The Visitors Book

by Sophie Hannah

  Whatever Alex says, there’s something wrong with our daughter. He doesn’t see it because he doesn’t want it to be true. When he’s home, she makes a special effort to be normal in front of him. She knows that if she can fool him, he’ll do his best to persuade me that I’m wrong, that this is standard teenage behavior.

  I know it’s not true. I know my daughter, and this isn’t her. This isn’t how even the most alarming teenage version of her would behave.

  Bascom and Sorrel Ingrey. It’s Ellen’s handwriting, but I don’t believe she would have made up those names. Allisande, Malachy Dodd, Garnet and Urban . . . Could she have copied it out from somewhere?

  I’m trying to work out how I can tactfully ask what prompted her to invent the alarming Perrine Ingrey, whom I resent for splattering my lovely terrace with blood and brains and celebrating with a “Ha!,” when the phone starts to ring downstairs. I would leave it, but it might be Alex. As I run to get it, I remind myself that I must call about having some more telephone points put in.

  Must. I hate that word. In my old life, it meant “Move fast! Panic! Prepare for catastrophe! Turn it into success by the end of the day! Keep two people happy who want incompatible outcomes! Be brilliant or lose everything!” Fifty times a day, “must” could have signified any of those things, or all of them simultaneously.

  I stop at the bottom of the stairs, out of breath. I refuse to hurry. There is no urgency about anything. Calm down. Remember your mission and purpose. If you’re fretting, you’re not doing Nothing.

  I’m not going to worry about missing Alex’s call. And if it isn’t him on the phone, I’m not going to wonder why he hasn’t called today. I know he’s fine—being fawned over by acolytes in Berlin. Discussing the Ellen situation with him can wait.

  Worries are pack animals as well as cowards: too flimsy and insubstantial to do much damage alone, they signal for backup. Pretty soon there’s a whole gang of them circling you and you can’t push your way out. Stuff the lot of them, I think as I cross the wide black and white tiled hall on my way to the kitchen. I’m lucky to be happy and to have this amazing new life. I don’t have much to be anxious about, certainly not compared to most people. There are only two points of concern in my current existence: Ellen’s odd behavior, and—though I’m ashamed to be obsessing about it still—the house by the side of the North Circular. 8 Panama Row.

  I’ve dreamed about it often since the day we moved, dreamed of trying to get there—on foot, by car, by train—but never quite making it. The closest I got was in a taxi. The driver pulled up, and I climbed out and stood on the pavement. The front door of the house opened, and then I woke up.

  I pick up the phone and say, “Hello?,” remembering Alex’s pretending-to-be-serious insistence that we must all from now on greet anyone who calls with the words “Speedwell House, good morning/afternoon/evening.” “That’s how people who live in big country piles answer their phones,” he said. “I saw it on . . . something, I’m sure.”

  Our new house’s solitary phone is not portable. It’s next to the kitchen window, attached to the wall by a curly wire that makes a plasticky squeaking sound when pulled. Finally at the age of forty-three I have a big, comfy sofa in a kitchen that isn’t too small, and I’m unable to reach it to sit down when I make or answer a phone call. I have to stand and look at it instead, while imagining my legs are aching more than they are. My mobile can’t help me; there’s no reception inside the house yet. Coverage seems only to start at the end of our drive.

  “Hello,” I say again.

  “It’s me.”

  Not Alex. A woman whose voice I don’t recognize. Someone arrogant enough to think that she and I are on “It’s me” terms when we aren’t. It should be easy enough to work out who, once she’s said a few more words. I know lots of arrogant women, or at least I did in London. Arrogant men, too. I hoped never to hear from any of them again.

  “Sorry, it’s a terrible line,” I lie. “I can hardly hear you.” How embarrassing. Come on, brain, tell me who this is before I’m forced to reveal how little this person matters to me. Alex’s mum? No. My stepmother? Definitely not.

  “It’s me. I can hear you perfectly.”

  A woman, for sure. With a voice as hard as granite and a slight . . . not quite lisp, but something similar. As if her tongue is impeded by her teeth, or she’s speaking while trying to stop a piece of chewing gum from falling out of her mouth. Is she disguising her voice? Why would she do that if she wants me to recognize her?

  “I’m sorry, this line is appalling. I honestly have no idea who I’m speaking to,” I say.

  Silence. Then a sigh, and a weary “I think we’re beyond lying by now, aren’t we? I know you came here to scare me, but it won’t work.”

  I hold the phone away from my ear and stare at it. This is absurd. I’ve never heard this woman’s voice before. She is nobody I know.

  “This is a misunderstanding. I don’t know who you think you’re speaking to—”

  “Oh, I know exactly who I’m speaking to.”

  “Well . . . lucky you. I wish I did. I don’t recognize your voice. If I know you, you’re going to have to remind me. And I’ve no idea what you mean, but I promise you, I didn’t come here to scare you or anyone else.”

  “I’ve been frightened of you for too long. I’m not running away again.”

  I lean my forehead against the kitchen wall. “Look, shall we sort this out? It shouldn’t take long. Who are you, and who do you think I am? Because whoever you think I am, I’m not. You’re going to have to give your speech again to someone else.” I should have hung up on her by now, but I’m holding out for a logical resolution. I want to hear her say, “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I thought you were my abusive ex-boyfriend / delinquent child / tyrannical religious cult leader.”

  “I know who you are,” says my anonymous caller. “And you know who I am.”

  “No, you evidently don’t, and no I don’t. My name is Justine Merrison. You’re delivering your message to the wrong person.”

  “I’m not going to be intimidated by you,” she says.

  Should have hung up. Still should. “Good. Excellent,” I say briskly. “Any chance that I could not be intimidated by you either? Like, no more crank calls? Is your No Intimidation policy one-way, or could it be reciprocal?”

  I’m making jokes. How bizarre. If someone had asked me before today how I’d feel if an unpleasant-sounding stranger called and threatened me, I would probably have said I’d be frightened, but I’m not. This is too stupid. I’m too preoccupied by other, more important things, and even some unbelievably trivial ones, like the list pinned to the cork board on the wall opposite: tasks Alex has assigned to me. Musts. Call a landscape gardener, find a window cleaner, get the car valeted. Alex is trying to insist I use a local firm he found called The Car Men, because of the Bizet connection. He’s written “CAR MEN!!” in capitals at the top of the list. The exclamation marks are intended to remind me that our Range Rover is a biohazard on wheels.

  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 call me and say those things? Who would imagine I must recognize 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 awkwardly 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 favor of impromptu circle-singing sessions. I chose Ellen’s school because of its unusual flexibility, then quickly realized 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 is 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 Ingre
y. 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.