A Game for All the Family: A Novel
3/5
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About this ebook
Pulled into a deadly game of deception, secrets, and lies, a woman must find the truth in order to defeat a mysterious opponent, protect her daughter, and save her own life in this dazzling standalone psychological thriller with an unforgettable ending from the New York Times bestselling author of Woman with a Secret and The Monogram Murders.
You thought you knew who you were. A stranger knows better.
You’ve left the city—and the career that nearly destroyed you—for a fresh start on the coast. But trouble begins when your daughter withdraws, after her new best friend, George, is unfairly expelled from school.
You beg the principal to reconsider, only to be told that George hasn’t been expelled. Because there is, and was, no George.
Who is lying? Who is real? Who is in danger? Who is in control? As you search for answers, the anonymous calls begin—a stranger, who insists that you and she share a traumatic past and a guilty secret. And then the caller threatens your life. . . .
This is Justine’s story. This is Justine’s family. This is Justine’s game. But it could be yours.
Sophie Hannah
SOPHIE HANNAH is the New York Times bestselling author of numerous psychological thrillers, which have been published in 51 countries and adapted for television, as well as The Monogram Murders, the first Hercule Poirot novel authorized by the estate of Agatha Christie, and its sequels Closed Casket, The Mystery of Three Quarters, and The Killings at Kingfisher Hill. Sophie is also the author of a self-help book, How to Hold a Grudge, and hosts the podcast of the same name. She lives in Cambridge, UK.
Read more from Sophie Hannah
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Reviews for A Game for All the Family
106 ratings16 reviews
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Justine Merrison leaves London with her husband Alex and daughter Ellen. They go to live in Devon where Justine plans to do nothing. Things don't go as planned when Ellen claims her new best friend at school called George has been expelled. Justine then starts to recieve phonecalls which shes convinced are not meant for her.I have read a couple of books by Sophie Hannah before and enjoyed them. If this book was my first encounter with then it would be my last. I really just didn't get this book.The story starts out well and I was compelled to read it to see what was going to happen. The reader gets Justine's story of what happens and then there is Ellen's story for school. Ellen is writing a family story with murder and it is really about Georges family. I didn't like Ellen's story at all and found it so unbelievable. The whole book for me was a let down with unbelievable characters and storyline. Even the school is full if wacky people and tales to tell. This book is just not for me although I did finish it in a fashion. I think I was waiting for that big twist that never happened.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great audio read by Lucinda Clare, Fiona Hardingham, and Gavin Stenhouse. This was just plain fun to listen to and you really do NOT know what's going to happen until the very end--a good mystery!
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Starts well but the ending is very disappointing. It's as if the Author can't be bothered to finish it. Poor writing from a good writer.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I received an ARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book or my review itself.Sophie Hannah, in my opinion, is one of the few writers today who could pull a story (and a story-within-a-story) like this off.Justine and her family have left the big city of London for a quieter life in the country. Determined to leave the broken pieces of her once-powerful career behind, Justine settles into a life of "doing Nothing" with a capital N.But then her daughter, Ellen seems to change before her eyes, becoming withdrawn and secretive. Ellen finally admits that she is upset because her best friend, George, has been unfairly expelled from her new school.When Justine marches into the school to right this terrible wrong, though, she is told that George hasn't been expelled. George doesn't exist.Woven into this wonderfully bizarre and intriguing tale is a story Ellen is writing for class, the story of a family with a murderer among them.This is a book you will not be able to put down. The tension builds and builds until you have to stop everything else you're doing to keep turning those pages. While, for me at least, I don't think any ending could have completely lived up to the incredible buildup, the resolution packed an amazing, Hannah-caliber punch.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Sophie Hannah writes intense, convoluted novels centered around a woman who is involved in a crime (as a witness or participant or victim) but from an odd angle that make her seem delusional. Her main characters are often unpleasant or frantic, often doing things to make it hard for anyone to believe them. Here Hannah sticks to this blueprint, but she has done away with her usual counterpoint of the point of view of the detectives investigating the case. Justine has left her fast-paced career and moved her family to rural Devon, hoping to do nothing but putter around the beautiful estate they've purchased, Speedwell House, while her husband travels and her daughter attends school. But even on the way to their new home, Justine is struck by an affinity for an unattractive house along a busy road. Soon after arriving, her daughter becomes distressed by the expulsion of another pupil and Justine begins receiving threatening phone calls from a woman who thinks Justine is called "Sandie."A Game for All the Family is certainly as complex and odd as any of Hannah's other books. Justine is an unlikeable character, being arrogant and high-handed in her dealings with others. She's also prone to not doing basic things that most people would do in her circumstances, while reacting strongly to much smaller events. It's a stand-alone novel, with out the usual detectives to do the work of solving the crimes and puzzles, and this is a weakness. Since the only view the reader has is from the inside of a biased and erratic narrator, there's no way to ground the story in any sort of objectivity. And Justine is consumed with her own opinions and personal bugbears that I'm still not entirely certain what happened. And some of the reactions of the people around the main character make very little sense. Still, this is a rare misfire by an author who has so far been reliable in her crime novels. I look forward to reading the next one, which I am relieved to see is once again balanced by the usual detectives.