The Fire Child Read online

  At once she flinches, startled, nearly dropping the mug in her hands. ‘Oh,’ she says, ripping the earphones out. ‘I am sorry, Miss Rachel.’

  ‘No, please, it was my fault. I made you jump.’

  Her smile is soft, and sincere. I smile in return.

  ‘I was wondering. Do you fancy a cup of tea?’

  She looks at me in a friendly, puzzled way. ‘Tea. You want me make you cup of tea?’

  ‘No. I thought …’ I am shrugging. ‘Well, I thought you and I could chat and, er, y’know. Have a cuppa and a conversation. Girl to girl. Get to know each other a bit better. This house is so big! You can get pretty lost.’

  ‘Cup … pa?’ Her puzzlement is plain now and tinged with concern. ‘There is problem, you must tell me?’

  ‘No, I—’

  ‘I collect Jamie OK. He is in the Drawing Room. But – is a problem? I have done something—’

  ‘No, no no. It’s nothing. I just, I just, I thought we might …’

  This is hopeless. Perhaps I should tell her the truth. Sit her down with the teapot and spill it all out. Confess it all. Confess that I am finding it difficult to find my role. That David’s friends are nice but they’re his friends, older, richer, different. That Juliet is lovely but she is frail and reclusive and I can’t keep intruding on her. That there is generally no one else to talk to, no adult in my days – I have to wait for David to come home to have interesting conversations face to face, or ring up Jessica in London and beg for scraps of gossip about my old life. I could tell Cassie the facts. Tell her that the isolation is starting to gnaw.

  But I can’t say any of this: she would find it bizarre. So instead I give her a big fat smile and say, ‘Well, that’s great, Cassie. Everything is totally good. I wanted to make sure you’re OK, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh yes!’ She laughs, lifting up her earphones. ‘I am fine, I happy, I OK, I have a new song, I love Awoo, you know? Lim Kim!’ She laughs again, and then she warbles a couple of lines, ‘Mamaligosha, Mamaligotcha … alway Mamaligosha! Help me work. Miss Nina she used to say I sing too much, but I think she make a joke me. Miss Nina was very funny.’

  Her earphones are replaced, she smiles again, but her smile is a little sad now, and maybe sharper at the edges. As if I am something of a disappointment after Nina, though she is far too nice to say this.

  Again, the awkwardness returns. Cassie is waiting for me to go, so she can finish her chores. I return her fading smile, and then – defeated – I leave the kitchen.

  There isn’t much else for me to do. The house looks at me in derision. Why don’t you do some restoring? Buy a carpet. Make yourself useful. I stand like a frightened interloper in the hall. I must go and see Jamie, check on my stepson.

  I find him soon enough, in the Yellow Drawing Room, sitting on the sofa. He does not respond as I open the door, does not move a millimetre. He is still in his school uniform, and he is intently reading a book. It looks serious for his age. A lock of dark hair falls across his forehead, a single dark feather on snow. The beauty of the boy is saddening, sometimes. I’m not sure why.

  ‘Hello, how was school?’

  At first he barely moves, then he turns my way, and frowns for a second, as if he has heard something rather puzzling about me, but hasn’t entirely worked it out. Yet.

  ‘Jamie?’

  The frown persists, but he responds. ‘It was OK. Thank you.’

  Then he goes back to the book, ignoring me completely. I open my mouth to say something but realize I have nothing to say to my stepchild, either. I am flailing here. I don’t know how to reach out, to find common ground, to form the vital bond: with anyone. I don’t know how to talk to Cassie and I don’t know what to say to Jamie. I might as well talk to myself.

  Lingering by the bookshelves, I strain to think of a subject that might engage my stepson, but before I do, Jamie speaks.

  ‘Why?’

  But he isn’t speaking to me. He is staring at the large painting on the wall opposite the sofa. It is a huge abstract, a column of horizontal slabs, of hazy, throbbing colour, blue over black over green.

