A Game For All The Family (25 page)

“What? Our . . . He’s in our . . .” I’m stumbling over my words. “Which house?”

“Do we have more than one?” Alex points. “That one over there. Speedwell House, Kingswear. Remember it?”

“This isn’t funny, Alex. George Donbavand is in there? With Ellen?”

“With a completely transformed Ellen, yes. Barely recognizable: radiant, witty, bubbling over with joy. It’s a bit of an eye-opener. I hadn’t realized how miserable she was.”

I told you a hundred times.

I start to march in the direction of the house. Alex catches my arm, pulls me back. Or maybe we’re both being pulled by Figgy, who is now thoroughly embedded in greenery. The only sign he’s still there is his taut leash protruding from the leaves.

“Justine, relax. Abandon all plans to embarrass the living daylights out of your daughter. No harm’s going to come to them. They’re fourteen, not three. They’re playing Monopoly.”

“
Monopoly?
Who plays that these days? We don’t have Monopoly.”

“George brought it. He seems remarkably civilized for a teenage boy, I have to say.”

“I wish he hadn’t come. Not today. I need to talk to you, without visitors around—especially not him. Can you ask him to leave?”

“Why? That’s absurd. What happened at Beaconwood? You’ve come back all wound up.”

“He’s not allowed to be here. For as long as he’s in our house, we’re not safe.” I’m not sure I believe this. So why am I saying it?

“Darling, with the greatest respect, you’re sounding a bit”—Alex makes a winding gesture with his index finger, next to his head—“out to lunch.”

“Why’s the blind down?” I ask.

“What?”

“The kitchen blind’s down. And Ellen’s bedroom curtains are pulled shut. How could you not notice? How long have you been out here?”

“Hour, hour and a half? Figgy seems happy pottering around the garden, I thought I might as well—”

“Was the kitchen blind down when you came out? It wasn’t,” I answer my own question. “I don’t think it was down when I got out of the car. I’d have noticed. They’ve done it just now. Why?” I set off toward the house again: great big strides.

“Justine, wait! Can you put the brakes on and not overreact? Think about it: it’s getting dark. People draw blinds and curtains when it gets dark, don’t they? Come on, Figg—looks like we’re going in.”

“Have you ever known Ellen to notice that the curtains need drawing?”

“I don’t know.”

“I do.” I hurry ahead. Whatever is about to happen, I’d rather Alex and Figgy stayed in the garden, but I can hardly stop my husband from entering his own house. “Ellen never touches a blind or a curtain—not in her bedroom, not anywhere. I do it. As you can see, I’m not inside the house at the moment. Which means George Donbavand must have—”

“Justine, you’re going off at the deep end for no—”

“On his first visit to my house, he’s seen fit to close the blinds and curtains in two rooms. Why?”

“I don’t know. Let’s stretch the boy on a rack until he tells us, shall we?”

I run into the house through the open front door. “Ellen? Ellen!”

“Hi, Mum,” she calls out.

This house is too big. I can’t get to the kitchen quickly enough. When I do, she isn’t in it. “Ellen? Where are you?”

“Upstairs, with George. In my bedroom!”

In her bedroom with a remarkably-civilized-for-fourteen boy from a severely dysfunctional family, with the curtains closed. Closed by him.

Remarkably civilized means unusually mature—intellectually, and perhaps sexually too.

“I’m coming up!” I yell. I try not to look at Alex but still manage to see him shaking his head at the spectacle I’m making of myself.

Ellen’s door is wide open. She and George are sitting on the floor with glasses of orange juice beside them and a Monopoly board between them.

Curtains closed, door open.
What does that mean? Did they only open it when I called Ellen’s name? They look as if they’ve been sitting like this for a while; there’s no sign from either of them of recent exertion, they’re both fully clothed . . .

Alex was right. They’re playing Monopoly.

George springs to his feet and walks toward me, holding out his hand. I shake it. “Ellen’s mum,” he says, with a wide smile. “It’s a great pleasure and an honor to meet you. You have a supremely brilliant daughter who’s about to beat me at Monopoly.”

Ellen giggles. Her eyes are bright, her cheeks pink.

“It hardly seems fair, when I’m the one who brought the game. I won’t be making that mistake again. What a wonderful house you have, incidentally.”

“Thank you.” I have to say something. “George, did you . . .” What am I doing? I can’t ask him, but I have to know.