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Game for All the Family by Sophie Hannah is a complex family drama where insanity is a close companion.Justine Merrison has left London for Devon, along with her opera singer husband, Alex, and their 14 year-old daughter, Ellen. Justine, a former TV producer plans to do nothing at Speedwell House, their new estate. Trouble starts when she receives a weird, oddly threatening phone call from some woman who apparently thinks Justine should know her. After a second phone call, it becomes clear that whoever is calling has a lot of information about Justine while she still doesn't have a clue about the identity of the caller.At the same time her daughter Ellen is writing a murder mystery story for school about the Ingrey family, who, from the story, may have lived at Speedwell House in the past. Justine is concerned about the events in the story and her daughter's frame of mind to be writing about such things. When she talks to Ellen, Ellen is more distraught that her best friend, George Donbavand, has been expelled from school for no good reason. When Justine asks about George at the school, she is told that no such student ever existed.All the bizarre events meander down a twisted, convoluted trail with several implausible leaps of intuition to eventually interconnect in the end. While Hannah does an excellent job making you wonder about the reliability of Justine as a narrator, she also expects you to follow and accept Justine's implausible connections and impetuous behavior as normal perceptive actions. Many of them aren't. Additionally, there is a whole lot going on that you need to keep straight, including alternate chapters with the story Ellen is writing about the Ingrey family.I'm in a quandary about this novel. While I basically enjoyed it, it also felt way too long, complicated, and entangled to be credible. No matter how how relaxed the school is, no head mistress of a school would give out any information about a family in the school. Additionally, most people would contact the police as soon as they received the first threatening phone call, and they would have been taken seriously until they had cause to doubt their veracity. In most cases the authorities would be called if a family was behaving like the Donbavands. There were more problematic leaps of credibility for me. While I did enjoy the novel, I'm not sure the ending was worth it. For that reason it's only recommended.Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of HarperCollins for review purposes.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Justine Merrison has abandoned her television career and left the city, seeking a more stress-free life. She’s determined to do Nothing. But her daughter, Ellen, is suddenly withdrawn and Justine discovers there’s some question as to whether or not the girl’s best friend actually exists. And, to make things even more difficult, the unknown threat-making telephone caller has escalated to making death threats. Justine sets out to find the answers, but becomes entangled in a mystery she has trouble understanding. Will she find a way to bring her family safely through this inexplicable puzzle?Despite the intriguing-sounding premise and some truly lovely writing, readers may find the gratuitous profanity off-putting and many will be hard-pressed to find any redeeming qualities in the snarky, self-obsessed Justine, her clueless opera singer husband, and her unjustifiably rude daughter. Unfortunately, the increasingly-implausible storyline coupled with the plot twists and turns leading to a rather inane resolution make this a disappointing tale.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In my opinion this is a very interesting read. At first, I was a little confused about the story and the writing project that Ellen, the teenage daughter of Justine, was doing, but knowing it wasn't just there figured it played an important role. After a couple chapters I had trained my mind to follow both of these stories knowing that they were both important to the ending of the story.So the story starts off with Justine and her family, Alex (the husband) and Ellen (teenaged daughter) moving from a big city to a smaller one after she terminated her career in TV. There was a conflict in her career and she decided she was done with that. She notices a house on the way to her new home and it strikes some sort of unnerving core to her and it stays in the back of her mind even though it has no perceivable reason to.After arriving at their new home, Alex goes off on tour (he's an opera singer) and Ellen is settling in at her school, when Justine starts receiving odd, threatening phone calls. Justine is sure these calls are a case of mistaken identity so tries to reason with the caller. At just about the same time, Ellen becomes moody and upset and won't confide in her mother about the reason at first. Justine comes across a story that Ellen is writing for school and finds the few pages extremely creepy and it starts to really bother her and she thinks it might be contributed to the sour mood she has been in.As days go by, she slowly learns that Ellen's best friend, George, has been expelled from school over what Ellen explains is a misunderstanding. Justine goes to the school to try and straighten out the issue and is met with lies and shady behavior from the principal and staff at the school which sets her on high alert that this is much more than she thought.Not being able to get that house out of her mind, and thinking that her daughter's school story is a true story, she begins to investigate all possible leads to connect these events all together. The house ends up being the home of a dog breeder and Justine comes back with a little dog, but no definite connection between the story and real life. The creepy calls continue and she has contacted the police with no resolution.Alex comes rushing home to be with his family and together they begin to face the odd events that start taking place...the phone calls, the expulsion of the student and Ellen's sulky behavior, the labels over the house name that happen one night, the grave dug in their garden after one of the calls mentions that, etc.Slowly the story ties together binding the writing project of Ellen's to real life and the ending is shocking in it's own right. A real psychological thriller.**I received a copy of this book through a good reads giveaway.**