  I don’t especially like this painting; it’s the only one of Nina’s purchases of which I disapprove. The colours are beautiful and I’ve no doubt the painting cost thousands – but the colours are evidently meant to represent the coast, here, at Morvellan: the green fields, the blue sky, the black mine houses between. It has a dominant and foreboding quality. One day I will move it. This is my home now.

  Jamie is still staring, rigidly, at the painting. Then again he says, to himself, as if I am not in the room, ‘Why?’

  I step closer. ‘Jamie, why what?’

  He doesn’t turn my way. He keeps talking into nothing. ‘Why? Why did you do that?’

  Is he lost in some deep daydream? Something like sleepwalking? He looks perfectly conscious. Alert even. But intently focused on something I cannot perceive.

  ‘Ah. Ah. Why. There will be lights in the Old Hall,’ he says. Then he nods as if someone or something has answered his question, and then he looks at me – not directly at me, but slightly to my right – and he smiles: a flash of surprised happiness. He smiles as if there is someone nice standing next to me, and then he goes back to his book. Reflexively, I snap my head right, to find the person who makes Jamie smile.

  I am staring at the wall. At empty space.

  Of course there’s no one there. It’s only me and him. So why did I turn my head?

  Part of me, abruptly, wants to flee. To run away. To get in my car and drive as fast as possible to London. But this is ridiculous. I am merely spooked. The hare, and now this. It is unbalancing. I’m not going to be scared by an eight-year-old boy, a soulful stepson with traumas. If I leave the Drawing Room now I will be admitting defeat.

  I must stay. And if we cannot talk we can at least sit in companionable silence. That would be something. I can read in here, as he is reading. Let stepson and stepmother read together.

  Crossing to the bookcase on the further side of the Drawing Room, I check the shelves. Jamie turns the pages of his book, his back to me. I can hear him flick the pages, quickly quickly.

  There is a section here of Nina’s books that I have not read: tall, authoritative books on historical furniture, silverware, embroideries.

  I pull out one book, The Care and Repair of Antique Furniture, flick through it and replace it, not sure what information I am seeking. Then I try another: Regency Interiors: a Guidebook. Finally, I choose a third: The Victoria and Albert Catalogue of English Woodwork, Volume IV. But when I pull the book from the shelf, something very different comes with it, flapping to the floor.

  A magazine.

  It looks like a gossip magazine. Why would it be kept here? Amongst Nina’s books?

  Jamie is still deep in his reading. His capacity for quiet concentration impresses me. He gets it from his father.

  Sitting down in one of Nina’s beautifully reupholstered armchairs, I scan the cover of the magazine and my question is answered. The magazine is dated from eight years ago, and right there, at the very top, is a small box. With a photo of a glamorous couple. David and Nina.

  My heartbeat quickens. I read the caption.

  Nina Kerthen, eldest daughter of French banker, Sacha Valéry, proudly shows her new baby, with her husband, Cornish landowner, David Kerthen.

  We take a look inside their historic home.

  Briskly I flick through the pages. Find the relevant section.

  The article’s prose is silly celebrity journalese, venerating David and Nina for simply being rich and good-looking, aristocratic and lucky. The world ‘elegant’ is employed in almost every paragraph. It is froth and nonsense.

  So why did Nina keep it? She was highly intelligent: she wouldn’t usually read this stuff. My guess is that she kept it for the photos, which are good. The magazine got a proper professional to do the job. There are some night-time exteriors of Carnhallow, showing the house glowing in the dark noctu
rnal woods like a golden reliquary in a shadowy crypt.

  The photos of David and Nina are also impressive. And one, in particular, compels. I pause as I look at it, biting my own hair, thinking, reflecting.

  This photo shows Nina, in a summer dress, sitting in a satin armchair, in this very room – the Yellow Drawing Room – with angled knees pressed together. And in this one singular picture she is holding baby Jamie. This is the only photo where we see their son, despite the promise of the magazine cover.

  At her side, David stands tall, slim, and dark, in a charcoal black suit, with a protective arm poised around his wife’s bare, suntanned shoulder.

