A Game For All The Family (21 page)

“You remember George, don’t you, Helen?”

She looks at me as if I’ve said something offensive.

“He used to attend this school, didn’t he?”

“I’m afraid you won’t be able to go inside the building with a dog.” Helen presents this as if it’s an answer to my question.

“He isn’t a dog,” I say. Because you can lie even when it’s ludicrous, even knowing no one will fall for it. You can present laughable nonsense as if it’s the cleverest scam ever dreamed up by a human mind—that’s what I’ve learned at Beaconwood. “Granted, he looks exactly like a dog, but in fact he’s a bizarre-looking human. Figgy, say hello to Helen. He used to go to a different school, but he got expelled—can you believe this?—for looking too much like a dog. Now, please get the fuck out of my way.”

Helen stands aside. I’d have sworn at her sooner if I’d known it would be so effective.

I head for Mr. Fisher’s classroom, wishing I could remember his first name. Lincoln? No, that sounds too American. I’m sure it begins with L. Lachlan. Yes, that’s it. Lachlan Fisher.

I peer through the thin glass panel in the door and see that he’s in full flow, talking and gesticulating. I can see why Ellen calls him the Nerd King. It’s easy to picture him hacking into GCHQ databases while dressed in cartoon-character pajamas.

His stupidly large glasses have slid down his nose, almost to the tip. The children laugh at something he says. They like him. I can tell from outside that there’s a good atmosphere in the classroom.

I knock and steel myself for another difficult encounter.

Still talking and waving his arms to emphasize whatever point he’s making, Mr. Fisher sidles slowly toward the door. He hasn’t seen me yet. Any second now he’ll look through the glass and his relaxed expression will give way to one of discomfort. I can’t believe Helen Minchin has been warned about me and he hasn’t. Lesley Griffiths would have left no member of staff unbriefed.

The door opens. “Hey, Justine.” Mr. Fisher smiles at me. It looks genuine.

Wait. You haven’t challenged him yet.

“Are you looking for Ellen?” He’s doing that weird, obtrusive blinking that he always does: squeezing his eyes shut, then popping them open. It’s offputting. Also difficult not to imitate. “She’ll be in her classroom now, with Mr. Goodrick. Oh, who’s this?”

“Figgy. He’s very new.”

“Hello, funny chap.”

It occurs to me that some people might greet Mr. Fisher with those same words.

“He’s a furry little character, isn’t he?” He bends to stroke Figgy’s head. “Or is he a girl?”

“No, she’s a boy.” I laugh. “Sorry—daft joke.
He’s
a boy. I’m not here for Ellen. I need to talk to you.”

“Me?” Mr. Fisher sounds surprised. “Oh. Huh. Okay, let me just . . . Class? 9F! Thank you. I’m going to step outside for a moment to talk to a parent. I don’t want to hear the sound of chaos breaking out, okay?”

He closes the door on them and turns back to me. “This is good. I wanted to ask you something. I mean . . . funnily enough. Huh.”

Someone at Beaconwood who isn’t actively wishing me away: wow. I resist the urge to hug him. “You go first,” I say.

“Oh. All right. I wanted to ask . . . This is kind of an out-of-the-blue question, but did you used to work in television? Did you make dramas and stuff?”

My stomach flips. How does he know? No one who isn’t part of the industry notices the tiny names that appear in the end credits of a TV program.

I told Ellen at least ten times not to mention my former career to anyone at school. It’s not a secret, but as soon as people know, they start asking questions, and I stop being able to pretend those years of my life never happened.

“Yes, I did. It was a form of slavery, albeit voluntary and well paid, and I’m delighted not to be doing it anymore. Ellen wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. I don’t like to talk about it—brings me out in hives.”

“Oh, Ellen didn’t . . . tell me,” Mr. Fisher finishes the sentence uneasily. “So, there’s something you want to discuss?”

Interesting that he doesn’t want to reveal his source. Particularly as I can’t think of a single other person associated with Beaconwood who would know what I did when I lived in London.

Hopefully this will work in my favor. He’ll be feeling bad, hoping to compensate by being superhelpful from now on. “Mr. Fisher, I like you.”

“I . . . I beg your pardon?”

“I approve of you. You teach my daughter about narrative perspective. I think you’re a decent man. And recently I’ve been treated pretty indecently by some of your colleagues.”