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A slowly unfurling horror - a twisted woman who invents a family tragedy and then forces everyone in her life to believe it, & live accordingly. Told in the voice of Justine Merrison, an overworked television developer who quits her job and moves w/her family out of London, fully intending to do NOTHING but who stumbles into the drama of another family's life through her daughters (at first, secret) friendship with the strange George Donbavand. Between the creepy, unnerving "story" her daughter writes for a school project, to the increasingly shrill anonymous phone calls Justine receives telling her to get away from the town, from Speedwell House, the foreboding and convoluted possibilities grow until the very last pages ... Yikes! Sometimes I felt Hannah overused the interior monologues of Justine and dialogue between characters to reveal details or further complicate the clues, instead of actually moving the story forward? And the " real" events of the plot interspersed w/ chapters of the Addams Family style tale of the apocryphal Ingrey family and their murderous youngest daughter, Perrine -.great device but a bit lengthy. Nevertheless a compelling read w/ a believable determined protagonist - and a real twist for the ending - wow.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A psychological thriller which kept up the tension throughout, and kept me guessing until the end.Justine leaves London to settle in Devon with her family. After a demanding career she plans to do nothing at all. Daughter Ellen seems to be happy at school until her friend George is expelled. Strange anonymous phone calls become increasingly threatening and disturbing, and Justine’s husband Alex insists on involving the police.An intriguing story, well worth the read, with some interesting twists.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Sophie Hannah gets more and more bizarre with each book. Entertaining.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5story goes on and on and on....way too wordy. don't bother reading.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5It's the story of a London TV producer who’s retired to Devon to get away from it all is now being terrorized by an unknown someone who offers no name but reveals every fault in the lives of two families, one of them is her own. Another " victim"...an opera singer Alex Colley. While he and his wife slowly move in traffic his wife silently hears in her head... “My name is Justine Merrison and I do "Nothing.” No more early morning meetings, no more dealing with strangers, no more guessing about anything. She doesn't even react with any sense of alarm when Alex teasingly tells her and Ellen, their 14-year-old daughter, that they’ve changed plans and decided to move into a random house he points out on the side of the highway. Noting can disturb her quite selective intensity. Forward...four months: Though, she’s disturbed by a series of calls from a woman she doesn't recognize and who refuses to identify herself, but says she knows why Justine, whom she insists on calling “Sandie,” has moved outside Kingswear. She insists that this "Sandie" go back to London. Ellen seems to have settled into the Beaconwood School. She has written a story about a family whose youngest daughter is a multiple murderer and then becomes a murder victim herself. But Ellen’s "honeymoon" with Beaconwood ends abruptly when her best friend, George Donbavand, is expelled for stealing a coat that she had given him. Things become worse when Justine goes to the school to try to explain that George had been given the coat only to have the head teacher Lesley Griffiths tell her that there ever was a student named Geoge Donbavand. Soon the deepening mystery forces Justine to confront the real reason she had left her old job and her old life in the first place. Plenty of shivery of second sights. Even after the last page ends you won’t soon forget this nightmare within a nightmare.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A woman's confessional-type narrative interwoven with the macabre story authored (or not?) by her teenage daughter, plus winks and nods to unreliable narrators, locked-room mysteries, and Agatha Christie — maybe not the best resolution but a fun, unputdownable weekend read.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5I can hardly credit I actually finished this, I guess it was mainly because I wanted to refuse to believe anybody (author, editor, publishing house, the whole team of, presumably, professionals who should know better than, and get paid not to, inflict such pure silliness on their audience) could have the brass neck to present their readers with that kind of non-solution to this non-mystery without suspense, plot twist nor, ultimately, sense. I can suspend disbelief with the best of them, however, a solid basis to get me started (relatable characters carrying out marginally believable actions, a dignus vindice nodus - problem worth solving), is that really too much to ask? It's not even that the writing was terrible, it was OK, even funny in places, it seems more that the author could not be arsed to make the effort to render a half-decent story. What a waste!
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Game for All the Family by Sophie Hannah is a perplexing mystery within a mystery. Following their move from London to the bucolic countryside, Justine Merrison begins getting a series threatening phone calls she believes might be tied to her fourteen year old daughter Ellen's writing project.
