A Game For All The Family (41 page)

Interesting. It looks as if Anne has no objection to her son reading novels, as long as he doesn’t have access to the internet. It’s other real people that she fears. She’s not worried about the influence of
Jane Eyre
or
Oliver Twist
.

Clever people can be the stupidest of all.

Anne and Stephen’s bedroom is the messiest room in the house. The bed is unmade. There’s a large pile of clean, ironed laundry balanced on one corner and spilling over onto the floor, where there are nearly as many crumpled, dirty clothes and discarded bath towels. An ironing board is pushed against the wall under the window. There’s a dressing table in a corner with two laptops on it, as well as makeup, deodorant, perfume, balled-up socks.

The Donbavands need a bigger house. Incarceration doesn’t have to be this cramped.

The phone begins to ring, startling me. I stare at the old-fashioned handset on the bedside table nearest to the window. It’s covered in dust. I don’t want to touch it. It might stink of liar breath. My stomach heaves at the thought.

It could be Anne, calling to speak to George. When he doesn’t answer, won’t she panic and drive straight home? I need to get out of here as soon as I can. There’s nothing to stop me leaving now. I’ve done what I wanted to do: invaded Anne’s home the way she invaded mine.

Randomly, I pull open the dressing table drawers and find nothing interesting. One contains between ten and twenty plug adaptors. Furious, I slam it shut, thinking about Anne jetting around the world, sharing her ideas with other academics while her son’s not allowed to make one friend without getting removed from school.

In the next drawer down there’s a heap of hair accessories on top of a brown envelope file, which I pull out and open. My breath catches in my throat.

At the top of the first typed page, in a large font, are the letters “A.I.,” underlined.
Allisande Ingrey.
Beneath the heading, there’s a numbered list of what look like gravestone inscriptions. It goes on for pages and pages, starting with the short and basic—“In Loving Memory of,” “In Remembrance of”—and moving on to longer, more elaborate suggestions: “A tiny flower, lent not given / to bud on earth and bloom in heaven.” There’s a blue-ink checkmark next to number forty-six on the list: “Our family chain is broken. / Nothing seems the same. / But as God calls us one by one / The links shall join again.”

That’s a reference to Perrine Ingrey having been murdered, no doubt.

The phone has stopped ringing. In the ensuing silence, I tell myself what I know is true, though I wish I could pretend otherwise: Anne Donbavand has chosen the inscription for my gravestone.

In the same file, there are three coffin catalogs, showing pictures of every conceivable kind of model: dark, shiny and expensive; plain, light and cheap. There’s a blue checkmark next to one of the priciest. An odd choice if you’re planning to murder a person, some might say, but I understand. Allisande might be hated and feared by Lisette, but she matters to her. When someone is that important to you, you don’t choose cheap.

There’s a black eyeliner pencil on the dressing table. I remove its lid and draw an “X” next to Anne’s checkmark. I start to write, “Good quality, but too baroque. I’d prefer a plainer style—okay, sis?” Halfway through writing “quality,” I give up. I don’t want to make a joke, even one that will make Anne angry. I don’t want to call her “sis” because she’s not, has never been and will never be my sister.

This isn’t funny. I can’t quip my way out of it. A delusional, dangerous woman is fantasizing about killing and burying me and I have the brochures to prove it. She’s been thorough: as well as coffins, there are hundreds of pictures of urns in the file: another two catalogs’ worth. Anne mustn’t have been able to decide at first between burial and cremation.

I take several deep breaths. She might not go any further than she has already. Maybe the contents of this file and the hole in my lawn will be enough for her.

And Figgy’s nametag, and climbing into your house when you told her she wasn’t welcome, and the anonymous calls, and the dead creature in her handbag
. . .

I pull out all the drawers, one by one. There’s nothing else in the dressing table, nothing in the wardrobes.

I find two more files—one red and one green—in the drawer of Anne’s bedside table. I flip open the first and see something that belongs to me. I catch my breath.
When did Anne have the chance to . . . ?

No. She didn’t. She didn’t steal it. This is her own copy of the real estate agent’s brochure. She must have seen that Speedwell House was for sale, as we did; sent off for the details, as we did.

Here’s the beautiful picture of the staircase, Ellen’s bedroom with the little mint-green door in the wall . . .

