I ask.

  ‘No. Mum, seriously, stop interrogating me.’

  I think about saying, I’m not keen on family trees. In fact, I loathe them.

  No, I’m not going to do that. It would be a bribe – ‘Chat to me like you used to and I’ll tell you a juicy story’ – and it wouldn’t be fair.

  Hardly juicy. A family tree on a child’s bedroom wall. With the wrong family on it.

  Cut.

  That’s one useful thing about having worked in television, at least: I have extensive experience of ruthless cutting. If I don’t like a scene that’s playing in my mind, I can make it disappear as quickly as an axed TV drama.

  Usually.

  ‘Where did you get those names from?’ I ask Ellen. ‘Bascom and Sorrel Ingrey—’

  ‘Mum! For God’s sake!’

  ‘Garnet, Urban, Allisande … they’re so strange. And why did you use your own name? Why is there an Ellen in the Ingrey family?’

  ‘I don’t know. There just is. Stop inventing things to worry about. It’s just a story.’

  I can hardly tell her that reading it made me feel as if I’d swallowed a lead weight. ‘Yes, and you’ve decided to put things in your story for a reason.’

  ‘I didn’t think about the names.’ Ellen studies her fingernails, avoiding my eye. ‘I wanted to make the story sound old-fashioned and sinister, I suppose.’

  ‘You succeeded,’ I tell her. The heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach lifts a little. Maybe there’s nothing to worry about after all. ‘You should add dates. To the family tree – not necessarily to the story. What time period are you in? What year did Perrine Ingrey murder Malachy Dodd?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ Ellen snaps. ‘Some time in the past. And don’t talk about the characters as if they’re real. Ugh, it’s embarrassing.’

  That’s her. She’s still in there.

  ‘Look, it’s only some stupid homework,’ she says, expressionless again. ‘It doesn’t matter to anyone. Twenty years ago, twenty-five. What do dates matter? It’s just a story. Why do you care?’

  Am I deliberately trying to enrage her because any reaction would be better than blank withdrawal? She isn’t nearly angry enough. The old Ellen would never have tolerated this level of interference or said that any creative project of hers didn’t matter. By now I would have been having clothes thrown at me.

  ‘I care, Ellen. Why did you put a murderer in your bedroom?

  ‘What?’ For a fleeting moment, I see my own fear reflected in her eyes. Then it’s gone.

  ‘Perrine Ingrey. Her bedroom in the story is this room.’ I point to the little mint-green door by the side of Ellen’s bed. A quarter of the size of the shortest dwarf in the world.

  ‘No reason,’ says Ellen. ‘Literally, no reason. I needed a room, this is a room …’ She shrugs.

  ‘I wondered if maybe it’s going to turn out that Perrine didn’t kill Malachy Dodd after all. That someone else did.’

  ‘No, because it says more than once that she did kill him. That part’s not in doubt. You can’t have read it very carefully.’

  ‘I read it four times. I thought all the stuff about her killing him was protesting
too much, and that—’

  ‘No, Mother. That would be a cheat. It’s in the third person. That wouldn’t be an unreliable narrator, it would be me, the author, lying. You can’t do that.’

  I smile. ‘How do you know the unreliable narrator rules? Not from Mr Goodrick?’ This is a man who regularly cancels proper lessons in favour of impromptu circle-singing sessions. I chose Ellen’s school because of its unusual flexibility, then quickly realised that I didn’t want it to flex for anyone but me.

  A miracle happens. Ellen smiles back. ‘What do you think? Mr Fisher, the Nerd King, gave us a mini-lecture about narrative perspective, including unreliable narrators. It was so boring? His class are doing the story homework too. All Mr Goodrick said was, “Don’t use the word ‘said’”. He wants us to use more interesting speech words. That’s why everyone in my story exclaims and yelps, in case you didn’t notice.’

  ‘I didn’t. I think I’d yelp if I encountered an Ingrey. And there’s nothing wrong with “said”, said your mother.’

  Too late. Ellen has shut down again. We were starting to talk properly, like we used to, so she had to distance herself.

  Mr Fisher – which one is he? The Scottish hard-blinker with the huge glasses? His first name is something Celtic-sounding. Lorgan? Lechlade?

