Sophie Hannah - A Game for All the Family

DEDICATION

For Karen Gearythank you for looking after

my books so brilliantly for a decade!

CONTENTS

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1: The Killing of Malachy Dodd

Chapter 1

Chapter 1: The Killing of Malachy Dodd (continued)

Chapter 2

Chapter 2: The Perrine Compromise, and Taking Turns

Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Standards of Evidence and the Almost Hanging of Perrine

Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Pas Devant les Enfants

Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Homeschooling

Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Who Was It, Sitting on That Tree Branch?

Chapter 7

Chapter 7: A Bumcracker Dies

Chapter 8

Chapter 8: Remove All Sharp Items, Chop Down All Trees

Chapter 9

Chapter 9: No Lock on the Little Green Door

Chapter 10

The Casting Ouch or The Ben Lourenco Affair

Chapter 11

Chapter 10: You Know What? You Know What? You Know What? I Dont Care

Chapter 12

Chapter 11: An Unlocked-House Mystery

Chapter 13

Chapter 12: The Legend of Evil Perrine

Chapter 14

Chapter 13: Who, How, When and Why

Chapter 15

Emails

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Sophie Hannah

Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

The people Im about to meet in my new life, if theyre anything like the ones Im leaving behind, will ask as soon as they can get away with it. In my fantasy, they dont have faces or names, only voicesraised, 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 myselfwhat I believe to be the point of me. Thats 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. Thats part of the reason for starting a new life. In my old one, there wasnt enough space of any kind.

My name is Justine Merrison and I do Nothing. With a capital N. Not a single thing. Ill 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 managersall haggard and harried from a six-month stretch of fourteen-hour working days.

I wont mention what I used to do, or talk about day-to-day chores as if they count as Something. Yes, its true that Ill 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 dont 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 Ill 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 isnt 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 dont need to do anything in a hurry. At this rate of travelapproximately four meters per hour, which is unusual even for the North Circularwe wont 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 doesnt matter when I arrive, as I have nothing pressing to attend to. I wont 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 didnt hear his question over the noise of Georges Bizets Carmen thats blaring from our cars 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. Dads talking to you!

I think your mothers 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 doeshas for as long as Ive known himis 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 didnt 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, well 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 hed disobeyed them and telling him again like they really meant it this time. Ill 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, Youre a nutter, Mum. You cant say Nothing. Youll 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, theyll think youre a depressed housewife whos 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 wont, I say. Not if I beam blissfully while describing my completely empty schedule.

Ah, so you will say more than Nothing!

Say youre a stay-at-home mum, Ellen advises. Or youre taking a career break after a stressful few years. Youre weighing up various options . . .

But Im not. Ive already chosen Nothing. Hey. I tap Alex on the arm. Im going to buy one of those year-planner wall chartsa really beautiful oneand stick it up in a prominent place, so that I can leave every days box totally empty. Three hundred and sixty-five empty boxes. Itll be a thing of beauty.

Youre so annoying, Mum, Ellen groans. You keep banging on about this new life and how everythings going to be so different, but it wont be, because . . . you! Youre incapable of changing. Youre exactly the same: still a massive . . . zealot. You were a zealot about working, and now youre going to be one about not working. Itll be so boring for me. And embarrassing.

Pipe down, pipsqueak, I say in a tone of mock outrage. Arent you, like, supposed to be, like, only thirteen?