Alex appears at the top of the stairs. This must be how escaped lions feel when their tamers hove into view.

“Do please ask, whatever it is,” says George eagerly. “Ask away!” He’s got a wide, square face, fine golden-brown hair, thin lips, big eyes that I’m trying not to stare at. It’s the irises. Instead of circles of color, they look more like hollow cylinders—curved blue surfaces and gray interiors. It’s as if they go back a long way into his head, like tunnels down which the black pupils of his eyes are falling.

I clear my throat and say, “It’s nothing, really.” George’s willingness to be grilled makes me feel guilty.

“Oh, do ask, or I’ll wonder for
ever
,” he says theatrically. “I’m insatiably curious.”

“In that case you have something in common with my wife,” Alex tells him.

“I was going to ask you if you closed the curtains. Ellen’s window.”

You see, George, I had a peculiar feeling in this room recently. I thought, “There’s something wrong here—something to do with the window.” And I couldn’t work out what it meant. Still can’t. And Ellen never closes her curtains, but here they are: closed.

Malachy Dodd was alive on one side of that window and dead on the other. But he’s not real, is he?

“Oh. Yes, I did indeed,” says George. “It was getting dark.” His smile has vanished and he looks stricken. “Oh—should I not have done that? I know some households like to leave curtains open day and night. I come from a family that closes them as soon as the light starts to fade, but maybe you’re different?”

“It’s fine, George,” says Ellen contentedly. Everything is ideal in her world at this moment. She looks . . . joyful is the only word I can think of that comes close to describing it. “Mum always closes the curtains when it gets dark. Don’t you, Mum?”

She’s not angry with me for asking an embarrassing question. She’s too elated; resentment would be impossible.

“Yes, but I’m in someone else’s house,” says George, his brow still furrowed. “Your mother’s right. I shouldn’t have touched the curtains without asking.” He turns back to me. “I should confess that I also lowered the blind in the kitchen, when Ellen sent me down to get orange juice. Unilaterally, without permission. I’m so sorry. What must you think of me?”

I’m thinking more questions: Why lower a blind in a room that you’re only going to be in for a minute? Where do his parents think he is?

He speaks like a fussy old retired colonel with a monocle.

And that surprises you? After all you’ve heard about his family life, you expected him to be a normal kid, playing
Grand Theft Auto
on his Xbox?

“Don’t give it another thought, George,” says Alex firmly. “It’s fine. Helpful, in fact. Isn’t it, Justine?”

“Yes. Very. Thank you, George.” I smile, feeling a stab of pity for this child who obviously wants so much to be liked and approved of.

Instantly, he produces a broad grin of his own to mirror mine and says, “It’s cozier if you keep the darkness out, I think.”

“I agree,” says Alex. His deliberately jolly tone annoys me. He’s trying to compensate George for what he sees as my unreasonableness.

“My house should be cozy, as it’s a little cottage, but it isn’t at all. I hate it.”

“You . . . you hate your house?” I say.

“Oh, I don’t mind the building itself. It’s the people in it that are the problem. They’re positively unnerving. Every day they unnerve me.” He pronounces every word loudly and deliberately, like an entrant in a diction competition performing before the judges. “That’s another reason I closed the blind and the curtains. But we don’t need to go there. In fact, we shouldn’t.”

I look at Ellen, hoping for a clue. She’s deliberately avoiding my eye. Alex has fallen silent.

Wonderful. The conversation’s taken a turn for the awkwardly unfathomable, and suddenly I’m its sole custodian.

“Who unnerves you?” I ask. “Are you talking about your family?”

“Justine, I don’t think he wants to talk about—”

“Hell, yes, my family!” George laughs and rolls his eyes, giving the lie to Alex’s tactful warning. “They’re a sorry bunch. I’m the only normal one of the four of us. Ellen is so lucky to have you two—loving, reasonable parents.”

I have no idea what to say. I’ve known this boy less than five minutes.

“And you’re lucky to have her, and so am I,” George goes on. “Even if she does beat me at Monopoly.”

“I haven’t yet,” says Ellen. “Let’s carry on playing. You two can go downstairs.”

“George . . . you said something about another reason you closed the blind and curtains?”

“Mum, you’re obsessed,” says Ellen.

“It’s all right,” says George. “Yes, I didn’t want to be seen.”