Having recently quit her stressful job in television, Justine is looking forward to doing Nothing. The first few months of life in their new house are idyllic but the first disquieting phone calls occurs on the same day she finds out Ellen is upset about her friend George's expulsion from school. When Justine tries to intervene on George's behalf, she is stunned to learn there is no George so therefore, there was no expulsion. Despite a few doubts, Justine believes Ellen's story and she is determined to get to the bottom of what happened and find out why the school is lying to her. At the same time, she continues receiving telephone calls that are increasingly sinister. She is also growing concerned about Ellen's writing project about a murder mystery that appears to be based on real life events but her search for more information leads to one dead end after another. Believing all of these events are somehow linked, Justine begins her own investigation but will she uncover the truth before it is too late?
The premise of A Game for All the Family is certainly unique but the execution of the story falls a little flat. The chapters alternate between the present day events and Ellen's story and while, initially both story arcs are interesting, there is little progression in either storyline. The dual storylines are written in two distinct voices but Ellen's murder mystery is so incredibly implausible that it eventually detracts from the main storyline. With each incredulous plot twist, the novel becomes a convoluted mess of highly improbable coincidences.
All in all, this latest release by Sophie Hannah's is an entertaining but overly long and somewhat bizarre mystery that readers will have to suspend disbelief to enjoy.
Book preview
A Game for All the Family - Sophie Hannah
Opening
The people I’m about to meet in my new life, if they’re anything like the ones I’m leaving behind, will ask as soon as they can get away with it. In my fantasy, they don’t have faces or names, only voices—raised, but not excessively so; determinedly casual.
What do you do?
Does anyone still add for a living
to the end of that question? It sounds stupidly old-fashioned.
I hope they miss out the living
bit, because this has nothing to do with how I plan to fund my smoked-salmon-for-breakfast habit. I want my faceless new acquaintances to care only about how I spend my time and define myself—what I believe to be the point of me. That’s why I need the question to arrive in its purest form.
I have the perfect answer: one word long, with plenty of space around it.
Nothing.
Everything should be surrounded by as much space as possible: people, houses, words. That’s part of the reason for starting a new life. In my old one, there wasn’t enough space of any kind.
My name is Justine Merrison and I do Nothing. With a capital N. Not a single thing. I’ll have to try not to throw back my head and laugh after saying it, or sprint a victory lap around whoever was unfortunate enough to ask me. Ideally, the question will come from people who do Something: surveyors, lawyers, supermarket managers—all haggard and harried from a six-month stretch of fourteen-hour working days.
I won’t mention what I used to do, or talk about day-to-day chores as if they count as Something. Yes, it’s true that I’ll have to do some boiling of pasta in my new life, and some throwing of socks into washing machines, but that will be as easy and automatic as breathing. I don’t intend to let trivial day-to-day stuff get in the way of my central project, which is to achieve a state of all-embracing inactivity.
Nothing,
I will say boldly and proudly, in the way that another person might say Neuroradiology.
Then I’ll smile, as glowing white silence slides in to hug the curved edges of the word. Nothing.
What are you grinning about?
Alex asks. Unlike me, he isn’t imagining a calm, soundless state. He is firmly embedded in our real-world surroundings: six lanes of futile horn-beep gripes and suffocating exhaust fumes. The joys of the A406,
he muttered half an hour ago, as we added ourselves to the long line of backed-up traffic.
For me, the congestion is a joy. It reminds me that I don’t need to do anything in a hurry. At this rate of travel—approximately four meters per hour, which is unusual even for the North Circular—we won’t get to Devon before midnight. Excellent. Let it take twenty hours, or thirty. Our new house will still be there tomorrow, and the day after. It doesn’t matter when I arrive, as I have nothing pressing to attend to. I won’t need to down a quick cup of tea, then immediately start hectoring a telecommunications company about how soon they can hook me up with WiFi. I have no urgent emails to send.
Hello? Justine?
Alex calls out, in case I didn’t hear his question over the noise of Georges Bizet’s Carmen that’s blaring from our car’s speakers. A few minutes ago, he and Ellen were singing along, having adapted the words somewhat: "Stuck, stuck in traffic, traffic, stuck, stuck in traffic, traffic, stuck, stuck in traffic, traffic jam. Stuck, stuck in traffic, traffic, stuck, stuck in traffic, traffic jam, traffic jam, traffic jam . . ."
Mum!
Ellen yells behind me. Dad’s talking to you!
I think your mother’s in a trance, El. Must be the heat.
It would never occur to Alex to turn off music in order to speak. For him, silence is there to be packed as full as possible, like an empty bag. The Something that he does—has for as long as I’ve known him—is singing. Opera. He travels all over the world, is away for one week in every three, on average, and loves every second of his home-is-where-the-premiere-is existence. Which is lucky. If I didn’t know he was idyllically happy with his hectic, spotlit life, I might not be able to enjoy my Nothing to the full. I might feel guilty.