“Indecently?”

“Yes. Lesley Griffiths and Craig Goodrick have both lied to me about George Donbavand.”

“Oh.” Mr. Fisher hard-blinks at me.

“George was expelled for stealing a coat he didn’t steal. I know he didn’t, because the coat was Ellen’s and she gave it to him as a present. When I tried to talk to Lesley Griffiths about it, she told me there was no such boy. She said George Donbavand didn’t exist, had never been at Beaconwood, had never been expelled. Craig Goodrick said the same thing. They’re both lying, aren’t they?”

“Huh.” Lachlan Fisher looks down at Figgy. “This is kind of awkward.”

“It’s okay. You won’t be giving anything away if you tell me George Donbavand exists. I bumped into a kid on my way in today and he told me. I asked him directly.”

“Justine, that’s not true.”

“What isn’t true?”

“I’m not allowed to discuss it, but . . . you’re wrong.”

“Wrong how? George isn’t a real boy? He wasn’t expelled?”

“He wasn’t expelled.”

I turn away. I can’t stand to look at another lying face. “What about his sister, Fleur? I suppose you’ll say she wasn’t expelled either.”

“Most definitely not.”

“So she’ll be in her classroom now, will she, if I go and look for her?”

Mr. Fisher opens his mouth. No words come out.

“You know Fleur’s not at school today, or else you’d have said, ‘Yes, why don’t you go and look for her?’ Why isn’t she at school?”

“Justine . . .” Lachlan Fisher clears his throat. “Sometimes, with the best will in the world . . .”

I wait.

“You see, it’s complicated.”

“That’s okay. I can talk about complicated things. I’m forty-three. I’ve had lots of practice. Don’t gawk at me like a shell-shocked goldfish. Will you at least admit that George Donbavand is a real boy, who until recently was a pupil at Beaconwood?”

Mr. Fisher stares down at his hands. His interlocked fingers clench and relax, clench and relax, as if trying to mimic a heart pumping blood.

“Lachlan, I have a distraught fourteen-year-old daughter who can’t understand why her friend’s been expelled for something he didn’t do, even after she and he both explained to the head that he didn’t do it. How do you think she feels when I tell her that same head teacher is now flat-out denying the existence of the boy she describes as ‘my best friend in the whole world’? Is it the mission of this school to fuck with its pupils’ heads until they can no longer distinguish between illusion and reality?”

“No. No, it isn’t. Justine, I’m terribly sorry about all this. I really am.”

“Then tell me the truth. What’s going on?”

“I . . . Can you leave it with me?”

“No. Tell me now.”

“That’s impossible. I’m so sorry, but . . . if I could explain, you would understand. Truly.”

“I think that might be the most irritating statement I’ve ever heard.”

“Yes, I can imagine. Look, I promise—you have my solemn word—I’ll do my best to sort this out. As soon as I’m able to, I’ll be in touch. Hopefully later today. Do we have your current contact numbers in our records?”

“Yes.” I want to scream at him and pummel him with my fists, but I’ve got to be practical. He’s my best chance of finding out.

“I should get back to my class,” he says. “Tell you what: I’ll call you this evening either way.”

“No,” I say. “Only call me if you can tell me the truth. Come on, Figgy.”
Let’s get around this corner and then we can smash our fists against some walls. Well, I can.

“Justine!”

I stop. “What?”

“George is real. He was a pupil at this school until a few days ago. He and Ellen were best friends.”

I close my eyes for a second. “Thank you.”

“Justine? The kind of friends they were . . . are, I should probably say . . .”

“Yes?”

“I’ve never seen anything like that between two secondary school students before. Between two
people
before,” he amends. “It was . . . well, I suppose I can’t say what it
was
, as an outside observer. But it
seemed
more intense than any relationship I’ve ever seen between adults.”

Chapter 8

Remove All Sharp Items, Chop Down All Trees

Bascom Ingrey blamed himself for the death of the flaky-eyed bumcracker, whose name turned out to be Jack Kirbyshire. Lisette and Allisande saw that there was no doubt in either of their parents’ minds that Perrine had murdered him, and so they didn’t doubt it either. It was now undeniable that those who found themselves in close proximity to Perrine were likely to fall to their deaths from high windows.

