A Game For All The Family by Sophie Hannah

morning and one yesterday.”
    “What? Threatening how?”
    I take him through the two conversations word for word.
    “Jesus, Justine! You’ve wasted ten minutes on Victorian character names when you’re being pursued by a fucking psycho? Why didn’t you tell me straightaway?”
    “Alex, calm down. I’m hardly being pursued—”
    “Twice in two days, threatening to hurt you if you don’t go back to your old life in London? I call that being pursued. Please tell me you’ve told the police.”
    “No, I—”
    “Right. I’ll get off the phone and let you do that straightaway while I book a flight home. Tell them—”
    “Book a flight home?” I cut him off. “You can’t come back. You’ve got concerts.”
    “Justine, we need to take this seriously. Promise me you’ll call the police, and look after yourself and Ellen properly until I get back. Okay?”
    “All right, but . . . please don’t cut short your tour just for this. I agree, it’s worrying, but I don’t think we need to panic.”
    “I don’t intend to panic, but I’m also not going to swan around Germany singing Die schöne Müllerin while a psychopath eyes up my home and family with a view to attacking them,” says Alex impatiently. “I hope you’ll agree that’s reasonable?” In a kinder voice, he says, “I can’t help being a heroic man of action. I’ve got my own coat and everything. Bought it myself. Didn’t have it given to me by a girl.”
    I smile. “Well, if I can’t talk you out of it . . .”
    “Text me when you’ve spoken to the police. I’ll go and get this flight booked. See you soon.”
    I smile as I put my phone back in my pocket. I’m pleased Alex is coming home. If there’s any danger at all, I decide, it will now sense that my husband is on his way and beat a shamefaced retreat.
    All of which means the police can wait half an hour or so. First, it’s time for school.
    Lesley Griffiths, a chunkily built woman in her late fifties with waist-length silver hair, welcomes me into her office with chalk all over her clothes and a cake tin stuffed under one arm. She neither explains nor apologizes for her appearance—which I’m used to by now—and radiates the sort of confidence and authority I would expect from the CEO of a multibillion-dollar company. Each time I see Lesley, she resembles a scarecrow that’s had random objects stuck to it; last time she was holding a potted cactus in one hand for no discernible reason.
    “Justine! This is a nice surprise. We never see you! That’s the school bus for you—never see the bus parents! Sit, sit.” Lesley points me toward the chair opposite her desk, and I hurry to seat myself as quickly as I know she wants me to. She’s a clever and efficient woman who can often anticipate where things are heading, and her tendency is to try to speed them toward their final destination. I’ve been physically pushed down into this same chair before when I dawdled for too long. The challenge today will be to remain in Lesley’s office long enough to get answers to my questions. I’ve let her hustle me out into the corridor prematurely on previous occasions, then had to knock on her door twenty seconds later and say, “Sorry, me again. I did have one other thing to ask . . .”
    Above Lesley’s desk there’s a framed collage of holiday photos, mainly taken at her house in the south of France. Most are of her husband and three children messing around in their pool, but two are of Lesley in a green kaftan, reading in a deckchair. The kaftan looks much worse in one picture than in another—torn and faded. I suspect about ten years passed between photograph one and photograph two.
    Apart from the collage, Lesley has nothing on her office walls apart from framed hunting and shooting pictures, which look like illustrations from old books. It’s odd to see so many images of guns in a head teacher’s office. Beaconwood is an eccentric school. I used to think this was a good