As it is, we’ll be able to share our contrasting triumphs without either of us resenting the other. Alex will tell me that he managed to squeeze four important calls into the time between the airline staff telling him to switch off his phone, and them noticing that he’d disobeyed them and telling him again like they really meant it this time. I’ll tell him about reading in the bath for hours, topping up with hot water again and again, almost too lazy to twist the tap.
I press the off
button on the CD player, unwilling to compete with Carmen, and tell Alex about my little question-and-answer fantasy. He laughs. Ellen says, You’re a nutter, Mum. You can’t say ‘Nothing.’ You’ll scare people.
Good. They can fear me first, then they can envy me, and wonder if they might take up doing Nothing themselves. Think how many lives I could save.
No, they’ll think you’re a depressed housewife who’s going to go home and swallow a bottle of pills.
Abandoned and neglected by her jet-setting husband,
Alex adds, wiping sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his shirt.
No they won’t,
I say. Not if I beam blissfully while describing my completely empty schedule.
"Ah, so you will say more than ‘Nothing’!"
Say you’re a stay-at-home mum,
Ellen advises. Or you’re taking a career break after a stressful few years. You’re weighing up various options . . .
But I’m not. I’ve already chosen Nothing. Hey.
I tap Alex on the arm. I’m going to buy one of those year-planner wall charts—a really beautiful one—and stick it up in a prominent place, so that I can leave every day’s box totally empty. Three hundred and sixty-five empty boxes. It’ll be a thing of beauty.
"You’re so annoying, Mum, Ellen groans.
You keep banging on about this new life and how everything’s going to be so different, but it won’t be, because . . . you! You’re incapable of changing. You’re exactly the same: still a massive . . . zealot. You were a zealot about working, and now you’re going to be one about not working. It’ll be so boring for me. And embarrassing."
Pipe down, pipsqueak,
I say in a tone of mock outrage. Aren’t you, like, supposed to be, like, only thirteen?
I haven’t said ‘like’ for ages, actually, apart from to express approval,
Ellen protests.
That’s true, she hasn’t,
says Alex. And she’s frighteningly spot-on about her drama-queen mother. Tell me this: if you crave tranquility as you claim to, why are you daydreaming about starting fights with strangers?
Good point!
Ellen crows.
Fights? What fights?
Don’t feign innocence.
Not feigning!
I say indignantly.
Alex rolls his eyes. Aggressively saying, ‘Nothing’ when people ask you what you do, making them feel uncomfortable by refusing to qualify it at all, or explain . . .
"Not aggressively. Happily saying it. And there’s nothing about Nothing to explain."
Smugly,
Alex says. Which is a form of aggression. Flaunting your pleasurable idleness in the faces of those with oversensitive work ethics and overstuffed diaries. It’s sadistic.
You might have a point,
I concede. I’ve been particularly looking forward to telling the hardworking, stressed people I meet that I do Nothing. The more relaxed a person looks, the less fun it’ll be to boast to them. And it’s pointless bragging to the likes of you—you love your overstuffed diary. So I’m just going to have to hope I meet lots of people who hate their demanding jobs but can’t escape them. Oh God.
I close my eyes. It’s sickeningly obvious, isn’t it? It’s me I want to taunt. My former self. That’s who I’m angry with.
I could have escaped at any time. Could have walked away years earlier, instead of letting work swallow up my whole life.
I literally cannot believe I have a mother who . . . homilies on in the way you do, Mum,
Ellen grumbles. "None of my friends’ mothers do it. None. They all say normal things, like ‘No TV until you’ve done your homework’ and ‘Would you like some more lasagna?’"
Yes, well, your mother can’t go ten minutes without having a major, life-changing realization—can you, darling?
Fuck off! Oops.
I giggle. If I’ve ever been happier than I am now, I can’t remember the occasion.
Aha! We’re on the move again.
Alex starts to sing, "End of the traffic, traffic, end of the traffic, traffic, end of the traffic, traffic jam, end of the traffic, traffic, end of the traffic, traffic jam, traffic jam, traffic jam . . ."
Poor, long-dead Georges Bizet. I’m sure this wasn’t the legacy he had in mind.
Excuse me while I don’t celebrate,
says Ellen. We’ve still got another, what, seven hours before we get there? I’m boiling. When are we going to get a car with air-conditioning that works?
I don’t believe any car air-conditioning works,
I tell her. It’s like windshield wipers. The other cars want you to think they’ve got it figured out, but they’re all hot and stuffy on days like today, whatever Jeremy Clarkson might want us to think. They all have wipers that squeak like bats being garroted.
