The Fire Child Read online

  ‘Do not take him to a doctor, Rachel. I mean it.’

  ‘Why? What are you scared of? Is there something else you haven’t told me? Something you’re scared they might find, even now?’

  His face tightens with fury. I continue, regardless. ‘Is there?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘So what’s the issue? You say you’ve told me everything.’

  ‘I have, Rachel. So do not do it. I order you.’

  ‘You ORDER me?’ I feel like screaming Your Son Thinks I Will Be Dead By Christmas. Your Entire Family Is Fucking Crazy.

  But that makes me crazy, too. For it is possible I am now part of this family. Umbilically linked.

  ‘David, let’s end this conversation. Please. It’s only going to get worse.’

  He is momentarily muted. Then he offers a tired shrug. I know that tiredness, I feel it too. I am not sleeping properly, haven’t been sleeping for a while; vivid dreams disturb me.

  David checks his watch, pulling back his white shirtcuff. He is wearing his signet ring with the Kerthen crest,but no wedding ring. This is not unusual. He rarely wears a wedding ring. It’s not what people like him ‘do’, apparently. It is another way he is subtly but clearly posh, in a way I don’t even begin to comprehend.

  ‘All right.’ He sighs, enormously. ‘Look, I guess I’m sorry, it’s nearly nine: I’ve been working for twelve hours straight. Sorry for shouting. It’s the strain.’ He rubs his eyes. ‘I can’t even come home this weekend, I’ve got to work right through.’

  ‘Oh that’s fine. You stay there. We’ll cope with everything on our own. While you cruise around London.’

  He winces. And why not? That was a pointless little barb. I’m turning into something I hate: a shrewish woman, nettling my husband. This has to end, one way or another. I need to get Jamie some professional assessment, whatever his father says, and then I can decide my own future: if it is right and safe for me here. And any unborn child. Dead by Christmas.

  ‘David, let’s talk some other time. When we’ve both calmed down.’

  We end the call. His face gives way to a blank screen. I sit back, and gaze down at my stomach. Imagining a tiny bump. Then I rise and trawl my anxieties through the house, towards the Yellow Drawing Room, where I find Jamie playing a game on his smartphone, cross-legged on the sofa.

  Since the outburst at Levant, Jamie has been more conciliatory with me, as if he feels guilty. When I approach the sofa, he flashes me a sad smile, so I sit beside him and give him a little hug. Wanting him to sense the idea, the sweet possibility, of new life inside me. I kiss his forehead. His soft black hair smells of apple shampoo.

  ‘Sorry we argued, Rachel. Sorry about that.’

  ‘Me too.’

  I gaze at my stepson. His young eyes are so clear and violet-blue. I can see myself in them. A tiny reflection, brilliantly miniaturized in their icy fire.

  ‘Jamie.’

  He yawns. ‘Yes?’ He sounds very sleepy. It is way past nine.

  ‘Jamie, I am going to take you to see someone special.’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘They will sort everything out and everyone will be happy. We’ll start very soon. It’ll be a secret, between us. You and me.’

  He smiles weakly. ‘OK.’

  ‘It’s nothing terrible, but it’s better if we keep it secret. Not tell anyone.’

  He nods. Then he says, ‘Not even Mummy?’

  I stifle my agitation. Nothing I can do or say will ease this tragic confusion. This is, however, further proof that my plan is correct. I cannot continue in this house, continue with this marriage, unless I do what’s right by Jamie. He needs urgent medical help. Psychiatric help. Whatever David says.

  So I chivvy him off to bed, then I return to the kitchen. Where I stare at the pregnancy kit for about ten minutes, like I am trying to make it move with psychokinetic skills. Then I lean forward, pick it up, take it into the nearest downstairs loo.

  And now I sit. And wait. And I do not pray.

  And then I look down at the little plastic wand that might cast a magic spell on my future.

  Two lines.

  I am pregnant.

  35 Days Before Christmas

  Afternoon

  ‘Hello! Rather blowy today.’

