A Game for All the Family

by Sophie Hannah

  ‘My name isn’t Sandie.’

  ‘Tell me what you’re planning to do to my family!’

  Ellen starts to sob. Alex moves to comfort her, but she runs from the room.

  ‘You’re mixing me up with another person,’ I say, detached from my words as if it’s someone else speaking. ‘I’m not Sandie. My name’s Justine Merrison.’

  ‘Don’t lie. I know your name and you know mine.’

  ‘No. Neither of those things is true.’

  ‘Shut up! This is your last chance.’ The words come out like a controlled scream. She’s hysterical, but trying to keep her voice down. Trying not to be overheard, perhaps? ‘Your last chance, and your family’s too,’ she says. ‘I’ll bury you all. Go home, Sandie, if you want to live.’

  ‘First things first,’ says DC Euan Luce. ‘Your two phone numbers, landline and mobile – who has them? Let’s make a comprehensive list.’

  He’s in his late forties and comprehensive about everything. When he arrived – an hour earlier than expected, with no apology – he spent so long wiping his feet on the mat that I thought we’d have to have our conversation standing in the hall.

  Alex and Ellen were getting ready to leave, with Figgy rolling over their feet. Luce had to wait while I Googled local vets and brands of worming tablets, and made a list for Alex of everything he needs to buy at Pet World after dropping Ellen at school.

  Now he’s asking me questions in the lounge, in what he plainly regards as less-than-ideal circumstances. I had to bring Figgy in here with us so that he didn’t try to follow Alex and Ellen out of the house. Luce has tutted several times at Figgy’s harmless pottering around the room. I’m guessing he has zero experience of dogs, and a wife who jumps to smooth down curtain pleats every time she hears his key in the door.

  He must be this uptight for a reason. Maybe he has a mountain of a workload that follows him around in his mind like a big bully. I was the same when I had a career. My days often started with a strong desire to kill my poor postman, and tear up letters without opening or reading them, because the mail had fallen messily all over the hall floor. When you work too hard for too long, you start to suspect innocent objects and people of conspiring against you.

  I don’t know why Luce is saying, ‘First things first’ when it’s not ‘first’ at all. He’s spent the last half hour asking me for pointless details: my full name, Alex’s, Ellen’s; how long we’ve lived at Speedwell House, where we lived before, what Alex and I do.

  ‘I do Nothing,’ I told him gleefully, and enjoyed watching him recoil. I stare at the strange, protruding chins of visiting policemen. Luce’s is separated from the rest of his face by a deep crease and has a foldaway look about it – as if it ought to be pushed back in or extended more fully.

  His was the best reaction I’ve had so far to my ‘I do Nothing’ announcement. I wish I’d given him a longer, fuller answer: I can’t remember the last time I was in a hurry. If every clock and electronic device in the house died on the spot and I had no way of knowing what time it was, it wouldn’t matter in the slightest. Guess how many people will seek me out today, in person, by email or by phone? None!

  Well, none apart from my psycho caller. Come to think of it, she doesn’t count, since I’m not the person she’s after. I hope this is as clear to Euan Luce as it is to me. I’ve told him everything she’s said to me since her campaign of intimidation started, word for word. I did more than tell him; I re-enacted each phone call for him, imitating the crazy woman’s voice, mimicking her tone as best I could.

  ‘Let’s start with the landline,’ says DC Luce. ‘Who knows that number?’

  ‘My father and stepmother, Alex’s parents. A few old friends.’

  ‘How many?’

  I tot them up in my head. ‘Seven.’

  ‘And you can give me names and contact details?’

  ‘Well, I can, but I promise you none of them—’

  ‘You can’t promise me anything,’ he dismisses me briskly. ‘You don’t know what anyone’s capable of, however many years you’ve known them. So only eleven people know the phone number for this house?’

  ‘A few more than eleven. Ellen’s school obviously has all our details.’

  ‘Doctor, dentist?’

  ‘Yes. Utility companies, our bank, credit card people. I can’t think of anyone else.’

  ‘All right. And your mobile number? Who knows that?’

  ‘Hardly anyone. My father and stepmother, and Ellen’s school.’

