A Game for All the Family

by Sophie Hannah

As you can hopefully see, I have become obsessed with you and your fake biography, Anne. You’ve made me part of it and I want a resolution. I’d like to know who murdered Perrine Ingrey. It’s a tribute to your creative skills that, despite knowing she isn’t real and never was, I still want to know who killed her and why.

  Yours sincerely,

  Justine Merrison

  From: jmerrison71@gmail.com

  To: ellencthatsme@gmail.com

  Dear Ellen,

  It’s George here. I am missing you more than usual. I think it’s because I know you’re not at home. Isn’t that peculiar? When you’re at Speedwell House, I can at least see the building that contains you, even if I can’t see you. I hope you come back soon. I am devising a flashing-light code that will allow us to communicate properly. It’s quite complicated and will take you a while to learn, but once you have, it will enable us to have proper conversations.

  All my love,

  George xx

  From: ellencthatsme@gmail.com

  To: jmerrison71@gmail.com

  You don’t have to start every email with ‘Dear Ellen, It’s George here’!! I know it’s you! Mum’s switched over to a different email address now anyway. Your code sounds amazing!! I’ll learn it v v quickly. I can also write it down and have a manual to refer to in case I get stuck (which I won’t!!) I can’t WAIT to get back to Speedwell House. I’m basically living in a kennels here. The dogs all stick their tongues into my cereal bowl while I’m trying to have brekkie – so gross! I wish you could come and live here with us. Failing that, I wish I could tell you where I am, but Mum says it’s important I keep it secret. You wouldn’t ever tell anyone, would you?

  Hugs and kisses and LOVE, Ellen xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

  From: jmerrison71@gmail.com

  To: ellencthatsme@gmail.com

  I wouldn’t dream of telling anyone your confidential location, of course, but you still shouldn’t tell me, much though I yearn to know. I would feel so much happier if I just knew where you were, but I can’t promise that my mother won’t find this phone. Call me a pessimist, but I suspect that one day she will. This situation of being able to converse with you whenever I want to (albeit by machine) is too good to be true, and my fourteen years on this planet have drummed into me that things which are too good to be true don’t happen to me. Apart from meeting you, that is.

  Dearest Ellen, don’t tell me where you are because I would smash a window and come and find you, and your mother is right: it wouldn’t be safe. My mother might find a way to get the information out of me. I wouldn’t put it past her to torture me (more than usual) and so it’s better if I’m not in on the secret. My only worry is how long this situation will go on for. I suppose it’s bearable for as long as we can email each other.

  All my love,

  George xx

  From: ellencthatsme@gmail.com

  To: jmerrison71@gmail.com

  Don’t worry, I think my mum’s planning to tackle the situation so that we can go back to our house – YAY! She keeps hinting she’s had THE BEST idea, and now she and the dog lady are having a whispery conversation in the garden!

  xxxxxxxxxx

  From: jmerrison71@gmail.com

  To: ellencthatsme@gmail.com

  That is heartening news. I have every confidence in your mother’s brilliant idea. After all, she had you!

  All my love,

  George xx

  16

  ‘That’s my best guess,’ Olwen concludes with a shrug. She throws a tennis ball for the dogs, using a plastic contraption that scoops it up off the floor so that she doesn’t have to bend down. ‘I can’t see who else could have murdered Perrine, but then everything I’ve said is based on the assumption that the story obeys its own internal logic. What if it doesn’t?’

  ‘I think it does,’ I say. ‘It might be a lie from start to finish, but it’s the life history Anne’s chosen for herself. She’s effectively swept the facts aside, substituted this story, and said, “This is who I am and what I’ve been through.” She’d want it to be good. Watertight. The solution you’ve come up with is the best one. It’s the only one that works, and it’s … well, if it were true it would be shocking, wouldn’t it? For Lisette Ingrey, if she were real, it would be deeply traumatic.’

  ‘Yes, and if it’s not true, it’s certainly ingenious,’ says Olwen. ‘Though a little obvious, when there’s no other possible resolution.’

  ‘Olwen, trust me, it’s not obvious. I worked in TV drama for years. Thirty twists a day crossed my desk. I thought I’d seen them all, but I could have read that story fifty times and I wouldn’t have got it.’