Why am I wasting time staring at something I know by heart? I close the brochure and pull out the other papers in the file: information about Speedwell House, printed off a website . . . I gasp when I see what’s at the bottom of the pile: another set of real estate agent’s details, but this time much older—fifteen or twenty years older, perhaps. The colors in the photographs are faded. Again, there’s the little door from Ellen’s room . . .
Perrine’s room
. . . I vow to myself here and now that I’ll paint that door a different color as soon as I can, whether Ellen agrees or not. I am coming to loathe that mint green. Why has nobody ever changed it?

Over the years, Anne has been collecting all the information she can about Speedwell House, the Ingreys’ family home. Except the Ingreys never lived there, and Anne Donbavand is not Lisette Ingrey.

I stuff everything back into the green file, shuddering.

The red file is worse. In it, there’s a list of names, email addresses, Twitter handles, workplace details and phone numbers. Bile fills my throat. I swallow it, wincing at the foul taste, then sit down on the edge of the bed so as not to lose my balance. Once the dizziness recedes, I look again.

Everyone I know or used to know is on this list. Ben Lourenco, Donna Lodge, Freddii Bausor, Dad and Julia, childhood friends, neighbors, casting directors, makeup artists, agents. Everybody who was part of my life, even a tiny part; people I followed on Twitter and who followed me, and the same for LinkedIn and Facebook.

Everyone.

Why didn’t I set my Facebook privacy settings to maximum? Why, all those years ago, didn’t I make my Twitter account private? Anne’s presence in my digital life has more than made up for my absence from it.

I could so easily have avoided this invasion. Alex gave me a little speech about digital privacy a few years ago, and I laughed at him, told him he sounded like a mad conspiracy theorist. “I’m not hiding from anyone,” I said. “I hate this obsession with privacy. It’s so much effort apart from anything else.”

Anne must have spent hours researching all my contacts. There’s a thick wad of paper here. A quick flick-through tells me that she’s thoroughly investigated each and every name on the list. Somehow, she’s found the addresses and phone numbers of more than twenty people, details I didn’t know myself, in some cases. Matthew Read from the BBC, Peter Fincham from ITV, Will Peterson from Independent Talent, my friend Cassie from primary school who tracked me down and made contact a few years ago, much to my annoyance . . . Anne has found and listed their addresses, along with assorted other details.

Obsessed with me, obsessed with my house. Which came first? It had to be the house, surely. Or perhaps a combination of that and Ellen’s friendship with George. I dared to move into Speedwell House, and then my daughter stole Anne’s son’s loyalty . . .

Here’s my dad’s mobile phone number, and here, directly beneath it, she’s written mine.
Thanks, Dad. Cheers for giving my number to a maniac. I didn’t think you’d ever go one better than the family tree business, but it seems you have.

What do I do? Do I take these files straight to DC Luce? What do they prove? My name isn’t anywhere in these pages. It looks like a harmless list of names and addresses. And the other file, the coffin and urn catalogs and the inscriptions . . . there, too, my name is absent. Anne knows, and I know, that A.I. stands for Allisande Ingrey and that, in Anne’s twisted mind, Allisande Ingrey is me, but there’s nothing here that proves any of that to someone who doubts it. The abbreviation “A.I.” has other common meanings: artificial intelligence, advance information. In London, publishers constantly used to send me Advance Information sheets for books they were about to publish, in case I wanted to snap up the TV rights. Anne could plausibly tell DC Luce that she’d headed the inscriptions list “A.I.” because it contained useful information to have in advance of dying. She could—and I’ve no doubt she would—pretend that the blue checkmarks were things she’d chosen for her own funeral, not mine.

I press my eyes shut. For a few moments, I am filled with such intense fury that I can’t speak, think or move. Then I breathe it all out, all the heat and anger. With it goes my last hope of getting any help from the police. I no longer resent Euan Luce’s inability or unwillingness to help me, whichever it is. That’s just how things are.

I open my eyes and stare out of the window. There’s no sign of any cars heading toward the house. From here I’d see anything driving up from the main road, which is useful. The view from the Donbavands’ cottage isn’t as beautiful as the view from Speedwell House. It’s partly because both the ceilings and the windows are so much smaller and lower . . .

My heart jolts, stopping the thought in its tracks.
Smaller, lower. Smaller . . . Lower . . .

I fumble in my mind for whatever thought just flitted past.
Hand it over, brain.

