The If Game by Catherine Storr

you sure you don’t know them? Never did?’
    â€˜Quite sure.’
    â€˜But they live over here? Perhaps it’s just in Australia you’ve got a double. Are they over here for a visit, then?’
    Stephen said gloomily, ‘I don’t know. None of it seems to make sense.’
    Alex said, ‘Where do you meet these people? The first was in the funny flat house, wasn’t it?’
    â€˜That’s right.’
    â€˜Where else?’
    â€˜I told you. In a garden. In St Edmund’s Square.’
    â€˜In the square! Are they very posh, then?’
    â€˜No. Why?’
    â€˜Because it’s only posh people with a lot of money live in the square.’
    â€˜Well, they aren’t posh at all. I don’t know how they got there, anyway.’ He remembered the young woman from next door saying that the house hadn’t been occupied for months. So those people must have been trespassers, just like him.
    â€˜Anywhere else?’
    It seemed ridiculous, but having started to tell her, he had to go on. ‘While we were away.’
    â€˜What, by the sea?’
    â€˜In a sort of tower.’
    â€˜They were in a tower?’
    â€˜One of them was. A boy. Quite small.’
    â€˜What was he doing in a tower?’
    â€˜Hiding. He said it was a game.’
    â€˜And he knew you too?’
    â€˜Said he did. But. . .’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜He thought we were in Australia. He must have been crazy.’
    Alex said, ‘Wait a minute. You said those other people had funny accents. Were they Australian?’
    â€˜Could have been. Yes.’ Now that she’d said it, he knew she was right.
    â€˜So they’re somewhere around over here?’
    â€˜That last one was in Martelsea. Where my dad and I’d gone on holiday.’
    â€˜Seems like they’re everywhere,’ Alex said.
    â€˜That’s show I feel.’
    â€˜You don’t like them?’ she asked.
    â€˜It’s not that. It’s that I don’t like them knowing everything about me and I don’t know them.’
    â€˜Do they know everything about you?’
    He didn’t want to tell her that what they did know was his baby name. ‘They think they do.’
    She was thinking hard. ‘Is there anything special about the places you meet them at? Or is it just anywhere?’
    Inside the flat house. In the Square garden. Inside the Martello tower. He said, ‘No. Just seems to be anywhere.’ Then, remembering, he said, ‘It’s like as if I always have to go through a door. Then they’re there.’
    â€˜You mean they’re always the other side of the door?’
    â€˜It’s like that. Yes.’
    â€˜Suppose the doors let you in to a different sort of life?’
    â€˜You mean Sci-Fi sort of stuff?’ He wanted immediately to get rid of the idea.
    â€˜Something like that. Only . . .’ She stopped, mid-sentence.
    â€˜Go on.’
    â€˜You’ll say it’s stupid.’
    â€˜Never mind. Just say what you were going to.’
    She said, suddenly, in quite a different tone, ‘Do you ever play the “If” game?’
    â€˜What’s that?’
    She said, ‘It’s sort of wondering what you’d be doing if something different had happened. Like “What wouldyou do if you were on a plane and there was a hijacker?” or “What would you do if you won the lottery?” or “Who would you be if you could choose to be anybody?”’
    Stephen recognized it at once. ‘I don’t play it with anyone. It’s the sort of thing my dad doesn’t like.’
    â€˜Mine doesn’t either. But my mum and I play it a lot. I told you, when we were talking about Sherlock Holmes. It’s a game my mum and I play.’
    â€˜What’s that got to do with Australia and these people?’
    â€˜I just wondered. Suppose there’s another life going on somewhere where you