‘His name’s George.’ Ellen rolls her eyes again. ‘Yes, he’s a boy. Big deal.’
‘I’m just surprised,’ I say. ‘Most people your age pretend to hate the opposite sex, unless they’re …’ Er, no, let’s not take the conversation in that direction, Justine.
I mustn’t ask if there’s any element of boyfriend/girlfriend to the friendship. It wouldn’t go down well, and it doesn’t matter. ‘What’s George’s surname?’
Ellen’s eyes fix on me. ‘Why do you want to know?’
‘No reason. I wondered, that’s all.’ What have I done wrong? Let me rephrase that, even though no one’s hearing it: I’ve done nothing wrong. So what does Ellen think I’ve done?
‘Donbavand,’ she mutters, so faintly that I have to ask her to repeat it. And then, because it’s an unusual name, I ask her to spell it. This all takes longer than I want it to.
‘And … George was expelled?’
Ellen nods. Her expression hardens, and I see how furious she is. Anger radiates from her body in waves. ‘Yesterday. He did nothing wrong. I told them that, but no one believed me. They think he stole my coat, but he didn’t. I gave it to him – at the end of last week. I said he could keep it. It was … like a gift.’
‘You gave George your coat as a present?’
‘Yes. He lost his. It must have been somewhere at school – George doesn’t go anywhere else – but he couldn’t find it and he was literally white-faced with horror at the thought of going home without one. So I gave him mine – which isn’t girly-looking and could easily be a boy’s coat,’ Ellen adds defensively, as if my main issue with this story is likely to revolve around the gendered clothing debate.
‘I’m sorry, right?’ she snaps. ‘I knew you’d buy me another one if I said I’d lost mine.’
‘Okay. And …?’ I wait.
Nothing. The shut-down face.
‘I was going to pretend I’d lost it, but then the weather warmed up a bit, so … I put off saying anything.’
I sip my tea, wondering what and how much she’s still withholding. We both know there’s a lot more she could tell me. ‘So … I’d buy you a new coat if you lost your old one, but Mrs Donbavand wouldn’t buy another one for George?’
Ellen’s mouth sets in a firm line, as if she’s trying not to say something. ‘Mrs Donbavand isn’t Mrs. She’s Professor.’
‘Okay. Well, with her PhD and all, she presumably isn’t on the breadline, and knows how to find the coat section of a department store?’
‘She—’ Ellen stops as the phone on the kitchen wall starts to ring.
I sigh. I’d suggest leaving it, but it might be Alex. I’d like to hear his voice, if only because it will sound jollier than mine at the moment.
‘Hello?’ I tuck the phone under my ear so that I don’t have to hold it in my hand. That’s how resentful I am of having to stand in this spot every time I talk on the landline: I’m not willing to make any extra physical effort. Not being able to sit on the sofa is bad enough.
‘Are you still pretending you don’t know who I am?’ says a voice that is – unfortunately – familiar.
‘I wasn’t pretending. I genuinely don’t know who you are. Who are you? Tell me.’
‘Pack up your possessions and go home.’
Possessions? For some reason I picture an elaborately carved wooden trunk full of jewels.
‘Nooo,’ I say, deliberately drawing it out. ‘You pack up your plan to hound me with threatening phone calls, and fuck off. I am at home. This is my home now – not that it’s any of your business.’
Ellen is mouthing, ‘What?’ at me.
‘You’re trying to scare me, like you always have before, but it won’t work this time,’ says my anonymous caller. ‘Am I supposed to wonder if you’ll destroy me? Is that it? Are you hoping I’ll drive myself mad, not knowing when you’re going to attack?’
‘I’m nowhere near as ambitious as you seem to think,’ I tell her. ‘I’m hoping you’ll get off the phone, never ring this house again, and have a happy and productive life thereafter. How about that? Does that sound good to you?’
‘Get out!’ the woman shrieks. It’s such a shrill, violent sound that I gasp. Ellen looks startled.
‘Don’t make me hurt you,’ stammers the voice, quieter now. ‘Please don’t, because … I don’t want to have to. I’m a peaceful person.’
