The Family Game(63)

Outside the cubicle I find a woman in her late forties, patience waning, with a towel wrapped tight around her. Behind her a full changing room, bodies in various stages of undress. I find a free combination locker, store my bag securely and head to the pool.



* * *



On the subway ride home, hair now suitably damp and redolent of swimming pool, I google Gianna Scaccia and find what I expected to, what Robert has already described. Death by accidental overdose. I stare at her beautiful face, her eyes alive with possibility, her caramel skin and tumbling curls.

But as I tap through the article, something unexpected jumps out at me, stopping me dead in my tracks. I reread the paragraph to be sure I haven’t misunderstood.


‘It’s important to understand,’ Marion Scaccia, 58, Gianna’s mother, tells us, ‘that while someone with an addiction might appear to have things under control, relapses can be triggered by anything. Gianna was going through a lot. The loss of a close friend is always hard, but in the case of suicide doubly so. I think she was having trouble processing it. The fact that Gianna hadn’t seen Alison’s suicide coming, at all, hadn’t noticed her friend’s troubles, plagued her. After all, there was no outward explanation for why Alison did what she did. My daughter blamed herself for not seeing the storm cloud coming. And she turned to substances to lighten her pain.’



I sit bolt upright in my subway seat. Alison Montgomery, the second girl on Robert’s list, was Gianna’s close friend.

Alison can’t have committed suicide, though. She wouldn’t be on Robert’s list if she had. Gianna must have worked out what happened to Alison, that the Holbecks were involved, and she must have let them know.

I type Alison Montgomery’s name into my search engine.


Death of MIT undergraduate Alison Montgomery highlights the abnormally high suicide rates at the university.

Legal questions are being asked about the extent educational institutions could be held responsible for the deaths of their students after final-year graduate Alison Montgomery, 21, was unexpectedly found dead in her halls last week. Alison becomes another student in a long list who have committed suicide at the institution since the 1990s. Alison, in her final year of study majoring in Data, Systems and Society at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was described as ‘a warm-hearted and brilliant young woman’. Her death has come as a shock to many and has raised questions about why the warning signs were not picked up sooner by the university.



I look up from the article abruptly.

Edward was at MIT in 2004, the year both girls died. My heart thunders in my chest as his proximity to Alison hits home. My mouth is suddenly dry. Oh God. Edward must have known both Alison and Gianna. Did he date them? Did Robert consider Alison a distraction and Gianna a complication?

I lean forward, head on hands to keep from fainting, as I try to push the thought away, but it will not go. Edward must have known. He must have suspected something strange was going on. Is that why the rift opened between him and his family? And if so, why in God’s name are we cosying up to them now?

Edward told me he had a girlfriend at MIT, but that they broke up after the first year. I feel like I’m going to be sick as the subway car rattles into the next station and I bolt for the door, managing to reach the nearest platform bench before a wave of dizziness drains the blood from me and my vision blurs.

I try not to think of the fact that I’m twelve weeks pregnant, and how totally trapped I am in my situation. I take a deep slug of water from my gym bottle and force myself to stay calm, to think. How could I get so far into all this without noticing what must have been right in front of me? Edward did not want me to meet his family, and since we have, he has been on guard to make sure no one oversteps a mark. I pushed for them. He could have, should have, told me if he knew any of this, but then could he really know? I push my cold hands into my burning cheeks and try to calm down.

First of all, Edward didn’t really know Lucy Probus; Lucy was Bobby’s girlfriend. Edward was living back at The Hydes when Bobby was attending Columbia; he was just a teenager. He wouldn’t have had anything to do with Lucy. He might not even have been aware that she went missing.

The simple truth is, Edward must have been seeing Alison, and Robert didn’t like it. He broke up with her at the family’s behest and as her exams approached, Alison took her own life. And as far as Edward knew, Gianna, her wild and guilt-ridden best friend, overdosed shortly after. It’s not as if Edward would have had a tape to explain all of this. Alison and Gianna’s deaths were made to look innocent. And life can be hard for some people – tragedy, while awful, is rarely more than that.

As my faintness subsides, I rise, carefully, and board the next train as it pulls in.

Finding a seat, I turn my attention to the two most recent women on Robert’s list: Aliza Masri and Melissa Brown. If I can work out their connection to the Holbecks, things might come fully into focus.

Wikipedia tells me Aliza Masri is a visual artist.


Born in Lebanon to an American mother and a Lebanese-Syrian father, Aliza attended international school in Beirut before moving back to the US with her mother. Aliza’s work has appeared in notable galleries across Europe and the US.

Masri slipped into notoriety in late 2019 when it was alleged, after controversial comments made on social media, that she may have supported the contentious movement the FFI, which is known to have strong international links to Hezbollah.