A Game For All The Family (13 page)

Because they’re a difficult family.

I don’t believe that’s the explanation. Every school is used to dealing with nightmare families by the dozen, surely.

“Ellen, talk me through the chronology of all this,” says Alex. Within seconds of arriving home, he was asking why I hadn’t sorted out a clear “timeline” for the George Donbavand business. The word made me shudder. It’s only ever used by busy people who need to be efficient.

I’d better face facts: I’m going to have to become that brisk, capable person again, at least for the foreseeable future, if I want to get my old life back. My old new life, that is: the one in which my daughter was happy and her best friend in the whole world had not been expelled.

I feel sick when I try to imagine what might be required of me. I was efficient for too long—most of my life—and it nearly broke me. How can I go back to that? I can’t bear the thought of having Things To Do—things that matter. I spent most of last night lying awake fantasizing about starting a new new life. Not in Devon; nowhere near here. Remotest northern Scotland, perhaps, or Florida.

And abandon poor George Donbavand to his fate?

You’ve never even met the boy. Forty-eight hours ago, you hadn’t heard of him.

Look what happened when you stuck up for Ben Lourenco: nothing. It made no difference.

“Ellen?” Alex prompts. “Can you tell me what happened when, starting from the beginning?”

“Do you want exact dates and times?” she snaps. Her eyes are red, with semicircles of purple-gray shadow beneath them. She came downstairs looking like a ghost, carrying her laptop under her arm.

She’s been awake all night, crying and writing her story.

“Don’t jump down my throat, El,” Alex says. “I’m on your side. I just—”

“Then why are you asking about chronology, like a policeman who doesn’t believe my alibi? You don’t believe me, do you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“We both do,” I tell her.

“We also believe there’s something very strange—strange and wrong on every level—going on at your school,” says Alex. “That’s why it’s important that you tell us everything that’s happened from your point of view, and when it happened. I want to get to the bottom of this mess.”

“It didn’t happen ‘from my point of view.’ ” Ellen’s voice vibrates with anger. “It happened from everybody’s point of view. It objectively happened.”

“We know that, El.” I reach over to squeeze her hand. She pushes me away.

“George is real,” she says, blinking away tears. “He’s as real as the three of us. Two days ago he was expelled. Mr. Goodrick’s lying. Mrs. Griffiths is making him lie. She’s probably threatened to sack him if he tells the truth about George. She’s evil.”

No, she isn’t. That can’t be the answer.

“She’s the head. The other teachers would do what she told them.”

“So George was in on Tuesday?” asks Alex. “Was Tuesday his last day at school or his first day not at school?”

“His last day,” says Ellen. “He told me he’d been expelled and wouldn’t be in again. And he was right. Yesterday, the day Mum drove me in, he wasn’t there. There was no sign he’d ever been there. The bits of the wall displays that he’d done, with his name on them—his impressionist painting and his photo of a kingfisher—they’d gone. And all the others had been moved around.”

Alex shakes his head. “Unbelievable,” he says. “No, I don’t mean I don’t believe it, I mean what the fuck. Sorry. Five quid in the swear box from me.”

“Yeah, the swear box we haven’t got and have never had,” Ellen mutters.

“Thought that counts,” says Alex. “It’s unbelievable. A school expels a pupil for stealing a coat he didn’t steal—and they’ve been told he didn’t steal it by its original owner—and then they remove him from the classroom wall as if he never existed?”

“What did you mean about all the others being moved around?” I ask Ellen.

“I meant they didn’t only take George’s stuff down from the wall—that would have left some gaps, and there weren’t any. Someone took down the whole lot and put them up again so that there were no obvious spaces where George’s work used to be.”

“Ellen can’t go back there,” I say to Alex.

“Mum, I have to.”

“You two are arguing about the future. I’m still struggling to understand what’s happened so far,” says Alex. “Ellen, when did you speak to the teachers about George and the coat? On Tuesday? Before? Who did you speak to?”

“Miss Squires first and then Mrs. Griffiths, when Miss Squires told me to. I explained—”

“On Tuesday?” Alex cuts in. He’s not giving up on this timeline thing.

“No, Monday. George knew he was in trouble on Monday morning. He was crying in assembly.”

“This story makes me want to kill people,” I say through gritted teeth.