‘Are you sure? That’s not the impression I’m getting.’
‘Go back to your TV executive high life in London. Before it’s too late.’
‘I shouldn’t have told her to fuck off,’ I say for the third time since Ellen and I set off in the car. ‘Or been sarcastic. I provoked her. Stupid.’ The drive to school consists almost entirely of quiet country roads overhung by canopies of trees, with bright winter sun dropping patches of light through the leaves; scattered gold on the tarmac. It’s like speeding through a series of beautifully illuminated green tunnels. I wish the inside of my head were as lovely and peaceful as what I see all around me.
‘Why wasn’t I more temperate?’ I ask pointlessly. And why didn’t I have the gumption to produce a plausible lie to explain the threatening phone call to Ellen? She’s unhappy enough already, and now I’ve added to her burden by telling her about the stranger who has targeted me for persecution. I should have told Alex first. I’m sure the first thing he’ll say is, ‘Let’s make sure Ellen doesn’t get wind of this.’ Too late.
As someone who cocks up all the time, I know exactly what I have and have not done wrong. I’ve never tried to scare or intimidate a woman with a funny sort of lisp. Or anybody at all, for that matter.
Yet she expected me to recognise her voice. Who the hell is she?
Go back to your TV executive high life in London. That’s too close to be a coincidence. My career – ugh, how I loathe that word now – was in television, though I’d never have described myself as an ‘executive’. This woman knows where I used to live, and she knows what line of work I was in.
‘You’re never temperate,’ Ellen says. ‘You’re a zealot. Please don’t be a zealot when we get to school. I’m the one who has to go there every day. Can’t you just drop me off and then go home?’
‘No.’
‘Mum, please!’
‘No, Ellen. If this George boy has been expelled for stealing your coat and he didn’t do it, we need to sort it out.’
‘I thought you were determined to do nothing ever again.’
‘Yes – apart from have fun. I’m going to enjoy getting George unexpelled.’ It will take my mind off the horrible phone calls.
‘It won’t work,’ says Ellen. ‘Don’t you think I’ve tried? No one wants to listen.’
‘Well, they’re going to listen to me whether they want to or not. I suspect they don’t believe you and think you’re covering for George: he stole your coat, but he’s your best friend, so you’re trying to get him off the hook. To be fair to them … a coat is a pretty unusual present.’
‘I’m an unusual person. It’s one of my main selling points.’
‘You are and it is. But it sounds as if George’s mum is even more unusual. The professor. Before the lunatic rang, you were saying she wouldn’t have bought George a new coat – why not?’
‘I don’t know! Ask her.’
‘Why are you so angry with me, Ellen?’
‘I’m not angry with you. I just …’ Her voice cracks. She turns her face away. I can hear her crying, or trying hard not to. I fantasise about smashing my car into the face of whoever has made her so miserable. Is it George’s mother? Mrs Griffiths, the head? The more the merrier. If they’ve made my daughter cry I’ll mow them all down – in my dreams, at least.
‘It’s okay, El. If yelling at me makes you feel better, I don’t mind. I won’t take it personally.’
‘George was scared. He was actually frightened! I’ve never seen anybody look like that apart from in a film, when a murderer or a monster’s chasing them.’
Great. Thanks to my aversion to any and all censorship, my daughter knows what pure terror looks like. If Alex and I hadn’t let her watch so many 18-certificate films, she might still have her coat, and I might be at home, easing myself into another day of pleasurable inactivity. Yesterday I tried meditation for the first time. I’m not sure how well it went. I lay on the chaise longue in the garden room for nearly an hour and a half, but the silent mantra repeating itself in my head was not a peaceful one. The word ‘fuck’ kept cropping up: fuck your two-page treatments, fuck your series bibles, fuck your show-running and your brainstorming, fuck your greenlights and your BAFTAs – up the arse, actually. Fuck the BBC, fuck ITV, fuck Sky …
Something went wrong, clearly, even though I followed the instructions in my meditation book to the letter. It said, ‘Don’t put any energy into thinking, but if thoughts come into your mind, let them come. Observe them from a distance as they drift in and out. Don’t push them away.’ The book doesn’t specify what to do if only a load of fucks turn up.