Aaand . . . we’re at a standstill again,
says Alex, shaking his head. The golden age of being in transit was short-lived. You’re wrong about the seven hours, though, El. Quite, quite wrong.
Yeah, it’s just doubled to fourteen,
Ellen says bitterly.
Wrong. Mum and I didn’t say anything because we wanted to surprise you, but actually . . . we’re very nearly there.
I smile at Ellen in the rearview mirror. She’s hiding behind her thick, dark brown hair, trying to hang on to her disgruntled mood and not succumb to laughter. Alex is a rotten practical joker. His ideas are imaginative enough, but he’s scuppered every time by his special prankster voice, instantly recognizable to anyone who has known him longer than a week.
Yeah right, Dad. We’re still on the North Circular and we’re very nearly in Devon. Of course.
Big, beautiful green eyes and heavy sarcasm: two things I adore about my daughter.
No, not Devon. There’s been a change of plan. We didn’t want to inconvenience you with a long drive, so . . . we’ve sold Speedwell House and bought that one instead!
Alex points out of the car window to a squat redbrick 1930s-or-thereabouts semi-detached house. I know immediately which one he means. It looks ridiculous. It’s the one anyone would single out, the last in a row of eight. There are three signs attached to its façade, all too big for such a small building.
My skin feels hot and tingly all of a sudden. Like when I had cellulitis on my leg after getting bitten by a mosquito in Corfu, except this time it’s my whole body.
I stare at the house with the signs. Silently, I instruct the traffic not to move so that I can examine it for as long as I need to.
Why do I need to?
Apart from the excessive ornamentation, there is nothing to distinguish this house from any other 1930s redbrick semi. One sign, the largest—in the top right-hand corner, above a bedroom window—says Panama Row.
That must refer to all the houses huddled bravely together, facing six lanes of roaring traffic immediately outside their windows.
The other two signs—one missing a screw and leaning down on one side and the other visibly grime-streaked—are the name and number of the house. I try to make myself look away, but I can’t. I read both and have opinions about them, positive and negative.
That’s right: number 8. Yes, it’s called . . . No. No, that isn’t its name.
Pressure is building in my eyes, head, chest. Thrumming.
I wait until the worst of it subsides, then look down at my arms. They look ordinary. No goosebumps. Impossible. I can feel them: prickly lumps under my skin.
Our new house appears to be called ‘German,’
says Alex. Ludicrous name! I mean, er, won’t it be fun to live in a house called ‘German,’ El?
No, because we’re not going to be living there. As if Mum’d agree to buy a house on a nearly motorway!
You know why she agreed? Because, in no more than ten minutes, we’ll take a left turn, then another left, and we’ll have arrived. No more long journey, just home sweet home. As the old Chinese proverb says, ‘He who buys a beautiful house in the countryside far away might never get there, and may as well buy an ugly house on the North Circular and have done with it.’
It’s not ugly,
I manage to say, though my throat is so tight, I can hardly speak.
It’s lovely. It’s safe. Stop the car.
I’m not looking at number 8 Panama Row anymore. I tore my eyes away, and now I must make sure they stay away. That won’t be hard. I’m too scared to look again.
Mum? What’s wrong? You sound weird.
You look weird,
says Alex. Justine? Are you okay? You’re shivering.
No,
I whisper. I’m not.
Not okay. Yes, shivering. Too hot, but shivering. I want to clarify, but my tongue is paralyzed.
What’s wrong?
I . . .
Mum, you’re scaring me. What is it?
It’s not called ‘German.’ Some of the letters have fallen off.
How do I know this? I’ve never seen 8 Panama Row before in my life. Never heard of it, known about it, been anywhere near it.
Oh yeah,
says Ellen. She’s right, Dad. You can see where the other letters were.
"But I didn’t see it. I . . . I knew the name wasn’t German. It had nothing to do with what I saw."
Justine, calm down. Nothing to do with what you saw? That makes no sense.
It’s obvious there are letters missing,
says Ellen. There’s loads of empty sign left at the end of the name. Who would call a house ‘German,’ anyway?
What should I do and say? I’d tell Alex the truth if we were alone.
Dad? Accelerate? Like, you’re holding everyone up. Ugh! I said ‘like’ again, goddammit.
Don’t say ‘goddammit’ either,
Alex tells her.
"Don’t let me watch The Good Wife, then. And you two swear all the time, hypocrites."
The car creeps forward, then picks up speed. I feel braver as soon as I know it’s no longer possible for me to see 8 Panama Row. That was . . . strange,
I say. The strangest thing that has ever happened to me. I exhale slowly.
What, Mum?
Yes, tell us, goddammit.
Dad! Objection! Sustained.
Overruled, actually. You can’t sustain your own objection. Anyway, shush, will you?