Bascom took this latest tragedy harder than hard. It half-destroyed him. He was unable to teach, and Sorrel took over all subjects. Every lesson, from maths to geography to science, consisted of watching videos and eating marshmallows. Sorrel had evidently stopped worrying about relevance. There had been three days of nothing but
Cagney and Lacey
, for example. To say that class discussions were no longer intellectually challenging was an understatement. Lisette was really worried. She knew she wouldn’t get into Cambridge University on the strength of her ideas about why Harvey Lacey was always in his pajamas.

Officially, Jack Kirbyshire’s death was recorded as an accident, but the local police knew the truth as well as all the Ingreys did. They just couldn’t prove it.

The mood in Speedwell House was a dark one. The bumcrackers no longer sang, joked or listened to the radio. Bascom and Sorrel weren’t sure if any of them suspected Perrine of murder. None of the family had said anything to them, of course, but Perrine was so obviously an alarming child that anyone intelligent would suspect her, they thought.

“We can’t let her out of our sight,” Sorrel told Bascom. “Any of the bumcrackers might try to kill her now. We must remove all sharp and heavy items from Speedwell House and chop down all trees from which nooses might be dropped.”

“Would it be so terrible if a bumcracker tried to kill Perrine and succeeded?” said Bascom.

“You can’t mean that!” Sorrel was shocked. “You don’t want to give up on her, do you?”

“But what if she’s evil? The sort of evil for which there’s no hope.”

“Well, then you ought to give up on her for sure.”

“She can’t be evil,” said Bascom in anguish. “I refuse to believe it.”

He stopped in his tracks. “Oh my sainted stars!” he whispered.

“What is it?” asked Sorrel. “Have you thought of a plan?”

“Music!” Bascom exclaimed. “We forgot music! The girls need to learn it. They did at school, though the lessons weren’t up to much, were they? A few halfhearted choruses of ‘The Windmills of Your Mind’ while bashing some cymbals and a triangle.”

Sorrel frowned. “I don’t quite see what you’re saying.”

“Bach, Beethoven, Mozart—proper music lessons! That’s what the girls need. That’s what
Perrine
needs. That child has a soul, and I’m determined to find it. Music is the way. The pathway to the soul! Or it could be. I can’t believe I forgot about music when I was devising their homeschooling curriculum. I know why I did: it’s because I’ve got a tin ear. I’m musically illiterate, but I’m no philistine. I know how important music is. Obviously, it’s not a subject I can teach . . .”

“Oh, I can do it,” Sorrel offered cheerfully.

“Hmm. I’m not sure,” said Bascom. “No offense, but—”

“Don’t worry, I won’t just play them old Rolling Stones albums.”

“Oh good.”

“I’ll make them learn ‘Sloop John B’ by the Beach Boys, and then we can all sing it together, with the harmonies and everything.” Sorrel was proud of her ambitious plan.

“No, no!” said Bascom, annoyed. “That’s not what I mean at all. I mean
proper
music. Classical.”

“Oh, don’t be a snoot-nose!” Sorrel teased him.

“Sorrel, this is vitally important. We need to get someone in. A specialist.”

“From Nottingham?” Sorrel asked.

“No, not necessarily. I’ll make some inquiries.”

“All right, darling, but please don’t get your hopes up. I do worry that it might not work.”

“It
has
to work,” said Bascom. “It
will
work.”

And so it was that, a few weeks later, David Butcher, a former organ scholar of King’s College, Cambridge, arrived at Speedwell House with no idea at all of what was in store for him.

9

T
hanks for coming in, Justine.” Lesley Griffiths isn’t smiling. She hasn’t since I arrived. Oddly, this gives me hope. I’ve seen too many people slap a smile on a lie recently, to make it look better. If the truth is about to arrive on the scene, it’s fitting that it should wear a serious face.

Lachlan Fisher didn’t call me last night as I hoped he would. Instead, Lesley called to say she’d spoken to Mr. Fisher, and was I available to come in for a chat tomorrow afternoon? If so, they would both clear their diaries.

And now tomorrow is today and here I am in Lesley’s office. She’s sitting at her desk, with Lachlan Fisher behind her in the armchair in the corner of the room. I wish he’d pull it forward. He looks like a child who’s been dragged along to an event against his will and told to sit quietly until the grown-ups have finished talking.

I want him in this conversation. Without his intervention, I’m convinced it wouldn’t be happening.