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Dedication

To Joan

Epigraph

What, then, is the right way of living? Life must be lived as play, playing certain games, making sacrifices, singing and dancing, and then a man will be able to propitiate the gods and defend himself against his enemies, and win in the contest.

PLATO, LAWS

CHAPTER 1

GAME

The year Peter went missing was the year of the floods. I was on my way home from a meeting in Paris when the call came. It was a Wednesday, late April, and as the train hurtled toward London night was coming on. The heavy clouds were darkest blue and great pools of water lay in the fields like molten silver. I was on my laptop, reading about the latest in a series of leaked financial papers. When I glanced up, the last light slipped away, and my reflection coalesced upon the window as though the darkness was developing fluid.

My phone rang and I rooted violently for it in my handbag, alive with panic, as though I was secretly, desperately hoping for a momentous and life-changing call from someone who would ring only once and withhold their number. In my wildest dreams, I would not have guessed Peter’s mother would be the caller.

“Andrea … are you there? It’s Patricia, Mrs. White.” When I didn’t answer, she went on, “Is that you, Andy? Is it you?”

“Yes, it’s me. How are you?” Had the vicar died? A quick, stabbing pain, deeper than I would have expected.

“We’re both well, dear. You sound … a bit different.” Thinking about it later, I would realize she meant posher. “Peter says you’re doing very well.”

Her voice was trembly. She had always been old, even when we were small. Her eyes were a pale china blue. When I used to knock at the vicarage door, her mouth would purse in disappointment as though she’d been expecting a boy, not a girl, but a nice boy called Rufus or Hugo from a nice home. But there I was with my crew cut and pink plastic earrings, smiling the gap-toothed smile of a master criminal and inviting Peter to throw sticks in the stream, by which I meant trapping a slowworm and posting it through Mrs. East’s letterbox because I’d heard my mother call her a witch. We were always up to something or other. I had a weakness for games, a trait I shared with Peter.

“It’s Peter, dear, I’m worried about him. We haven’t heard from him. Not this past month. Have you spoken to him?”