“By . . . ?” I ask.

“The secret police, otherwise known as my dad. Our house is halfway up the hill on the other side of the river, directly opposite you. I don’t think he’d be able to see me in here from there, but I didn’t want to take the risk. He doesn’t know I’m here, you see. I’m not allowed to go anywhere. You can imagine how oppressive I find it!”

I glance at Alex, whose face is caught halfway between a smile and a grimace. He can’t decide if George is joking.

I’m sure he isn’t.

“Where does your dad think you are now?” I ask.

“He has no idea. I’m hoping to keep it that way.”

“But if you’re not allowed to go anywhere, how did you . . . ?”

“A very good question!” George follows this compliment with a small bow. “I snuck out. Is it sneaked or snuck? I think it’s snuck. I left a note saying I’d gone out for a long walk. My mother’s away at a conference, which makes life easier—in too many ways to list. I waited until I knew she wouldn’t be able to call for several hours, then I wrote a note for Dad and slipped out.”

Seeing my look of concern, George adds in his strange, booming voice, “It’s perfectly all right, really. You’re safe. Dad’s more likely to saw off his own head than tell Mum, even if he finds out where I’ve been. She’d make him suffer horribly.”

You’re safe.
He takes for granted that the whole world is as afraid of his mother as his father is. And as he is, despite his bold manner. This isn’t confidence I’m looking at; it’s a very frightened boy, putting on an act.

I ought to tell him that if he isn’t allowed by his parents to be here, then he can’t stay.

And send him back to the madhouse halfway up the hill? Ellen would never forgive you.

“You’re welcome to stay as long as you like, George,” I say. “Make yourself at home.”

“Thank you, Justine. You’re too kind. As long as I like would be forever, which is impractical. Still.” He sighs. “I wish I had a nice, normal mother like you. Oh!” He turns from me to Alex. “Would the two of you like to join Ellen and me in our Monopoly tournament? It would be a convenient excuse to scrap the game we’re in the middle of—the one I’m losing—and start a new one. You’d be helping me out greatly.”

He’s real, I find myself thinking, but is he really fourteen? While knowing that he is, I am simultaneously wondering if there’s any way at all that he might not be. Could he be a seventy-five-year-old trapped in a child’s body? He’s so polite, yet he calls me “Justine” without waiting to be asked. Scrupulously polite and overly familiar—it’s an odd combination.

“But if you abandon a game—any game—then whoever’s winning at the moment of abandonment has won,” Ellen teases him. That’s my daughter, who, until today, thought board games were the dullest thing in the world.

“The moment of abandonment,” George repeats, amplifying each word. “What a marvelous phrase. Doesn’t it sound like a romantic novel?”

“You’ve got a better chance of not losing if you keep playing,” says Ellen. “It’s your only hope, however remote.”

George turns to me and rolls his eyes conspiratorially. “Your offspring is an evil genius. I am completely in thrall to her. Next time I come, I’ll make sure to bring a jigsaw puzzle instead. Collaboration, not competition! That’s the way forward.”

No doubt New Ellen will declare herself to be a devotee of jigsaws any moment now.

“Righto,” says Alex decisively. “Justine and I’ll leave you to it. We’d better go and track down the dog, who at this moment is probably crossing ‘Destroy the entire downstairs’ off his to-do list.”

Ellen laughs. “You’re funny, Dad.”

“Oh.” George looks disappointed. “Well, if you change your minds, you’d be most welcome to join us at any time. The dog too! Monopoly’s fun with two players but four or five is ideal. It’s a game for all the family!”

Two hours later, with my mobile phone hot in my pocket from a long call, I’m returning to my house again, this time in a dripping raincoat and drenched running shoes and socks. Figgy is soaked too. Without the padding of dry, fluffy fur, his legs look perilously thin. Luckily he doesn’t seem to mind. He and I have walked three times around the perimeter of Speedwell House’s grounds, on the inside. I’d have ventured beyond the big iron gates, but Alex, shocked to hear that I took Figgy to Beaconwood, was adamant that he can’t leave our land again until he’s had his second lot of vaccinations. I think he’s being neurotic, but arguing would have kept me in the house longer.

I had to get out. Being told by George that I would be “most welcome” to join an activity taking place in my own house made me feel the opposite. I escaped so that I wouldn’t have to speak to him again before he left.