  Mavis Prisk, the child psychologist, stands in her porch. She is younger than I expected. In smart jeans and a smarter top. Dark hair nicely cut. She is positively glamorous. Barely thirty-five. I am slightly taken aback, and feel shabby in my workaday clothes. Her firm voice sounded middle-aged on the phone – when I urgently arranged this meeting, when I pulled rank and gave her my full name, Mrs David Kerthen of Carnhallow House. From her formal answers and careful phrasing, I had anticipated a headmistressy woman in her fifties. Someone tweedy. Not sexy.

  ‘So this must be the famous Jamie Kerthen.’ She smiles and places a protective hand on his shoulder as we climb from the car, and she invites us into the warmth. ‘Let’s have a cup of tea and then we can all talk.’

  The house smells pleasantly of woodsmoke, from a big iron fire. Jamie surveys the place. He looks barely interested, vaguely nervous, and withdrawn. When we step into the white glassy kitchen, Mavis switches on a kettle, and I watch Jamie – as he takes in the spectacular view, over Cape Cornwall. My stepson is studiously gazing out to the ocean, where the partying sea leaps and dances over distinctive black rocks.

  ‘The Brisons,’ Mavis says, in an explanatory way, as she pours boiled water. ‘The rocks – they’re called the Brisons. Locals say they look like Charles de Gaulle having a bath.’ She puts the pot of tea and some mugs on a tray. ‘Let’s go into the study. It’s hard to get work done when there’s all that’ – she gestures at the immensity of blue, oceanic emptiness – ‘like a painting that keeps changing. It’s actually hard to stop watching.’

  The study is indeed quieter. Lined with shelves with apposite titles. The Handbook of Adolescent Psychology. Asperger’s in the Under 10s. Understanding ADHD. I wonder how this clearly smart, coolly confident woman, this paediatric psychologist with her scientific training, is going to react to my story. My stepson thinks he can predict the future. He has predicted my death. Am I going to mention that last bit? I find it hard to articulate. Because, again, it makes me sound delusional. Because a part of me really can’t help thinking: What if? How do you know? How does anyone know for sure?

  To my relief, Mavis Prisk begins with generalities. A smidgen of Cornish gossip. A polite joke. The inevitable mention of the November weather – ‘wait till you see January, the stormy seas are wonderful.’ Then she skilfully turns to the matter at hand, as if it is a natural evolution in our discussion.

  ‘Jamie, I understand you met with one of my colleagues, Mark Whittaker, at Treliske Hospital, not long after your mother’s accident? And he began some therapy with you, asking you to write to your mother?’

  Jamie softly blushes. And nods. And says nothing. His face twitches – and a sense of dread enters me. Is this going to be horrid? Cause some inner trauma to emerge – as a violent tantrum?

  Mavis nudges, again.

  ‘But you only saw the therapist a few times, is that right?’

  Another tiny nod. I am perplexed: I do not comprehend what has happened to this once very confident boy. Why has he regressed into almost total passivity?

  I intervene, on Jamie’s behalf: ‘It was decided that the therapy wasn’t helping. The letters, and everything. So it was stopped. But now …’

  Mavis acknowledges me, with a polite smile. Then turns back to Jamie. ‘I know it must be very difficult for you, James. But your stepmother says you are having new issues. She says that you have predicted things. That you are actually talking with your dead mother. If possible, I’d like to chat with you about all that.’

  Jamie says nothing. His hands are tight fists. He flashes me a hard and angry glare.

  ‘Jamie—’ I say. But he ignores my words, as well.

  Mavis tries again. ‘We’re al
l here to help you, Jamie. Maybe we have some ideas, some techniques, that can help you through all this. No one wants to make you sad or upset.’

  Still nothing. His chin is buried in his chest. Virtually autistic. This is painful.

  ‘Jamie?’

  Silence.

  ‘Jamie?’

  He does not respond.

  This is excruciating. Jamie rewards me with me another glare. Mavis, slightly blushing, sips from her tea. Then she glances my way, meaningfully. ‘Mrs Kerthen – Rachel? I have an idea. Would you mind, um, stepping out for an hour or so, perhaps take a walk on the cliffs? Then Jamie and I can talk alone.’

  I see her logic. Though I resent it, for reasons I can’t wholly explain.

  Mavis adds, ‘This is my job. I assure you I know what I’m doing.’