“George told me what he’d been accused of, and I told him not to worry. I made it worse by making him get his hopes up. I thought there was no way they wouldn’t listen to me—it was my coat! How could they still expel him once I’d told them I gave it to him as a present? Mrs. Griffiths was really nice when I told her, or pretended to be. She smiled and nodded as if she believed me, and praised me for being such a kind and loyal friend. And then she went and expelled George anyway! I thought back over everything she’d said to me, and I realized what was missing. All that smiley praise was to shut me up and get me out of her office. She never once said, ‘All right, George can stay. We won’t expel him now that we know the truth.’ ”

“But you assumed she wouldn’t,” says Alex.

“Totally. She seemed to believe me.”

“She did,” I say.

Alex and Ellen look at me.

“I mean, yes, she hoodwinked you, clearly—she wanted to expel George, and she let you think you’d changed her mind when you hadn’t. But I’m certain she believed you.”

“Presumably George protested his innocence too,” says Alex.

“Of course he did! He told Mrs. Griffiths exactly what I told her, but she didn’t believe him either. Why would she expel him if she knew he’d done nothing wrong?”

“The coat thing’s an excuse,” I say. “A smokescreen story.”

“Where are Mr. and Mrs. Donbavand in all this?” Alex asks. “Why are you the one going in to inquire and complain? Why not them? George is their son.”

“Dr. and Professor Donbavand,” Ellen corrects him. “They don’t care about their children. George hates them.”

“I’m sure they do care,” says Alex. “What does he look like, this George?” It’s a question I haven’t thought to ask.

Ellen wrinkles her nose. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“I’m just interested. Is he tall, dark and handsome? Short, dark and weedy?”

Ellen sighs. “He’s a Caucasian male, about three inches taller than me, with light brown hair and blue eyes. Satisfied?”

George hates his parents. They don’t care about their children.

There’s a half-formed idea in my mind. I like it so far and can’t be bothered to wait. “I think Lesley Griffiths was trying to communicate something to me without being too explicit,” I say. “She was using a kind of code. Telling me everything’s all right, even if I think it isn’t. If I ignore her actual words, which were implausible at best, everything about her manner was saying, ‘Trust me, Justine. I’ve done the right thing. You’d agree with me if you knew what I know. Everything’s fine, really.’ Ellen, does that sound similar to how she was with you?”

Is it possible that Lesley expelled George to protect him from his parents in some way? I can’t think how that would work, though—that’s the only problem with my theory.

Ellen shrugs. “Have I got a clean uniform?”

“No.” In the chaos and drama of yesterday, I forgot about the laundry I’d been meaning to put in. “But you don’t need it.”

“Yes, I do. I’m going in. Can you drive me to school, Dad?”

“Absolutely not!” I’m on my feet, prepared to stop them forcibly if I have to.

“Will you both sit down?” says Alex. “No one’s going anywhere until I’ve had more coffee. This one’s cold.”

“That’ll happen if you don’t drink it,” Ellen tells him.

“We also need to discuss the homework-dodging issue.”

Shut up, Alex.
Of all the stupid things to say.

“What?” Ellen spits the word out like a hard stone.

“You told your teachers Mum and I had said something we hadn’t said, El. That’s not ideal, is it?”

“Nor is bringing this up now, when she’s upset,” I say. “Can’t we tackle one thing at a time?”

“Dad thinks the two are connected,” Ellen says in a shaky voice. “Don’t you? You think me lying is the connection.”

“I’ve already said I believe you about George.”

“Only because you can’t prove it’s not true. Not because you trust me. What time is it?” Ellen asks me. “Is it half past nine yet?”

I look at the digital display on the microwave. “Just gone quarter past. Why?”

Triumph flares in Ellen’s eyes. Before I know its cause, I’m pleased for her. I want her to win everything. Yes, even arguments with her parents, paradoxically.

“I’ll prove to you that George exists. You can see him for yourselves! I know where he’s going to be at half past nine. Come on.” Ellen darts past me. I lunge to try and stop her, but she’s out of the door before I can grab hold of her pajama sleeve. Seconds later, the front door slams.

“We’re letting her go out without clothes?” Alex complains. The flat of his hand rests on the coffee plunger, as if he’s considering pressing an emergency alarm.