  The photo is mysteriously perfect. I feel a sudden and powerful twinge of jealousy. Nina’s shoulder is so beautiful and flawless. She is so immaculate, yet decorously sensuous. Suppressing my envy, I scrutinize the rest of the image. The baby is, for some reason, barely visible. You can only just tell that it is Jamie, lying in his mother’s suntanned arms. But you can very clearly see a tiny fist, reaching from white swaddling.

  If my heartbeat was quickened before, now it beats faster still. Because I am getting the sense I am staring at a clue, maybe even a distressing or important clue. But a clue to what? Why should there be a clue at all? I have to fight down my bewilderment. Regain my rationality. There is no mystery, there is no reason for me to be frightened or jealous. Everything is explained. Jamie is getting better, albeit slowly. We had a good summer. I will get pregnant. I will make friends. We will be happy. The dead hare was a coincidence.

  ‘What’s that you’re reading?’

  Jamie is standing beside me. I didn’t hear him move.

  ‘Oh,’ I say, with a flash of startled embarrassment, quickly shoving the magazine between two books. ‘Only a magazine. Nothing important. Have you finished with your book? Do you want something to eat?’

  He looks unhappy. Did he see the magazine in my hands? See his mother? It was daft and wrong of me to read it in here, in front of him, the grieving child. I won’t do that again.

  ‘Tell you what, I’ll warm up some of that lasagne, from yesterday, remember? You said you liked it.’

  He shrugs. I babble on, eager to make the most of this conversation, however staccato. I can make us all a family.

  ‘Then we can talk, talk properly. How about a holiday next year? Would you like that? We’ve had such a nice summer here, but maybe next year we could go abroad, somewhere like France?’

  Now I pause.

  Jamie is frowning intensely.

  ‘What’s wrong, Jamie?’

  He stands there, black and white in his school uniform, looking at me, and I can see the deep emotion in his eyes, showing sadness, or worse.

  And then he says, ‘Actually, Rachel, you should know something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I already went to France with Mummy. When I was small.’

  ‘Oh.’ Rising from the armchair, I chide myself, but I’m not sure why; there is no way I could have known about their holidays. ‘Well, it doesn’t have to be France, we could try Spain, or Portugal maybe, or—’

  He shakes his head, interrupting. ‘I think she has been staying there. In France. But now she is coming back.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Mummy! I can hear her.’

  He is obviously troubled: the terrible grief is resurfacing again. I respond, as softly as possible, trying to find the right words, ‘Jamie, don’t be silly. Your mummy is not coming back. Because, well, you know where she is. She passed away. We’ve all seen the grave, haven’t we? In Zennor.’

  The boy looks at me long, and hard, his large eyes wet. He looks outright scared. I want to embrace him. Calm him.

  Jamie shakes his head, raising his voice. ‘But she isn’t. She’s not there. She’s not in the coffin. Don’t you know that?’

  A darkness opens.

  ‘But, Jamie—’

  ‘They never did. They never found the body.’ His voice trembles. ‘She isn’t in that grave. They never found her. Nobody has ever found my mummy. Ask Daddy. Ask him. She isn’t buried in Zennor.’

  Before I can reply, he runs out of the room. I hear his footsteps down the hall, then the same light boyish steps, running up the Grand Staircase. To his bedroom, presumably. And I am left here alone, in the beautiful Yellow Drawing Room. Alone with the intolerable idea that Jamie has placed in my mind.

  Pacing across the room I find my laptop, lying on the walnut sidetable. Wrenching it open, I hesitate, take a deep breath, and then urgently type into the search engine: ‘death Nina Kerthen’.

  I’ve never done this before: because there seemed no need. David told me Nina was dead. He described the tragic accident: Nina fell down the shaft at Morvellan. It was awful. I even went to see her grave in Zennor churchyard, with its poignant epitaph: This is the light of the mind.

  My curiosity ended there. I didn’t want to know anything more, it was all too sad. I wanted a brand-new life with my brand-new husband, unblemished by the past.

  My fingers tremble as I scroll the page and click on a couple of likely websites. Local news reports. Neatly cached.

  No body has been found.

  Divers are still searching, but nothing has been discovered.

  The body was never found.