  ‘Why did you choose a murder mystery story?’ I ask Ellen. ‘And why do the Ingreys have to live in our house? I’m not sure I want to share it with the weirdest family in the whole of Kingswear, even if they are fictional.’

  Ellen gives me an unfathomable look. ‘Are you thinking Perrine Ingrey’s going to get murdered in my bedroom? She isn’t. Don’t worry. She doesn’t get killed in the house or the grounds.’

  ‘Then where?’

  ‘I haven’t written it yet.’

  ‘Still. It sounds as if you know.’

  ‘I’m saying: you don’t have to worry about murders in your house.’ Ellen rolls her eyes. ‘If you’re so addicted to drama, go back to work, for God’s sake.’

  ‘I’m not addicted to—’

  ‘Really? Then why are you always imagining things that sound like the beginnings of really crap TV movies?’

  Happily, I feel no urge to point out that nothing I made was crap. You are dead to me, old life and former career. I’m proud of different things these days – proud that this morning I sat on the doorstep for nearly an hour, wrapped in a blanket, watching the boats on the river.

  ‘Like that thing with the house on the North Circular – your weird premonition,’ Ellen says. ‘I bet you never bothered to Google it, did you?’

  ‘No. Why? Did you?’

  She nods. ‘You were right, German isn’t its name. It’s Germander. You must have seen the outlines of the three missing letters. Germander. Do you get it now?’

  ‘Germander Speedwell.’ I know the right answer, but can’t immediately work out what conclusion I’m supposed to draw.

  It’s a plant. I hadn’t heard of it until I looked up the name Speedwell, after our first tour with the estate agent. Veronica chamaedrys: a herbaceous perennial plant with hairy stems and leaves. Blue four-lobed flowers. Otherwise known as Germander Speedwell.

  ‘You saw a house called Germander and you connected it with Speedwell House because of the plant name,’ says Ellen. ‘That’s why you had that weird feeling. That and Dad being an arse and saying, “Look, there’s our new house.” It’s so obvious.’

  ‘Don’t call Dad an arse,’ I say distractedly.

  Is this the resolution of a five-month-old mystery? Can I put up a big ‘Solved’ sign in my head? It bothers me that I’m unable to answer the question definitively. I need to tell Alex, see what he thinks. Did I see the outline of the three missing letters? I don’t remember seeing them.

  ‘How long have you known?’ I ask Ellen.

  ‘Couple of months.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me as soon as you found out?’

  ‘I didn’t know how you’d react. For all I knew, you’d start wiffling on about the name connection being even more of a sign that you were destined to live there one day.’

  ‘Yet you’ve told me now.’

  I’m glad she did, even if it doesn’t cancel out the strong feeling I had.

  ‘What made you Google that house, months after we drove past it?’ I ask.

  ‘Nothing. I don’t remember. I was probably bored one day. Have you finished interrogating me now? Because it’s getting old.’

  ‘Sorry.’ No further questions. ‘I’ll go and get your story.’

  ‘No, chuck it,’ says Ellen. ‘I’ve already typed it up. I’m writing the rest on my laptop.’

  For which I know the four-digit access code.

  ‘Don’t waste your time,’ Ellen says with quiet efficiency. ‘I’ve password-protected the file.’

  Later that night when she’s asleep, I sit down to do the online search I probably should have done a long time ago. What did Ellen type into the Google box? ‘German, 8 Panama Row, London’? I try it. I didn’t do it sooner because I didn’t think there was any point. What could the internet tell me that would be useful? ‘This house is famous for provoking spooky feelings of belonging in people who have no connection with it’?

  Here it is: Germander, and the correct address. I’m looking at some kind of planning application document. The owner of 8 Panama Row seems to be an Olwen Brawn, or at least that was who wanted to stick a conservatory on the side of the house in June 2012. She might have moved by now, I suppose.

  A conservatory? With a lovely view of the six-lane North Circular? Evidently she decided against it or else permission wasn’t granted. There was no side conservatory when I saw the house five months ago.

  Olwen Brawn. The name has no effect on me at all, which is a relief.

  Could Ellen be right? Was it the first six letters of Germander that did it, and Alex pointing and saying, ‘There’s the house we’ve bought’? And the heat, the stress of moving day, the traffic jam …

  I’d like to believe that’s all it was.

