The Fire Child: The 2017 gripping psychological thriller from the bestselling author of The Ice Twins

‘Not that I can see.’

‘Well, uhm. Not sure we have any left. I’ll go check.’

She disappears. Gazing around, I see a poster for some kiddie medicine on the wall. The poster shows a mother with an angelic little baby, superhumanly cute and flawless. The mother has a smile as radiant as the faithful on Judgement Day. For unto us a child is born.

‘Here,’ says the shop girl. ‘Had a bunch at the back, must have forgot to put them out on the shelves. Sorry!’

I snap from my daydream. ‘Thank you. Brilliant. Can I take two?’

The girl smiles. Two to make sure you are definitely pregnant. Grabbing my kits, I scoot out into the drizzle and wind. Shoppers in drab hoodies turn my way, as if they have all been there a while, waiting for me. Look at her.Skulking around.

Am I pregnant? It is what I’ve wanted, needed, desired, for so long, to make things whole. My heart sings at the idea. A daughter, a son, I don’t mind. And a sibling for Jamie. This will repair the world. I bring you glad tidings.

The tension is too much. I can’t even wait to drive home. I’m going to find out this very second. Climbing out of the car again I head for one of those rather handsome old pubs, the Commercial Hotel.

The pub is, inevitably, almost empty. Just one young guy at the end of the varnished wooden bar, staring at a pint of Guinness. He briefly leers at me, then stares at his beer again.

Into the Ladies. I take out the kit, squat on the loo. I pee.

And then comes the wait. I am actually trying not to pray. I mustn’t get my hopes up. But oh, my hopes. My brilliant hopes.

Count the time, count the time, I must number the moments until I can call my husband and sing out the wonderful news, the news that changes everything, the news that will make us truly happy, properly a family.

I shut my eyes, tick off the final seconds, and look down. One line means not pregnant, two lines means pregnant. I need two lines. Give me two blue lines.

I look at the stick.

One line.

The sadness bites hard. Why did I get my hopes up so high? It was silly. We’ve only been trying for a few short months. The chances are fairly low.

Should I even bother with the second kit? I’ve got my answer. One line. Not pregnant. Get on with things …

And yet. Who knows?

I wait, counting the stupid seconds. I look at the stick.

One line. Crossing out my dreams.

Chucking the kits vigorously in the bin, I pause as I exit the toilet, then go to the mirror and give myself a hard, instructive stare. Looking at my white freckled face, my red hair, at Rachel Daly. I must shape up, snap out of self-pity – and count myself lucky. I have a rich, sexy husband, I have a beautiful stepson, I am living in a magnificent house which I truly adore.

And yet it is a house I don’t want to go back to – not yet. Not with all its vastness and silence. Not when I am in this pensive mood. Trying not to think about the hare. That uncanny coincidence. The blood on my hands. Again.

Wandering into the bar, I check the array of drinks: local beers, Doom Bar, St Austell Breweries. But I don’t like beer. Instead I ask the yawning bargirl for a rum and coke. Why not? After all, I am not pregnant.

‘Here you go, my lover.’

I take the drink and sit at a table. The young man is still looking intently at his Guinness, like it is a lap dancer.

Reaching into my handbag, I find my book. It’s a thickish volume about tin mining, sourced from David’s library. David’s rhapsodies on the old mining life have got me interested. This is another way for me to understand my new family. The mine-owning Kerthens.

The book is old and has that annoyingly dense Victorian typography, very difficult to read, but it is full of curious, moving, even sinister vignettes of mining life.

The author toured the West Cornish mines in the 1840s, near the peak of production, and saw the wealth and the energy and the horror. He talks of the suffering and mutilation: the many cripples he met in the villages, men with permanently blackened faces from explosions; men missing fingers or hands or arms from shooting rocks with gunpowder; blinded and broken men being led around the humble Cornish villages by boys, eking out a pitiful living by selling tea, door to door.

In some places, he says, one miner in five died violently. Sometimes they died at each other’s hands: from drunken brawling. The boozy violence of the ‘wild men of the stannaries’ was legendary. In the mid nineteenth century it was said that, in West Cornwall, wherever three houses met together, two would be alehouses.

Yet the author also saw a vivid beauty: how boats would sail up the night-time coast then anchor to gaze in astonishment at the sight of Pendeen and Botallack and Morvellan blazing away on the cliffs without cease, the rising and falling beams of the fire whims, the winding drums of the horse engines, the cries of the landers, the glare from boiler house doors, the crashing of the stamps. And the lights glowing in the windows of the great three-storeyed engine houses, halfway up the cliffs. And then, most magnificent of all, the mighty fires of the smelting houses lit by fountains of molten metal, springing up fifteen feet into the air, then splashing back into the basin, like majestic geysers of quicksilver.

And now, incredibly, it is all gone. After four thousand years. The men no longer work half-naked in the terrible heat at the end of undersea tunnels; they no longer climb a mile down ropes, like monkeys, deep into the reek of sulphur; and boys of eight are no longer sent down the pit to produce half the world’s tin and copper and many millions in profit. All that is left is those ruins by the sea, those ruins on the moors, and in the woods. Scorrier, South Crofty, Wheal Rose, Treskerby, Hallenbeagle, Wheal Busy, Wheal Seymour, Creegbrawse, Hallamanning, Poldise, Ding Dong, Godolphin, and Providence.

Gone.

I look up from the book, hoping to see a face, swap just a smile with the bargirl. But now I realize the pub is deserted. The drinker has gone, even the bargirl has disappeared. I am totally alone. It’s like no one else exists.

Afternoon

The house is quiet when I get back. The house is always quiet. The great front door opens and I am greeted by perfect stillness, the scent of beeswax, and the long and lofty New Hall.

Something brushes between my legs and makes me start. It’s Genevieve. Nina’s slender grey cat. Winding between my ankles.

When Nina died David gave her to Juliet to look after in her granny flat, because David doesn’t like cats. But sometimes she leaves Juliet’s apartment and stalks the house.

Bending down, I tickle the cat behind the ear, feeling the bone of her skull. Her fur is the colour of wintry sea mist.

‘Hey, Genevieve. Go catch a mouse, we need the help.’

The cat purrs and gives me a sly, green-eyed glance. Then abruptly Genevieve stalks away, towards the Old Hall.

The silence returns.

Where is everyone?

Juliet is presumably in her flat. But where is Jamie? Heading right, I make for the kitchen, where I find rare human life. It’s Cassie, busy unloading the dishwasher, listening to K-Pop on her iPod. Cassie is young, amiable, Thai, thirty-two. She’s been with the family ten years. She and I don’t interact very much. Partly because her English is still hazy, and partly because I don’t know how to act with her – I don’t know how to deal with ‘servants’. I am of the serving classes. I feel awkward. Better to leave her to it.

But I feel like I need interaction right now.

Cassie is oblivious to me. She has her earphones in as she works and she is cheerfully humming along.

Stepping forward, I touch her gently on the shoulder. ‘Cassie.’

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?’