  Slamming the laptop shut, I stare through the lead diamonds of Carnhallow’s windows: into the green-grey autumn evening, the black trees of Ladies Wood. Gazing deep into the gloom.

  Jamie is right. They never found the body.

  Yet there is a grave in Zennor. Complete with epitaph.

  109 Days Before Christmas

  Morning

  It must be the most beautiful supermarket view in Britain. The new Sainsbury’s, looking out over Mount’s Bay. To my right is the crowded and steepled town of Penzance, the marina bobbing with boats and activity. On my left is the softly curving coast, disappearing towards the Lizard. And directly in front of me is the tidal island of St Michael’s Mount, surrounded by vast and shining sands, topped by its medieval castle, comical yet romantic.

  There is a coffee shop on the first floor, overlooking the bay. When I come here I always order a skinny cappuccino, and then I step past the dentured pensioners nibbling their pastries and sit outside at the metal tables even when it is cold, as it is today. Cold but sunny, with clouds gathering far to the west, like a rumour.

  My coffee sits on the table, neglected this morning, because I have my mobile phone pressed to my ear. David is on the other end. Listening to me, patiently. I am trying very hard not to raise my voice. Trying not to alert the pensioners. Ooh, look at her, that’s the woman who married David Kerthen …

  ‘So, again, why didn’t you tell me? About the body?’

  ‘We’ve been over this already.’

  ‘I know. But think of me as an idiot. I need to hear it several times to understand. Tell me again in small words, David. Why?’ I know this is difficult for him. But it is surely more difficult for me.

  He answers. ‘As I said, because it’s not the sort of thing you chat about on a romantic date, is it? Oh, my wife is dead but the body is trapped in a mine, shall we have another drink?’

  ‘Hmm.’

  Maybe he has a point, yet I still feel angry. Or perhaps unnerved. Now it is in my head I can’t get rid of the mental image. The gruesome idea of a body, preserved in icy minewater. Mouth and eyes open, suspended in lightless clarity, and staring into the silence of the drowned corridors, under the rocks of Morvellan.

  David is very silent. I can sense his restrained impatience, along with his eagerness to calm me. He is a husband, but he also has a busy job, and he wants to get back to work. But I have more questions.

  ‘Were you worried that I might not move here? Into Carnhallow, if I knew they never found her?’

  A pause. ‘No. Not really.’

  ‘Not really?’

  ‘Well, perhaps. Maybe there was a slight reluctance. It’s not something I like to dwell on. I want to forget
all that, I want us to be us. I love you, Rachel, and I hope and believe you are in love with me. I didn’t want the tragedies of the past to have any bearing on our future.’

  For the first time this morning I feel a twinge of sympathy for him. Possibly I am overdoing it. After all, he lost a wife, and he has a grieving son. And what would I have done in his situation?

  ‘I do kind of understand,’ I say. ‘And I love you, David. You know that, you surely know that. But—’

  ‘Look, hold on, I’m sorry, darling – I have to take this call.’

  The moment I am coming to terms with all this, the agitation returns. David has put me on hold. For the second time this morning.

  I tried calling him last night after I discovered the truth about Nina, but his secretary patiently told me he was in some endless, mega-important meeting, until 10 p.m. Then he simply turned his phone off without responding to my many messages. He does that sometimes when he is tired. And normally I don’t mind: his job is hard, if well rewarded, and the hours are insane.

  Last night, I minded. I was shaking with fury as I kept reaching voicemail. Answer. The. Phone. This morning he finally picked up. And he has been dealing with me ever since, like a store manager with a furious customer.

  As I wait for him to come back on line, I gaze at that view. It seems less appealing today.

  My husband returns. ‘Hi, sorry, that damn guy from Standard Chartered, they’ve got some crisis, he wouldn’t let me go.’

  ‘Great, so glad you’ve got more important people to talk to. More important things than this.’

  His sigh is heartfelt. ‘Darling, what can I say? I totally messed up, I know I messed up. But I did it for the best reasons—’

  ‘Serious?’

  ‘Truly. I’ve never deliberately deceived anyone.’

  I want to believe him, I want to understand. This is the man I love. Yet now there are secrets.