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

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 word ‘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 nocturnal 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?’