And now here I am, the very next day, driving to school to cause trouble. Maybe yelling at some teachers for half an hour or so will purge me of all my repressed anger, and my meditations thereafter will be obscenity-free. My life will be a smooth-surfaced pool of tranquility.
‘I gave him my coat thinking the worst that would happen was you’d moan at me for losing it,’ says Ellen. ‘If I’d known he’d get expelled, I wouldn’t have given it to him. And now I’ll never see him again.’
‘Yes, you will.’
‘I won’t. You don’t understand.’
‘None of this is your fault, El. You did a kind thing. But … George wasn’t scared of going home with a different coat?’
‘No. Mine was black and padded; his was a black duffel coat. He said his mum wouldn’t notice the difference.’
‘And his dad? Does he have a dad living with him?’
‘Yeah. His dad would notice, he said, but there’s no way he’d say anything.’
‘Right. So the dad’s scared of the mum too?’
‘I don’t know. George didn’t say.’
‘Well, he must be, mustn’t he? Unless George is the one he’s afraid of. Is George scary?’
‘George is the least scary person in the world. George is just … amazing.’ Ellen sighs.
‘It’s interesting,’ I say. ‘A mother who would go ballistic if her son told her he’d lost his coat, but who, at the same time, doesn’t notice if he comes home with someone else’s.’
‘She’s a weirdo.’
‘What else do you know about her? What’s she a professor of?’
‘Assyriology. Which has nothing to do with Syria.’
‘I know.’ I didn’t, but I see no need to admit to my ignorance. I bet Professor Donbavand doesn’t know how many times Peter Florrick had sex with hooker Amber Madison in The Good Wife. I do: eighteen times.
We all have our different specialisms.
‘Her name’s Anne,’ says Ellen. ‘I hate her.’ She clenches her fists in her lap. ‘If it weren’t for her stupid rules, George could email me and text me.’
I hear in her voice how much this boy means to her. Yet she hasn’t mentioned his name before today. Why didn’t she tell me about him? I must ask Alex if he’s heard the name George Donbavand, though I know what the answer will be.
‘We could chat on Instagram, FaceTime each other, hang around together outside school,’ Ellen goes on. ‘She won’t let him do anything.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I say. ‘George will soon be un-expelled. Does he have brothers and sisters?’
‘One sister. Fleur. She’s older – first year sixth form.’
‘Same rules for Fleur?’ I ask. ‘No emails, no texting? Does the mother really not let them visit friends?’
‘Really,’ says Ellen. ‘She knows most parents let their kids use the internet, and she thinks George and Fleur would see bits of it if they went to other people’s houses. And no one can ever go round to their house because she’s always working on her stupid Assyriology and needs the house to be silent all the time.’
‘What does George’s dad do?’
‘Creeps round the house like a mute slave, George says, doing her bidding.’
‘No, I mean work. What’s his job?’ I hate myself for wanting to know this. What will the answer tell me? He’ll be a lawyer, or an architect, or he’ll work in a shoe shop. Whatever work he does, he’s an idiot who hasn’t realised that doing Nothing is the only way to save your soul.
‘He also works at Exeter University,’ says Ellen. ‘I don’t know what he does there.’
‘Well, they sound like a screwed-up family.’ Come to think of it, the Donbavands sound almost too dysfunctional to be true. ‘Did George tell you all this? Are you sure he’s not exaggerating?’
I look at Ellen to see why she’s not answering. She’s crying again. ‘And now George hasn’t even got school, or me to talk to. It’ll be even worse for him that Fleur’s still going every day. Though they’ll probably expel her next – for dropping a pencil on the floor or something.’
I nearly miss the unmarked crossroads ahead, and have to brake fast. There’s nothing coming at us horizontally, so I drive on. Where is everyone? I’ve thought that so many times since moving to Devon. Why don’t Devonians clog up their roads all day long the way Londoners do? They can’t all be confined to their homes by Professor Anne Donbavand.