Ellen’s window, the peculiar feeling I had in her room . . .

Oh my God. I know what it is. Yes. Of course.

I know what it is, but I don’t know what it means.
Perrine Ingrey. Malachy Dodd. Perrine and Malachy, in her bedroom, Ellen’s bedroom . . .

I think back over my conversation with Sarah Parsons and snag on a throwaway comment she made, one I laughed away at the time, thinking it trivial.

I have to read the rest of Ellen’s story. Whatever it takes. And I need to talk to Sarah again.

Picking up the phone on the bedside table, I dial my own mobile phone number.

George answers on the fourth ring. “Um, hello, Justine’s phone. George Donbavand speaking.”

“George, it’s me.”

“Hello! How fantastic to hear from my . . . phone benefactor!”

I start to cry. “George, you don’t have to say that. You don’t have to keep paying me compliments. I need to ask you—”

“I mean it most sincerely, Justine. You’re the first person who’s ever called me. This is the first phone call I have ever received in my own right—not just a general family phone call, I mean.”

“George, listen—do you know where we got our dog?”

“Figgy? Um . . . no. Don’t
you
know?”

“Yes. I’m asking if you do.”

“Right. No. Ellen said you turned up with him one day. London, I think she said. You went to London, and came back with a surprise dog.”

“She never told you the name of the person I got him from, or the address?”

“No. Oh, but I remember now: she said you were driving and saw a house that you got obsessed with—”

“Did she say where? Which house?”

“No. Just a house in London. Why?”

“I’m trying to work out if there’s any way your mother could have that information.”

“I don’t think so, no,” says George.

Olwen, despite living in London herself, is part of my offline, post-London life. She might be the only person that Anne doesn’t know I know. I’ve never followed her or communicated with her on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. I remember asking my anonymous caller if she was Olwen, but I don’t think I mentioned “Brawn.”

There’s a good chance Anne Donbavand knows neither Olwen’s surname nor her address.

“Thanks, George.”

“You’re very welcome. Justine?”

“Yes?”

“Are you still in my house?”

“Yes.”

“I’m outside yours, just about to knock on the door. I emailed Ellen from Lionel’s boat. She didn’t answer straightaway, so I emailed Alex—I found a message from him in your inbox and I replied to it. He said I could come over. It’s weird and kind of symmetrical that we’re at each other’s houses, isn’t it?”

“Yes. George, I have to go. Tell Alex I’m going to call him in about five or ten minutes, okay? It’s important, so make sure he picks up the phone.”

“I will see to it. Don’t worry. Justine?”

“Yes?”

“There’s an enormous hole in your garden.”

“I know, George. I really need to go.”

“No problem,” he says cheerfully. “Maybe I’ll see you later when you get home?”

“Um . . . yes, maybe. Bye.”

I hang up, praying he used the word “home” because it’s where I live, not because he wants to live there too from now on. Even if he does, I can’t worry about it now—can’t worry about anything beyond the immediate danger of Anne Donbavand murdering me and interring my body beneath a terrible poem. I must focus on keeping myself and my loved ones alive.

I pick up the phone again, then realize I don’t know Olwen’s number. I had it stored on my mobile. I dial directory inquiries. “Can you put me through to Brawn—B-R-A-W-N—house name Germander, number 8 Panama Row, London?”

“Checking that for you now,” says the bored voice on the other end of the line. “I’ve got a Brawn at 8 Panama Row, initial O.”

“That’s the one. Put me through. Thanks.”

Please be in, Olwen. Please, please.

“Hello?”

“Olwen, is that you?”

“Justine? Are you okay? Are you crying?”

“No.”
Yes. With relief.

“What’s the matter? Is it Figgy?”

“No. No, he’s fine. I can’t explain now, but . . . Olwen, I know this is too much to ask, but can I come and stay with you—me and my family? I’d go to a hotel but I don’t know how long it’d be for, and Alex and I are so stretched anyway with the mortgage—we’d run out of money in a few weeks.” I’m babbling, and probably not making much sense, but I have to try and explain a bit or she’ll think I’m unforgivably presumptuous. “I’d ask someone else—someone I haven’t only just met—but everyone I know better than you, I can’t go to because she’s got their addresses. Yours is the only one she doesn’t know. I need to be where she can’t find me or I’ll never be able to sleep again. You’re the only one who isn’t on the list.”