  ‘Not your husband’s parents?’

  ‘No. They have his mobile number.’

  ‘What about your mother?’

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘And the seven old friends?’

  ‘They’re all people I … Figgy, down. Come here. Sorry.’

  Tut tut.

  Figgy is oblivious to the disapproval being beamed his way. He sticks his head under the sofa and wags his tail as if he’s seen something under there that he’s excited about.

  ‘I see those friends once a year at most,’ I tell Luce. ‘They wouldn’t need to ring me on my mobile, so I didn’t give them the number.’

  ‘So if you’re meeting somewhere, you don’t swap mobile numbers? That’s unusual.’

  I might as well tell him; there’s no reason not to. ‘This mobile’s very new. When we moved from London to here, I ditched my old phone and number – deliberately. I didn’t want anyone from my London life to be able to contact me.’

  ‘How come?’ DC Luce looks up from his note-making.

  ‘I was sick of them all. I wanted to shake them off.’

  ‘Without exception?’

  Except Ben Lourenco.

  ‘Yes. All my friends – my entire social circle – were TV industry people. They all kind of merged into one after a while – in my mind, I mean.’

  ‘Did something bad happen to you in London?’ asks Luce. ‘Is that why you moved?’

  ‘I don’t mean to be uncooperative, but this London angle’s a waste of time. Honestly. No one I knew there has my new mobile number. This is nothing to do with London.’

  ‘You’re not in a position to know that for certain,’ Luce says. He’s allowed to be sure of things; I’m not. ‘Your husband and daughter know your mobile phone number, yes?’

  I nod.

  ‘All right.’ He writes in his notebook. ‘And anyone who knows it could have passed it on to someone else – there’s no way we can know who, or how many, so if we’re looking for pointers we’d better concentrate on you.’

  ‘That’s a waste of time. These calls have nothing to do with me. Can’t you trace them?’ Above my head, the ceiling creaks. I hear raised voices, and the words ‘brush’ and ‘minutes’. Alex and Ellen. I thought they’d gone but obviously not. They’re arguing about what constitutes adequate cleaning of teeth. Figgy looks at me and barks. Do we need a toothbrush for him, and special dog toothpaste? I’ll have to ring Olwen and ask.

  ‘There’s someone else who’s got my mobile number,’ I tell Luce. ‘Olwen Brawn, Figgy’s breeder. But she’s not our woman. She didn’t know me or my number until yesterday, and she has a completely different voice.’

  ‘I’ll make a note of her anyway. As for tracing the calls – yes, we will, in the light of the death threats.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It’s interesting that you say the calls have nothing to do with you.’

  ‘Not interesting,’ I contradict him. ‘Just stating a fact.’

  ‘You’re the one receiving the calls.’

  ‘Yes, but they’re not intended for me. They’re intended for someone called Sandie.’

  ‘Which isn’t your name and bears no resemblance to it.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Anyone ever called you Sandie?’

  ‘Yes.’ I wait for him to look up in surprise. ‘The woman making these calls. She called me Sandie this morning, twice. No one else has ever called me Sandie because it’s not my name.’ />
  ‘All right, I’ll rephrase the question. Does the name Sandie have a particular significance for you? Was it a childhood nickname, maybe? Does it strike a chord, bring anything to mind?’

  ‘Um … the movie Grease? Olivia Newton-John, John Travolta.’

  ‘How is that film significant to you?’

  ‘It isn’t. I like it in the way that I like lots of films. Look, if I’d had a Grease-themed fling with a man who called me Sandie, I would mention it, wouldn’t I? I can think of no reason at all why anyone would address me as Sandie apart from the actual reason, which I’ve already told you: this woman has me confused with someone else.’

  ‘Though she knows you lived in Muswell Hill and worked in television. And from what she said about graves, she knows that your family consists of two adults and one child.’

  ‘Yes.’ I want to scream with frustration. ‘Can we not waste time telling each other what we already know? I’m sure you’re busy. Yes, this woman knows some things about me. I’m not denying that. And either because of those things, or in spite of them, she thinks I’m Sandie, which I’m not – scary Sandie who’s determined to destroy her. She’s clever, you see. She’s the one intent on scaring and intimidating me. She’s justifying her desire to attack with the lie that I’ve done it to her first, or Sandie has.’