  Perhaps I feel a kind of relief. Jamie’s disturbing silence is too painful to witness. Collecting my coat and buttoning it up tight, I give Jamie a hug, to which he does not respond. The boy is locked inside his own emotions. Like the Brisons, black and immobile amidst the roaring seas. Hunched against an impending storm.

  ‘You’ll be OK, Jamie. Mavis is here to help.’

  His huge eyes regard me. I have no idea what he is thinking. But I guess I have no choice. I’ve pulled him out of school for this; taken the risk of going behind David’s back. I have to leave.

  Pushing the door into the gale, I take the walk that Mavis advised. Up the cliffs, to the left.

  The wind off the sea is sadistically cold, yet I like it. The sting of the chill has a distracting thrill of its own. I can make out a distant lighthouse perched outrageously on a rock, far to the west, where a shaft of sun spears the writhing waves.

  The November wind tousles the grass. Small wintering birds fight the gusts, like tiny fluttering kites, dancing together. Everywhere there are signs, next to the footpaths, overgrown with ferns, warning of Death and Injury in the Mineshafts. I marvel. Even here, on this wind-shattered, uttermost headland, they still mined, wrestling the metal from the chilly rock.

  But up here on Carn Gluze there are also weathered tourist signs for Iron Age tombs: grassed-over tombs and barrows. These ancient remains look like the spoilheaps from the mines, and the smaller tombs look like capped mineshafts. The chimneys in the fields look like five-thousand-year-old megaliths. The Stone Age and the Victorian, the prehistoric and the industrial, are eroding into each other. The landscape is repeating itself, or maybe cycling around itself, endlessly.

  But I will not repeat my history, I will not recycle my past.

  I will break free.

  Whatever happens to us, to me and Jamie and David, and our baby, I know I cannot go back to London. Back to my childhood world of sticky carpets, and littered parks, and suburban screams. All the menial jobs I did, age sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. To keep my mum and me alive. I escaped all that: I worked and read and educated myself, and I survived. I can’t return.

  But first I must tell David that I am pregnant, and see if we can be a family. And I shall do this face-to-face. Again. I need to see how he reacts in person, whether it brings him real joy.

  This coming weekend. A month before Christmas.

  An hour has passed. The wind has dropped, and a low hanging sun gleams through vast black curtains of rain, falling on the distant waves. Soon it will be dark. It’s a short walk down to Mavis’s house where I buzz the bell, feeling a sudden but ferocious anxiety.

  The moment she opens the door, I know I was right: something has happened.

  ‘Come in,’ she says, unsmiling. ‘Jamie is in the living room, with a computer game.’ She coughs. It is an awkward, unmeant cough. ‘So we can, ah, talk in the study. Privately.’

  We move to the study. I don’t waste time. ‘So what is it? Please tell me. Did Jamie open up? Mention anything about the past?’

  Mavis won’t meet my gaze. She curls some of her nicely cut hair behind an ear and stares at her bookshelves. And only then at me. ‘Well, Rachel … First we need to know that children often react strangely to deaths. The death of a parent is consistently rated as one of the most stressful events. Bereaved kids have a threefold increased risk of depression.’

  ‘You think Jamie is depressed?’

  ‘No. Of course he is unhappy. But no, I would not say he is, precisely, depressed. But he is still grieving very badly. And the grieving is going on too long. Something is making it worse.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ah. I’m not exactly sure. He shows signs of magical thinking. Seeing a causal reaction between his behaviour and events, a link which does not exist. Magical thinking is a not uncommon reaction in a grieving child, but not nearly two years after the death.’

  ‘What else? What about the predictions?’

  Mavis Prisk’s pretty eyes won’t face mine.

  I persist. ‘Did you talk about the predictions, the hare, what he said?’

  ‘Yes, we did. Of course.’

  ‘So?’

  A hint of a blush. ‘He essentially denies that he said any of this. He says you are …’ she frowns, subtly. ‘He says you are making it up.’

  ‘But we know that’s a lie. He’s embarrassed.’

  She blinks. ‘Of course. Yes. Of course.’

  ‘He set the fires, and said those words.’

  ‘Yes. I know.’

  I have to press my point. ‘Did he talk about the death of his mother, the accident that night, anything about that?’

  ‘No.’

