A Game For All The Family Read Online Free Page A

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