  DC Luce grimaces. ‘Odd way to scare someone,’ he says.

  ‘I disagree. I think it’s a bloody excellent way to scare someone. You’ve got your basic, always-effective death threat – “I’ll kill you and your family” – with an added layer of fucking with the person’s head. You accuse them of doing to you precisely what you’re trying to do to them so that they’ll feel needlessly guilty, paranoid and confused as fuck, as well as mortally afraid. They’ll grow more and more convinced that they must be to blame for what’s happening to them, even though no evidence is provided. It’s quite brilliant if you think about it.’

  Luce shakes his head. ‘Sorry. I don’t see it.’

  Please crap down his trouser leg, Figgy.

  I smile and say, ‘You might not see it, DC Luce, but I’m living it.’

  ‘Following your logic, though, she’s not aiming this at you, she’s aiming it at Sandie. Sandie may have tried to terrorise her.’

  ‘True, but … when I tell her over and over that I’m not Sandie, she flat-out contradicts me and tells me I am. So maybe I’m the intended target after all.’ I’m trying to work it out as I speak. ‘How can she have such a strong, intimate-sounding grudge against Sandie and fail to realise I’m a different person? I don’t buy that. It’s more likely to be someone who hates me and wants to mess with my head as much as possible before …’ I don’t want to say before what. I’d rather not think about it.

  ‘But at the risk of blowing my own trumpet,’ I continue, ‘nobody hates me that much – not enough to do what this woman’s doing. Maybe she’s someone who was mildly pissed off with me, and also angry with someone called Sandie, and she had a psychotic breakdown and fused us into the same person. Schizophrenemy: when you merge two enemies in your mind to make only one.’

  DC Luce looks unimpressed.

  ‘Or maybe we’re crazy trying to find any logic in it at all,’ I say. ‘She might be out-and-out mad for all we know. Foaming-at-the-mouth insane – in which case, tomorrow she could well ring up and call me Gertrude or Montgomery.’

  Figgy springs up, in alert mode. He tries to bark and sounds hoarse. A few seconds later I hear the front door close quietly. ‘It’s just Alex and Ellen setting off for school, Figgs. Relax.’ I keep my voice unemotional, embarrassed to be talking to a dog in front of a policeman.

  ‘Your husband’s name is Alex,’ says DC Luce.

  ‘Yes. I know.’

  ‘Short for Alexander?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Sandie’s a common short form of Alexander.’

  I laugh. ‘Try calling Alex “Sandie” and see what happens.’

  ‘Has anybody ever—’

  ‘No. Whoever Sandie is, it’s not Alex. Let’s fast forward what’s coming next, shall we? Yes, Alex travels a lot for work – he’s a very-much-in-demand opera singer who sings all over the world and is away as often as he’s at home. No, he doesn’t have another woman who knows him as Sandie and who’s hatching a plan to kill him, his wife and his daughter.’

  ‘I’d like to ask your husband if anyone has ever addressed him as Sandie,’ says Luce.

  ‘They haven’t.’

  ‘He’s just gone out, has he? Do you know how long he’ll be?’

  I groan. ‘The caller addressed me as Sandie. Not Alex. How often do you ring a friend and then, when the friend’s spouse answers the phone, think, “Oh, well, even though Susan’s answered, I’ll just say, ‘Hello, Geoff’ anyway because she’s Geoff’s wife and that’s close enough.”’

  ‘How long is your husband likely to be out?’ Luce asks again.

  Allisande Ingrey. Sandie could be short for Allisande.

  ‘Ms Merrison?’

  Shut up for a minute. Let me try and work out what this means.

  How can it mean anything? Allisande Ingrey is a fictional character. It’s another irrelevant coincidence, like Sandie being a diminutive of Alexander.

  ‘Justine? How long is your husband—’

  ‘Instead of scouring our lives for a cause or connection that isn’t there, how about just tracing the calls? How long will it take? I mean, could you do it this morning – could you be doing it now, instead of waiting for Alex to come back so that you can ask him pointless questions? He’ll be gone a good while, I’d imagine. He’s dropping Ellen at school, then doing dog-related errands and …’

  I stop as the person whose morning activities I’m describing appears in the doorway. ‘Alex? I thought you’d taken Ellen to school. What’s wrong?’ His face is tight and pale.