  This is going nowhere. Yet I will not be budged. I have to heal him. Fix this family. Make Carnhallow safe for my child. ‘What can we do, medically?’

  She looks relieved, as if we are moving on to firmer ground. ‘I don’t have instant solutions, so the best bet is to wait it out, for now. Grief can be unusually prolonged. If he gets noticeably worse we could, possibly, consider medication, but obviously that’s a choice for the longer term.’

  Then she shakes her head, as if she has made a difficult decision, even as we talk.

  ‘Rachel. You should know that Jamie did say something rather troubling.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He implied, or suggested, or maybe inferred, that the disturbances began …’

  ‘Yes.’

  Her tone is pretty blunt. ‘Well, that they began when you arrived.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  She shrugs. ‘It’s an implication. But he said it.’

  ‘An implication? What exactly are you suggesting?’

  ‘I understand it might be upsetting. But I have to say, I do wonder. It may be that you are upsetting Jamie, causing some of this. I note his new symptoms began when you arrived at Carnhallow.’

  I can’t help my anger. ‘You reckon it’s all my fault? What a bloody ridiculous thing to say! How dare you, how can you fu—’

  Too late, I stop, chiding my vulgar, London self. I know I have crossed the line. My temper has preserved me in the past, but also condemned me.

  Mavis Prisk glares at me, flatly. ‘I think this is enough, for now. Hmm? Please, I think you had better go.’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry – I flew off—’

  ‘Please go. Now.’

  Guilty, and frustrated, I collect Jamie from the living room, where he was staring out of the window. At the slopes, the Cape, the simmering sea, turning purple and black, as night cruises in, from the Scillies.

  The therapist watches us from her porch, in the gloom of the dusk, as we get in the car, and reverse out of her drive.

  When she has disappeared from view, I turn and ask Jamie, trying to be as calm as possible.

  ‘Hey, you. What did you guys talk about? How did that go?’

  Jamie says nothing. Naturally.

  ‘I thought she was nice,’ I say, hoping my clumsy lies aren’t too obvious.

  The car rumbles on to smoother tarmac, the sea recedes. We are in the narrow streets of St Just in Penwith, that haunted, handsome old town. The last town of all.

  The evening wind
kicks at the scarlet plastic Santas strung across the road, making them dance like Cossacks, above the pasty shop. A gap opens up, and I pull out and steer left, heading for the coastal road to Carnhallow.

  ‘There!’ shouts Jamie. Very loudly. He is suddenly agitated. ‘There. There! That was her face.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes!’ He is undoing his seat belt; my stepson is about to get out of the car, even as I drive. ‘Yes, Mummy. Mummy. Mummy! There!’

  Tingled with panic, I yank the car over, pulling to a very sharp stop, close to whiplashing. Then I slap my hand on the switch, shutting all the locks so he can’t jump out.

  What is he staring at? Why is he so animated? There isn’t much to see. In the wintry twilight, the car windows are black: they reflect the interior, the dashboard light, the car’s occupants.

  He is looking at us.

  Or is he?

  Now I notice a little red bus across the road, with interior lights. Right at the back I see a blonde woman. She is turned away, but I can see her profile.

  The fear comes in a sudden rush, like frozen needles. Prickling, simultaneously, all over my body. It could be Nina Kerthen. It could. It really could.

  Yet it surely can’t. It’s someone that looks like her. Wearing her kind of clothes. That’s all. That’s what I’m seeing.

  Slowly, the bus pulls out, and comes right alongside, and I get a slightly better view. And the anxiety rises in my throat like a sickness, along with an imprisoning panic.

  It really is, I think. It’s Nina Kerthen. I feel faintly ill.

  Nina Kerthen is dead in the depths of Morvellan Mine, and yet here she is, returned – sitting in the back of a humble bus, probably heading down to Penzance. I stare, appalled. My mouth hanging open. The nausea rises. Surely it can’t be her. It is but it isn’t. It can’t be, but it is.

  With blithe unconcern, the bus steers away; I mustn’t let it escape. I have to know if this is Nina Kerthen: alive. I need the truth. Screeching the car right, then reversing left – making other motorists honk horns at me, furiously – I do a wild and brazen three-point turn, and take the westering road, following the bus.