  The computer screen in front of me is too tempting. I go back to the Google page and type ‘Bascom Sorrel Ingrey Speedwell’ into the search box. Nothing useful comes up, though I do find a man by the unlikely name of Bascom Sorrell, with two ‘l’s, in Nicholas County, Kentucky.

  I try ‘Perrine Ingrey Malachy Dodd’. Nothing. ‘Ingrey Allisande Lisette’, ‘Ingrey Garnet Urban’ – nothing.

  A full-body shiver makes my skin prickle. Garnet. Urban. According to the family tree, they’re Lisette Ingrey’s children. Their names both sound Victorian English. So do the names Bascom and Sorrel – their grandparents. Lisette, Allisande and Perrine, on the other hand, sound French. Different parents and generations; different tastes in names.

  Would a fourteen-year-old think of that?

  Yes. Ellen did. That’s why it’s in her story, and that’s all it is: a story.

  I’m not convinced. The names seem far too esoteric for even the brightest, most mature teenager to come up with.

  As for Ellen password-protecting the file, that’s easily explicable: reticence, embarrassment, a defence of privacy against a parent’s desire to know everything – all children do it at some point.

  I sip my tea, which is now lukewarm and so might as well be freezing cold.

  There’s no reason to believe that the weirdest family in Kingswear once lived in our house. They’re made up. Fictional characters.

  There is no Perrine Ingrey. My daughter’s bedroom did not once belong to her.

  * * *

  You see, unlike most parents, especially so long ago, Bascom and Sorrel Ingrey couldn’t agree on anything. They never had been able to, from the moment they met. They were opposites in every way. It is amazing that they managed to agree to get married, in fact. Ask any of their three daughters and they will tell you (well, apart from Perrine, who got murdered, but before that she would have said so too) that every time Bascom Ingrey expressed an opinion on any topic, his wif
e quickly spoke up and contradicted him. He did the same to her. And their behaviour showed how opposite they were as much as their opinions did.

  Bascom Ingrey liked to plan everything in detail, because he was a pessimist who believed that disaster would strike if you weren’t well prepared. Sorrel Ingrey was not like that at all. She was an optimist and thought that everything would work out fine if you left it to chance. She was very spontaneous and did what felt right at the time, and she enjoyed it when life surprised her (apart from when her youngest daughter became a murderer and was then murdered – but let’s not get ahead of ourselves).

  Bascom liked to be very early. Sorrel always arrived late. Bascom liked to read but never watched TV. Sorrel liked TV and never read. Bascom always voted Labour and Sorrel always voted Conservative. Bascom always sat with his back straight and his feet on the floor, even when he was in a comfortable armchair. Sorrel stretched out horizontally, kicked off her shoes and took up a whole sofa. She liked bright colours like turquoise and raspberry pink, which her husband hated. He only liked neutral colours like beige, grey and white. Bascom was obsessively tidy and could not bear it when any of his possessions was not in its proper place. Sorrel was happy for things to be a mess – she hardly noticed. If she needed something urgently and couldn’t find it because it was buried under a pile of random jumpers, she didn’t care. She would laugh and say, ‘I’ll have to buy a new one.’

  You’re probably thinking that all this disagreement meant that Bascom and Sorrel Ingrey had a terrible relationship, but the opposite is true (which, if you think about it, is predictable for a couple who are so opposite to one another). They were very happily married. This was because they did have an important thing in common: neither of them was the sort of person who agreed with their spouse just because it would be easier to do so. They respected this about each other, and they both learned the art of compromise – an art rarely learned by married people in marriages where one is definitely the boss. Both Bascom and Sorrel became brilliant compromisers.

  Their three daughters (well, perhaps not Perrine but definitely Lisette and Allisande) were pleased that both of their parents had strong principles that they stuck to, though they wished they didn’t have to listen to so many back-and-forth discussions about whether to go on holiday to a golden sandy beach in a hot country (Sorrel) or to a European city with lots of art galleries and museums (Bascom), or whether to go swimming as the main activity on a Saturday (Sorrel) or to the library (Bascom), or whether to fill the house with cute, furry pets (Sorrel) or have no pets at all, not even a goldfish (Bascom). When Lisette, Allisande and Perrine visited their friends’ houses, they noticed at once that there was not always a ‘No, this/No, that’ debate going on. Many of their friends’ parents hardly spoke at all.