Shush. Shut up, shut up, shut up. It’s not funny. Nothing about this is funny.
Justine, what’s the matter with you?
Alex is more patient than I am. I’d be raising my voice by now.
"That house. You pointed, and I looked, and I had this . . . this overwhelmingly strong feeling of yes. Yes, that’s my house. I wanted to fling open the car door and run to it."
Except you don’t live there, so that’s mad. You don’t live anywhere at the moment. Until this morning you lived in London, and hopefully by this evening you’ll live just outside Kingswear in Devon, but you currently live nowhere.
How appropriate. Do Nothing, live nowhere.
You certainly don’t live in an interwar semi beside the A406, so you can relax.
Alex’s tone is teasing but not unkind. I’m relieved that he doesn’t sound worried. He sounds less concerned now than he did before; the direction of travel reassures me.
"I know I don’t live there. I can’t explain it. I had a powerful feeling that I belonged in that house. Or belonged to it, somehow. By ‘powerful,’ I mean like a physical assault."
Lordy McSwordy,
Ellen mumbles from the back seat.
Almost a premonition that I’ll live there one day.
How can I phrase it to make it sound more rational? I’m not saying it’s true. Now that the feeling’s passed, I can hear how daft it sounds, but when I first looked, when you pointed at it, there was no doubt in my mind.
Justine, nothing in the world could ever induce you to live cheek by jowl with six lanes of traffic,
says Alex. "You haven’t changed that much. Is this a joke?"
No.
I know what it is: poverty paranoia. You’re worried about you not earning, us taking on a bigger mortgage . . . Have you had nightmares about losing your teeth?
My teeth?
I read somewhere that teeth-loss dreams mean anxiety about money.
It isn’t that.
Even poor, you wouldn’t live in that house—not unless you were kidnapped and held prisoner there.
Dad,
says Ellen. Is it time for your daily You’re-Not-Helping reminder?
Alex ignores her. Have you got something to drink?
he asks me. You’re probably dehydrated. Heatstroke.
Yes.
There’s water in my bag, by my feet.
Drink it, then.
I don’t want to. Not yet. As soon as I pull out the bottle and open it, this conversation will be over; Alex will change the subject to something less inexplicable. I can’t talk about anything else until I understand what’s just happened to me.
Oh no. Look: roadwork.
When Alex starts to sing again, I don’t know what’s happening at first, even though it’s the same tune from Carmen and only the words have changed. Ellen joins in. Soon they’re singing in unison, "Hard hats and yellow jackets, hard hats and yellow jackets, hard hats and yellow jackets, boo. Hard hats and yellow jackets, hard hats and yellow jackets, boo, sod it, boo, sod it, boo . . ."
Or I could try to forget about it. With every second that passes, that seems more feasible. I feel almost as I did before Alex pointed at the house. I could maybe convince myself that I imagined the whole thing.
Go on, then. Tell yourself that.
The voice in my head is not quite ready. It’s still repeating words from the script I’ve instructed it to discard:
One day, 8 Panama Row—a house you would not choose in a million years—will be your home, and you won’t mind the traffic at all. You’ll be so happy and grateful to live there, you won’t be able to believe your luck.
FOUR MONTHS LATER
FAMILY TREE
The Ingreys of Speedwell House
Murder Mystery Story
by Ellen Colley, Class 9G
Chapter 1
~
The Killing of Malachy Dodd
Perrine Ingrey dropped Malachy Dodd out of a window. She wanted to kill him and she succeeded. Later, no one believed her when she screamed, I didn’t do it!
Both of their families, the Ingreys and the Dodds, knew that Perrine and Malachy had been upstairs in a room together with no one else around.
This was Perrine’s bedroom. It had a tiny wooden door (painted mint green, Perrine’s favorite color) next to her bed. This little door was the only way of getting from one part of the upstairs of Speedwell House to the other unless you wanted to go back downstairs, through the living room and the library, and then climb up a different lot of stairs, and no one ever wanted to do that. They preferred to bend themselves into a quarter of the size of the shortest dwarf in the world (because that was how tiny the mint-green door was) and squeeze themselves through the minuscule space.
After she dropped Malachy out of the window and watched him fall to his gory death on the terrace below, Perrine squashed herself through the tiny green door and pulled it shut behind her. When her parents found her huddled on the landing on the other side, she exclaimed, But I wasn’t even in the room when it happened!
Nobody was convinced. Perrine hadn’t been clever enough to move a decent distance away from the door, so it was obvious she had just come through it. Her second mistake was to yell, He fell out by accident!
For one thing Malachy was not tall enough to fall out of the window accidentally (all the adults agreed later that his center of gravity was too low) and for another, if Perrine wasn’t in the room when it happened, how did she know that he fell by accident?
