Free A Game For All The Family by Sophie Hannah Page B

glad you think it’s all so funny,” I say as if I don’t mean it, though in fact it’s true: I am glad. Alex’s levity makes me feel better. “I read a bit of her story, not only the family tree. It was creepy, and I don’t mean it’s a scary story. It’s . . . you’d have to read it to understand. I can’t believe she made it up.”
    “You think she copied it from somewhere?”
    “No. That’s the strange thing. I don’t think she’d do that, but I also don’t think the three pages that I read are the product of her imagination. And those are the only two possibilities, aren’t they?”
    “I wouldn’t have thought so, no,” says Alex cheerfully. “There are always other possibilities, ones you haven’t thought of.”
    “Even the names . . . Especially the names.” I shake my head, convincing myself once again that something’s wrong. Can I convince Alex? “There are three generations of the same family: a married couple, Bascom and Sorrel Ingrey, with three daughters called Lisette, Allisande and Perrine. Then Lisette’s got two children called Garnet and Urban. Do those sound like names Ellen would have chosen to put in a story?”
    “Yes. They’re over the top and weird. Sounds exactly like a fourteen-year-old’s invention to me.”
    “I’d agree if the names were, I don’t know, Florentina and Star, but Bascom Ingrey? Urban Ingrey? They’re so austere and Victorian. I keep telling myself I’m making a fuss about nothing, and then I think of those names and I know it’s not right. They live in our house.”
    “Who does?”
    “The Ingreys. Except they don’t and never have, only in Ellen’s story. I’ve Googled. There’s definitely never been a family called Ingrey at Speedwell House. Our home is officially an architectural treasure, so there are online records going back to the year dot.”
    The next words I hear are quiet and German. They fade quickly. Someone walking past, no doubt.
    “Please tell me your paranoia isn’t veering toward the supernatural,” says Alex. “Is that what you’re hinting at? Speedwell House is haunted by a ghostly family called the Ingreys, and their spirits have infiltrated our daughter and made her ghost-write—ha, get it?—their family history?”
    “Don’t be daft.” At least now I get a turn to sound like the sensible one.
    “Then I don’t see what you’re worried about. Is this going to be another weird obsession that drags on, like 8 Panama Row?”
    “Who can tell?” I say breezily.
    “Darling, don’t jump down my throat, but how sure are you that all this obsessing over trivia isn’t some kind of stress hangover from the Ben Lourenco business?”
    I feel either sadness or a sort of amused disbelief when I hear Ben’s name these days, not boiling anger. I’m over it. I hope he is too.
    “Very sure. All Ben Lourenco stress was blissfully canceled out when I decided never to work again,” I say.
    “Good.” Alex sounds doubtful. “I suppose there’s a common theme: Ben, like this George Donbavand, was unfairly maligned and accused. Look, either Ellen’s written this story herself, and thought of the names herself—Googled ‘unusual Victorian names’ or whatever—or she’s copied it from somewhere. Ask her.”
    “I tried. She was cagey as anything. Oh, she’s put her own name on the family tree too, so there’s an Ellen in the story. Urban Ingrey’s wife is Ellen.”
    “I wouldn’t worry about that,” says Alex emphatically. Of all the not-worrying things I have told him, he has identified this one as the least worrying. “Writing’s a kind of fantasizing, isn’t it? Ellen’s probably cast herself in the heroine’s role. Look, I’d better go. Dieter and—”
    “Wait.” I wasn’t planning to tell him the rest, but it seems crazy not to. I don’t want to alarm him; on the other hand, he is as anxiety-proof as it’s possible for a human being to be. “I’ve had two threatening calls. One this