  ‘I reckon you would. All the clues are there, as Ellen points out in the final paragraph. She’s a talented writer, your daughter. If you ask me, the most incredible thing about the story is that a fourteen-year-old wrote it.’

  ‘No. Anne Donbavand wrote it – in her badly warped mind if not on paper. George learned it by heart and passed it on to Ellen, who wrote it down.’ The tennis ball lands near my feet, dropped from a furry jaw. Before Olwen has a chance to scoop it up, I grab it and throw it so that it lands next to Figgy: pet nepotism in action. He wouldn’t stand a chance of getting it otherwise, with all these bigger dogs around. He pounces on it and tears off to the bottom of the garden with a triumphant glint in his eye, happily unaware that he didn’t win on merit. ‘I knew from the first sentence that story wasn’t Ellen’s,’ I say.

  ‘And now we know who killed Perrine Ingrey, or we think we might—’

  ‘We do.’

  ‘But how does that help you? The only real thing in the story’s Malachy the dog, so what does it matter?’

  ‘If I’m going to stand a chance against Anne, I need to understand her delusions. On my own terms, I’m always going to lose. She doesn’t play by any rules I recognise. I need to play her game, and win. I think I can. I’m getting to understand her better.’

  ‘She’s bonkers, Justine.’ Olwen flashes me a sympathetic look as if she fears I might be too. ‘What more is there to understand?’

  ‘Some lies are purely functional,’ I say. ‘Like “No, Dad, I haven’t been smoking, honestly” or “Yes, darling, of course I’m totally faithful”. They serve a practical purpose, but the teller knows they’re not true. She doesn’t need them to be true in order to survive psychologically. Other lies are fully fleshed-out fantasies, chosen as preferable to the truth. Anne Donbavand wants it to be true that she was Lisette Ingrey, that she went through all that horror as a child.’

  ‘Why would anyone want that?’

  I sigh. ‘I could guess, but that’s all it’d be: groundless speculation.’

  ‘No! I’m not throwing it again, Wenceslas. Enough! Run along, the lot of you.’

  ‘I think Anne feels victimised,’ I say. ‘Let down by her family – far more than any collection of autobiographical details can adequately explain. She’s a clever woman. She knew she was wounded, and probably didn’t understand why. Maybe it was only the business with the dog, or maybe it was that and other things – other ordinary things. If you’re unusually sensitive, it’s possible to be destroyed by incidents that aren’t at all spectacular or dramatic – it doesn’t have to be full-on murder and horror to crush you.’

  ‘So she invented a murdered sister and another one intent on killing her as justification for the way she felt?’ Olwen asks. ‘So that no one would deny her right to feel as bad as she did, or does?’

  ‘I think so, yes. Would you risk describing your emotional pain if you thought everyone would say, “Oh, come on, it’s not as if you’ve had a hard life”? I wouldn’t.’ Didn’t. Don’t. ‘Anne needed a story that’d make anyone who heard it step back and say, “Wow. Poor you. How you must have suffered! Have all the sympathy and special treatment!” She created a new family to make up for the one that failed her so badly, and, again, her fantasy of being Lisette Ingrey pursued by the vengeful Allisande proves to be exactly what she needs. It enables her
to imprison her children, effectively, and claim it’s for their own protection. She’s overwhelmingly invested in her lie.’

  ‘You think she’s come to believe it?’

  ‘If I had to guess? Yes and no. She knows it’s not true by any consensus definition of truth. At the same time, she despises that way of defining things. Her story is truer than the reality. The facts of her life are untrue. So she doesn’t feel as if she’s lying. The story she’s shared with her husband and children and no one else – her secret name, her unverifiable, unrecorded, unwitnessed life – that’s the truth of who she is.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’m with you.’

  It’s frustrating that I can’t explain it properly. I know what I mean, but it’s hard to convey to someone else. ‘You and I and most people – we accept that fact is fact. Anne’s different. She’s not going to allow herself to be limited by reality. If she can’t alter it to suit her needs, she’d rather destroy everything. That’s why I can write her persuasive letters from now until the end of time and I’ll never get through to her. You couldn’t either. There’s only one person who maybe can.’