‘Why would school want to expel Fleur?’ I ask Ellen.
‘Forget it,’ she murmurs.
‘I never forget anything. I’m like an elephant. Why would they?’
‘Vindictiveness. Why do they want to expel George, when I’ve told them over and over that he didn’t steal my coat? That phone call, before …’ She stops suddenly. Starts biting her thumbnail, something she hasn’t done for ages.
‘The anonymous phone call?’ I ask. ‘What, Ellen? You have to tell me.’
‘I think it was school. Because of George.’
‘School?’ I pull over to the side of the road, cricking my neck in the process. ‘You think someone at school is threatening me, telling me to go back to London? Who would do that?’
‘I don’t know who. If I knew, I’d say the person’s name and not just “school”, wouldn’t I?’
‘But … if you’re saying it at all, you must have some idea.’ Another unmarked crossroads I wasn’t prepared for. It would never have occurred to me in a million years to connect the two creepy phone calls with Ellen’s friend being expelled.
What the hell is going on here?
‘Ellen, you need to tell me everything you know. This isn’t funny.’
‘I don’t know anything.’
‘Then tell me what you suspect.’
‘I’ve told you! I think whoever’s ringing and trying to drive us away is someone from school. One of the teachers.’
‘And you also think the school wants rid of George and Fleur, and they’ll do whatever it takes to achieve that, even framing them for offences they haven’t committed?’
‘Yes,’ says Ellen with feeling.
I’ve never heard anything so unlikely in my life. Yet my daughter believes it.
‘Why?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Oh, come on, Ellen, you can do better than that. I need to know everything before I go in there and kick off.’
‘I don’t want you to kick anything!’ She covers her face with her hands. ‘I want you to drop me off and go home! There’s nothing you can do. They won’t take George back, and we’ll have to put up with more horrible phone calls.’
It takes me a few seconds to work out what she means. ‘The horrible calls I’m getting are because you stuck up for George?’
She seems to be thinking about it. ‘I don’t know,’ she mutters after a while. ‘I don’t know … everything.’
‘Then tell me everything you do know, even if it’s not much. Please, Ellen. What are you keeping back?’
A long
silence. Then she says, ‘You’re getting the calls because you’re picking up the phone. It’d be too obvious if they asked for me, but it must be about me. You haven’t got any enemies in Devon, have you? You haven’t been making a nuisance of yourself, calling the head teacher a crazy tyrant. I have!’
Then why haven’t I been summoned to the school for an earnest talking-to? None of this adds up.
‘Whoever it is, she’s telling you to go back to London knowing you’ll take me with you,’ says Ellen. ‘I’m the one they want gone. I’m the one sticking up for George – the only one!’
I can’t bear the idea of anyone thinking of Ellen as an enemy, especially when her only crime is loyalty to her friend.
We’ll leave Kingswear. Tomorrow. Stuff the new house and the new life …
No. That’s insane. What Ellen is saying is insane. There has to be another explanation. I love my daughter, but she might be wrong.
I can’t tell her what I’m thinking; it would only make her believe I’m against her too.
‘Why would the school have it in for George and Fleur?’ I ask. ‘Are they particularly difficult pupils?’
‘No. But it’s not only the children the school gets landed with, is it? See exhibit A.’ Ellen points at me, attempting a smile. ‘Angry parent on the rampage.’
‘Right, so it’s not about George and Fleur, then? Them as individuals, I mean.’
‘It’s about the Donbavands,’ says Ellen. ‘They’re a particularly difficult family.’
Chapter 2
The Perrine Compromise, and Taking Turns
Perrine, the third daughter of Bascom and Sorrel Ingrey, was brought up in a way that could be called the very definition of compromise. Her parents – both of them equally, in full cooperation – made sure she did her homework so that she never got into trouble at school. They also encouraged her to play a musical instrument, and made sure she did the amount of flute practice that her flute teacher said would be ideal, but when after a year Perrine said she hated these lessons and didn’t want to play the stupid flute any more, her parents let her give up.
A Game for All the Family Page 5