  ‘Where is she?’ he says. ‘I can’t find her.’

  ‘You can’t find your daughter?’ asks DC Luce.

  ‘I took a call from my agent. When I’d finished, Ellen had vanished. She’s nowhere in the house, I can’t see her in the garden. Have you seen her?’

  No, but I heard her close the front door behind her. So did Figgy.

  ‘I’m sure there’s no need to panic, Mr Colley,’ DC Luce stands up, ready for action.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘I know where she is.’

  I find Ellen down by the wall at the bottom of the hill, as close to the river as she can get without leaving our land. She’d have made sure to be here in time to see Lionel’s boat make its return trip.

  She’s crying. Copiously but silently, as if she hasn’t noticed the tears streaming down her face. Or the cold. She’s got no coat, but she’s not shivering, though the sight of her in her thin white blouse and almost-as-thin green cardigan makes me shiver.

  Where is her coat now? If George Donbavand was expelled for stealing it, wouldn’t he also be made to return it? In which case, why hasn’t Ellen brought it home?

  I take off my coat and wrap it around her. She doesn’t seem to notice.

  ‘Is she there?’ Alex is behind me, with Figgy on the lead. I don’t answer. If I can hear him, he will soon be able to see Ellen for himself. I need to stay focused on what’s in front of me: the scene of a terrible tragedy, judging by my daughter’s face.

  ‘Ellen? What’s wrong? Has something happened?’

  ‘Leave me alone.’

  ‘No. You’re going to need to tell me what’s wrong.’

  She looks at me coldly. ‘Who even are you?’ she says.

  ‘Who am I?’ I’m not sure what I was expecting her to say, but it wasn’t that.

  ‘I know you’re my mother because we have the same face, but maybe that’s all I know.’

  ‘Ellen, what are you talking about? How have I turned into the bad guy?’

  ‘The freak who keeps ringing you, who you say you don’t know – she called you Sandie.’

  ‘Yes, she did.’
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br />   ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. People don’t just ring up and call you by a different name for no reason.’

  Great. First DC Luce and now Ellen. ‘Not usually, no,’ I say, ‘but apparently now and again they do.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Alex asks.

  ‘I’m not and have never been Sandie, Ellen. You’ve been to Granddad and Julia’s house. You’ve seen my old school reports with my name on them.’

  ‘El, what’s going on here?’ Alex sounds angry. ‘You’re surely not questioning Mum’s identity?’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘It’s understandable. Anyone’d take the word of an anonymous stalker who makes death threats over that of the mother they’ve known all their life.’

  Figgy looks up from the grass he’s been chewing and makes a mewling noise. I know how he feels.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mum.’

  Not good enough. Mothers are supposed to be all-forgiving. I’ll have to admit defeat and relinquish my anger eventually, but not yet.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Call me Sandie,’ I say in a monotone. ‘Everyone else does.’

  ‘Why do we never go to Granddad and Julia’s house?’

  ‘We don’t never go. We go sometimes.’

  ‘Hardly ever. When we do go, they always say they’d like to see more of us. You pretend to agree, but then you never arrange it. You still haven’t invited them here, and we’ve lived here for five months. And that time Granddad asked if they could come and stay for my birthday and you said someone else had baggsied the guest room – that was a lie. You just didn’t want him to come.’

  I exhale slowly. ‘El, if you want to have this discussion, we can have it. Soon.’

  ‘But not now,’ she says bitterly, as if this sort of disappointment is what she’s come to expect from me.

  ‘No, not now. For now, this will have to do: my reasons for keeping Granddad and Julia at a distance have nothing to do with me being called Sandie, because I’m not and never have been. My name has always been Justine Merrison.’

  ‘All right, you’ve made your point,’ Ellen snaps. ‘Forget I said it.’

  Oh, easy. No problem at all. In ten minutes’ time, I will have no memory whatsoever of being accused by my daughter of faking my identity.