A Game For All The Family by Sophie Hannah Read Free Book Online Page A

water. Wow. This is a first. Now she’s putting a teabag in a mug. Ellen doesn’t drink tea or coffee—she thinks both taste disgusting.
    She’s making me a drink: something that hasn’t happened before. I watch in stunned silence as she adds the milk, then squashes the bag against the side of the mug with a teaspoon before throwing it in the bin. It’s going to be orange and revolting, but who cares. My daughter has made me a hot drink, unprompted. This is a historic occasion.
    She brings the mug over to the table and puts it down where she wants me to sit: opposite her. “My best friend in the whole world was expelled yesterday,” she says. Then, rolling her eyes, “To which you’re going to reply, ‘I didn’t know you had a best friend in the world.’ ”
    I didn’t. I’m relieved to hear that such a person exists. Unlike most fourteen-year-olds whose parents announce a sudden house move, Ellen was excited about the prospect of leaving her old school and social circle. “I can make new friends,” she said, and it was as close to a sigh of relief as words can be. In London, she’d been part of a close-knit gang of four: Ellen, Natasha, Priya and Blessing. Blessing and Priya were lovely, but they were also inseparable, and Ellen found herself, at an early stage in the gang’s formation, forced to be the official best friend of Natasha, who was a devious, undermining backstabber with ultracompetitive parents. “Are you sure you’re okay sitting next to me for maths?” Natasha would ask Ellen, all wide eyes and fake concern. “It’s just that I know you find it so hard, and I don’t, and I don’t want you to get upset when I get more answers right than you do.” At least three comments of that sort every day, and other nonsense like random periods of withheld eye contact—strenuously denied when pointed out—soon led to Ellen disliking her supposed best friend intensely.
    As she regularly explained to me—and indeed, as I remembered from my own school days—you don’t get to choose your friends at that age. I suggested booting Natasha out of the gang, but, sadly, Priya and Blessing were both far too nice to authorize anything like that.
    Before Ellen started at her new school, I warned her about cliquey groups of girls. “Don’t worry,” she said in a world-weary drawl, “I’m going to keep my distance from everyone until I’ve sussed them all out. I’ll be bland and smiley and friendly, but I won’t be anyone’s friend . No way.”
    Since then she’s mentioned a few names—Lucy, Madeline, Jessica—but there’s been no hint of a change of policy, nothing to herald the arrival on the scene of anyone significant. “So who is this ‘best friend in the whole world’?”
    “His name’s George.” Ellen rolls her eyes again. “Yes, he’s a boy. Big deal.”
    “I’m just surprised,” I say. “Most people your age pretend to hate the opposite sex, unless they’re . . .” Er, no, let’s not take the conversation in that direction, Justine.
    I mustn’t ask if there’s any element of boyfriend/girlfriend to the friendship. It wouldn’t go down well, and it doesn’t matter. “What’s George’s surname?”
    Ellen’s eyes fix on me. “Why do you want to know?”
    “No reason. I wondered, that’s all.” What have I done wrong? Let me rephrase that, even though no one’s hearing it: I’ve done nothing wrong. So what does Ellen think I’ve done?
    “Donbavand,” she mutters, so faintly that I have to ask her to repeat it. And then, because it’s an unusual name, I ask her to spell it. This all takes longer than I want it to.
    “And . . . George was expelled?”
    Ellen nods. Her expression hardens, and I see how furious she is. Anger radiates from her body in waves. “Yesterday. He did nothing wrong. I told them that, but no one believed me. They think he stole my coat, but he didn’t. I gave it to him—at the end of last week. I said he could keep it. It was