A third big clue was that every single other person who might have murdered Malachy was downstairs in the dining room at the time of his hideous death. All of the Dodds were there, and all the Ingreys apart from Perrine. Her two older sisters, Lisette and Allisande, were sitting in chairs facing the three sets of French doors that were open onto the terrace where Malachy fell, splattering his red and gray blood and brains on the ground beside the fountain. It felt as if his falling shook the whole house, especially the French purple crystals
chandelier above Lisette and Allisande’s heads, but that must have been an illusion.
Lisette and Allisande definitely saw Malachy fall and smash, however, and, what’s more, they heard a loud, triumphant Ha!
floating down from above. Both of them recognized the voice of their younger sister, Perrine.
So, if all the other possible suspects were in the dining room, who else apart from Perrine Ingrey could have been responsible for Malachy landing in a heap on the paving slabs? I’ll tell you who: nobody.
There was no doubt that Perrine killed him, however much she wailed that she was innocent. (The death of Malachy Dodd is not the murder mystery in this story. The mystery is who murdered Perrine Ingrey, because she went on to get murdered too, but that comes later.)
No, there was nothing mysterious about the cruel killing of Malachy. Both of the families, the Ingreys and the Dodds, knew the truth, and soon everybody in Kingswear and the surrounding towns and villages knew it too. You cannot keep anything quiet in a place like Devon, where the main hobby is spreading cream and jam onto scones and gossiping about everything you’ve heard that day.
It came as a surprise to absolutely nobody that one of the Ingreys had committed a murder, because they were such a weird family—the weirdest that Kingswear and its environs had ever known. But there was one big shock for everyone when they heard the news. People should have realized that the most bizarre family for miles around would do the opposite of what you’d expect, or else they would have no right to retain their title of weirdest family. And what most of the nearby town and village folk would have expected was that if 1) there was a murder and 2) the killer was one of the three Ingrey sisters, it was bound to be either Lisette, the eldest, or Allisande, the middle sister. Certainly not Perrine, the youngest, who was the only one who had had what you might call a properly balanced upbringing.
You see, unlike most parents, especially so long ago, Bascom and Sorrel Ingrey couldn’t
1
Ellen? I knock on her bedroom door, even though it’s ajar and I can see her sitting on her bed. When she doesn’t respond, I walk in.
What’s this?" I hold up the papers.
She doesn’t look at me, but continues to stare out of the window. I can’t help looking too. I still haven’t gotten used to the beauty of where we live. Ellen’s room and the kitchen directly beneath it have the best views in the house: the fountain and gazebo to the left, and, straight ahead, the gentle downward curve of the grass bank that stretches all the way from our front door to the River Dart, studded with rhododendrons, magnolia trees, camellias. When we first came to see Speedwell House in April, there were bluebells, primroses, cyclamen and periwinkles in bloom, poking out of ground ivy and grass: little bursts of brightness interrupting the lush green. I can’t wait for those spots of color to reappear next spring.
In the distance, the water sparkles in the bright light like a flowing liquid diamond. On the other side of the river, there’s wooded hillside with a few wooden boathouses down at the bottom, and, above them, a scattering of pink, yellow and white cottages protruding from the greenery. From this distance, it looks as if someone has dropped pick-and-mix sweets from the window of an airplane and they’ve landed among the trees.
Since we moved here, Alex has said at least three times, It’s a funny thing about the English coastline: the land just stops. It’s like the interior of the country, and then it suddenly plunges into the sea without any interim bit. I mean, look.
At this point he always nods across the river. That could be in the middle of the Peak District.
I don’t know what he means. Maybe I’m shallow, but I don’t much care about understanding the scenery. If it looks gorgeous, that’s good enough for me.
Boats drift past: sailing dinghies, small yachts, pleasure boats and the occasional schooner. There’s one passing now that looks like a child’s sketch of a boat: wooden, with a mast and a red sail. Most have less elegant outlines and would be fiddlier to draw.
These are the things I can see out of Ellen’s window. Can she see any of them? She’s looking out, but there’s a shut-off air about her, as if she’s not really present in the room with me.
El. What’s this?
I say again, waving the pieces of paper at her. I don’t like what I’ve read. I don’t like it at all, however imaginative and accomplished a piece of writing it might be for a fourteen-year-old. It scares me.
What’s what?
Ellen says tonelessly.
This family tree and beginning of a story about a family called the Ingreys.
It’s for school.
Worst possible answer. Too short, too lacking in attitude. The Ellen I know—the Ellen I desperately miss—would have said, Um, it’s a family tree? And a story about a family called the Ingreys? The answer’s kind of contained in the question.
How long has it been since she last yelled Objection!
swiftly followed by Sustained!
? At least a month.
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