  ‘Who?’

  I run through the logic of it in my mind one more time before I take the plunge.

  ‘Allisande Ingrey. Her sister.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Allisande doesn’t exist? I know. That doesn’t mean no one can impersonate her. I couldn’t do it – Anne wouldn’t accept it coming from me, when I’ve been telling her over and over that I’m Justine and not Sandie – but someone else could try to be the sister she invented.’ I smile. ‘Someone with a tennis ball in one hand and a plastic … ball-throwing contraption in the other?’

  Olwen laughs. ‘Forget it, Justine. I’m not pretending to be Allisande Ingrey. I know I suggested it, but a) I suggested you should do it, not me, and b) I wasn’t being serious.’

  ‘It was a good idea.’

  ‘No. It really wasn’t.’

  ‘Will you just—’

  ‘No, Justine!’

  ‘Olwen, there’s no one else I can ask! It’s just one email – maybe a phone call. You’re right, it won’t work. There’s no way Anne’ll go for it, but …’ I lose heart before I reach the end of my pitch. ‘I don’t know, maybe I’m as crazy as she is, but I think if Allisande removed the threat – maybe even apologised for it – that might help things. Imagine if Anne were to get an email purporting to be from Allisande, saying, “Please can we meet and talk? I think I owe you a big apology.” She’d know it wasn’t me; my strategy all along has been to deny I’m Sandie. And I’ve just emailed her a long letter in which I argue that facing up to the truth is the only way forward. So why would I suddenly change tack? So, a voice Anne doesn’t recognise, claiming to be Sandie … she wouldn’t think in a million years it might be me.’

  ‘Right, but equally she would know it can’t be Allisande, who, after all, doesn’t exist!’

  ‘Maybe,’ I say. ‘But she’d love her to be real and contrite, wouldn’t she? And if I’m right about her psychology, Anne believes Allisande is real, in the murky realm that facts can’t touch. At the level of emotional truth, Allisande is very real to Anne – more so than her living, breathing relatives, probably. Either way, would Anne be able to resist an invitation to meet someone claiming to be her nonexistent sister?’

  ‘Meet? I thought it was just an email I was sending. What would happen at this meeting? What would I say? My answer’s still no, by the way. And to you, Good King Wenceslas – no more ball. I mean it.’

  ‘You’d tell Anne she was right all along. That you were young and frightened. You took your fear out on her and lost a beloved sister, when you should have supported her. Together, the two of you should have stood strong, like she wanted to, and gone to the police with the truth. However hard it was. You’d cry a bit, ideally, while saying all this.’

  ‘Cry?’ Olwen tuts, as if crying is an activity she’s long disapproved of.

  ‘Yeah. Lisette needs tears and begging – lots of both. She stuck up for what was right and fair, and she was made to feel like a traitor and a pariah.’

  ‘Justine—’

  ‘I know it’s all bullshit, Olwen. I still think a hefty dollop of fake contrition in her fake world might make Anne less dangerous to us all in the real world.’

  ‘Even if I were willing, which I’m not … wouldn’t Anne assume I was a friend of yours trying to trap her?’

  ‘You’re overlooking one crucial detail,’ I say.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You have dogs.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Allisande and Lisette both loved Malachy Dodd, remember? Isn’t it plausible that, after Malachy’s tragic death, Allisande would decide to be a dog breeder and kennels owner when she grew up?’

  ‘Oh, God!’ Olwen covers her face with her hand. ‘I hate to say it, Justine, but I’m worried all this is turning you as loopy as her.’

  Something inside me hardens. This has to happen. I’ll find someone else to play the part of Allisande Ingrey if I have to.

  ‘People believe what they want to believe, Olwen – all over the world, every single day. They ignore logic and evidence and basic human decency and believe whatever makes their life more bearable in the immediate short term. Anne will believe in Contrite Sandie because she’ll want to, desperately. It’ll be her perfect fantasy fulfilment.’

  ‘Her fantasy, from what I can gather, is her killing Allisande before Allisande kills her,’ Olwen points out.