“She won’t go farther than the garden dressed like that,” I say, hoping it’s true.

“None of this makes any sense!” Alex is angry suddenly. “Is George Donbavand going to be in our garden at nine thirty? Why would he be? Is he even real? I mean, why would Lesley Griffiths deny the existence of a boy who, until the previous day, was a pupil at her school?”

“I don’t know, Alex. If we want answers, we need to follow Ellen.”

“We’re not dressed.”

“So what? The world won’t end if we go outside in pajamas. Ellen wants us to go with her. We need to move.”
The river.
Is that where she’s headed, to where the land belonging to Speedwell House ends and the water starts?

“Justine!”

I’m in the hall, about to open the front door when Alex calls my name.

“What? Aren’t you coming?”

“Do we believe in this George Donbavand?”

“Yes,” I say without hesitation. “I do.”

Ten minutes later, the three of us—Ellen, Alex and I—are standing at the lowest point of our garden, looking out over the wall. Sunlight spreads itself into the dimples on the water. It’s restful, just watching, forgetting I’m part of a story I don’t understand. I wonder if Ellen and Alex feel the same.

Waiting in silence. Not knowing what for, not in charge, unable to anticipate. This moment, out of time and context, is how I would like my whole life to be.
This is it: what I want
. Here and now is the first time I’ve found it—my own peculiar holy grail—since we moved to Devon. Then the questions rush in and ruin it: Is George Donbavand about to appear? From where? If he was only threatened with expulsion on Monday, why has Ellen been withdrawn and distant for so long? Was she so wrapped up in her new friendship with George that she lost interest in us, her family?

“So. Here we are,” Alex says: a not especially helpful public service announcement.

“It must be half past nine by now. Is it, Mum?”

“I don’t know.” I haven’t worn a watch for years. “Maybe not quite. Another few minutes.” When I worked, my BlackBerry was never not in front of my eyes. I was never not staring at its screen, trying to calculate whether I could spare the time to notice what time it was.

“I know neither of you is expecting to see him,” says Ellen. “You don’t believe he’s real.”

“If he’s real, it can easily be proven,” says Alex. “Which makes me wonder why school would pretend never to have heard of him.”

Shut up, for God’s sake.

“If they’re lying, it’s going to become obvious pretty bloody quickly. Why doesn’t that worry them enough to stop them?”

“So they must be telling the truth?” Ellen says bitterly.

“I believe you, El,” I say.

“Look!” She’s staring hard at the river. Something’s happened.

What? What has she seen? Is George Donbavand about to come out of the water in a wetsuit and climb over our garden wall?

Please don’t let Ellen be crazy. Please let George be real.

I stare at the river. Alex does too. Counting down without numbers, without words. It’s like waiting for a magic show to start. Where is the magic element going to come from?

I see and hear nothing that surprises me, only boats and birds: an orange sail tied to a mast; a seagull sick of having to repeat itself.

No George Donbavand.

“There it is!” Ellen points out over the water. Standing beside her, I can feel her excitement. “Lionel’s boat!”

Lionel—never referred to with a surname attached—is a well-known local painter with a booming voice who has a tendency to finish his sentences with the words “Are you with me?” He exhibits his wares in pubs and cafés, hoping to sell them for between £40 and £90, depending on their size. Lionel has considerable skill as an artist, but his pictures are stomach-churningly awful. He paints attractive Devon scenes and landmarks—Budleigh Salterton beach, Exmoor, the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth, Torre Abbey—then spoils the beauty he’s created by painting a caricature of himself, complete with broken-veined nose, tufty white hair and tobacco-stained teeth, over the landscape in a completely different cartoon-like style that clashes horribly.

All his paintings have titles that begin “Lionel Woz Ere”:
Lionel Woz Ere At Wortham Manor
,
Lionel Woz Ere On Burgh Island
—those were two I particularly enjoyed leaving behind at the Anchorstone Café in Dittisham to put people off their food until the end of time. Lionel’s pictures don’t sell, and so end up being exhibited relentlessly, forever, by owners of establishments who tolerate and even encourage him because he’s “a character.” His paid work is to pilot his boat
The Kingswear Treasure
, a large wooden dinghy with an outboard motor, from Kingswear to Dartmouth and back again dozens of times a day, seven days a week. God knows when he finds time to paint.