  ‘At the moment, yes – because it hasn’t occurred to her that her sister might grovel and admit that she, Anne-slash-Lisette, was right all along. I think she might go for that as an even more favourable outcome, and if she does, there’ll be no more death threats – from anyone to anyone. Isn’t it worth a try? What if all Anne needs is for someone – anyone – to take the time and trouble to apologise to her for everything she’s been through – all the pain and misery that she didn’t deserve. She might decide she doesn’t need to kill me if she hears you say, “I’m so sorry. You were as much a victim as Malachy Dodd, John Kirbyshire and David Butcher – a wholly innocent victim. Please tell me what I can do now to make it up to you, because there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to make this right.”’

  Olwen sighs. ‘I understand the reasoning behind it, but … it won’t work. I hate to sound defeatist, but it just won’t.’

  ‘All right, fine,’ I say. ‘Let it not work. I’m asking you to try, not to guarantee success.’

  ‘What if Anne agrees to meet and turns up with a breadknife in her handbag? You’re asking me to risk my life.’

  ‘If she agrees to meet you, we’ll arrange it so that I’m there too. I’ll make sure nothing happens to you. She wouldn’t try to hurt you, Olwen. I’m the one she wants to harm, not you. Ellen and Alex can go to Maggie’s so that they’re out of the way. And Figgy, in case she recognises him. You’ve got a house full of dogs that look a bit like Figgy – that could work in our favour.’

  ‘So she’s coming here, is she? To my house? That’s the plan?’ Olwen closes her eyes. She knows that capitulation is not far away. It feels inevitable, to both of us. ‘How do my dogs work in our favour?’ she asks.

  I pick up a ball and throw it for Good King Wenceslas, who has been lingering hopefully near my feet.

  ‘In her mind, Anne has made me Sandie,’ I say. ‘I think she’s a proud woman – most people are who bury their own very real suffering and deny its existence – they’d find it too humiliating to admit to feeling the pain ordinary mortals feel. Anne’s not going to admit she’s wrong about the identity of her enemy-sister unless she sees a way to change tack without losing face. If I’m not Allisande but I turn out to be someone associated with Allisande – someone, perhaps, who got her dog from Allisande’s kennels … Make sense?’

  ‘Too much.’ Olwen sighs. ‘It’s way too rational for Anne Donbavand. She exists in another stratosphere – the woman’s completely loonytunes, J
ustine. We can’t just open the door to her elaborate fantasy life and stroll in as if it’s a … the local pub! It won’t work.’

  ‘So you keep saying. Wouldn’t you rather be able to say, “It didn’t work”? What possible comeback will I have then? That’s the way to win the argument: prove me wrong.’

  Olwen makes a frustrated noise.

  ‘I promise you, Olwen: I won’t let her hurt you.’

  From: AllisandeIngrey@hotmail.com

  To: a.donbavand@exeter.ac.uk

  Lisette, it’s me -- your sister, Sandie. I need to talk to you. Ideally, I’d like us to meet. I know this suggestion will be anathema to you. I know that for many years you have been afraid of me. But you have nothing to fear from me now. I want to make peace. This bad blood between us has gone on too long.

  I would like to invite you to my home in London. Can you come soon? Can you come now -- or tomorrow? If you want to, you can bring someone with you, if you’re worried I might harm you. Bring your husband. I would love to meet him. Bring your whole family if you wish.

  In peace --

  Allisande

  From: a.donbavand@exeter.ac.uk

  To: AllisandeIngrey@hotmail.com

  Who is this?

  From: AllisandeIngrey@hotmail.com

  To: a.donbavand@exeter.ac.uk

  I am your sister, Allisande Ingrey. Come to London tomorrow. Take the 1007 from Paignton. It arrives at London Paddington at 1338. I’ll send a taxi to meet you and bring you to my house. There are things we need to talk about -- things we should have talked about long ago. It’s my fault that we didn’t and I wish to put that right. Please come, Lisette.

  Sending you love and peace --

  Allisande

  From: AllisandeIngrey@hotmail.com

  To: a.donbavand@exeter.ac.uk

  Lisette, you haven’t replied. May I assume you will be there tomorrow?

  From: a.donbavand@exeter.ac.uk