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

I even love the name of this house. Carnhallow.

My daydreaming head rests on David’s shoulder. Like we are halfway to dancing.

But his mobile rings, breaking the spell. Lifting it from his pocket he checks the screen, then kisses me again – his two fingers up-tilting my chin – and he walks away to take the call.

I might once, I guess, have found this gesture patronizing. Now it makes me want sex. But I always want sex with David. I wanted sex the moment my friend Oliver said, Come and meet someone, I think you’ll get on, at that art gallery, and I turned around and there he was, ten years older than me, ten inches taller than me.

I wanted David on our first date, three days later, I wanted him when he bought me the very first drink, I wanted him when he then told a perfectly judged, obviously flirtatious joke, I wanted him when we talked about the rainy March weather and he sipped his champagne and said, ‘Ah but where Sergeant March is skirmishing, Captain April will headquarter, and General June will follow with his mistresses,’ and I wanted something more than sex when he told me about his house and its history and he showed me the photo of his beautiful boy.

That was one of the moments I fell: when I realized how different David was to any man I had met before, and how different he is to me. Just a girl from the council flats of south-east London. A girl who escaped reality by reading. A girl who dislikes chiller cabinets in supermarkets because they remind her of the times when Mum couldn’t afford to pay for heating.

And then, David.

We were in a Soho bar. We were drunk. Nearly kissing. He showed me the photo of that enchanting boy again. I don’t know why, but I knew, immediately. I wanted a child like that. Those singular blue eyes, the dark hair from his handsome dad.

I asked David to tell me more: more about his house, about little Jamie, the family history.

He smiled.

‘There’s a wood surrounding Carnhallow House, it’s called Ladies Wood. It runs right up Carnhallow Valley, to the moors.’

‘OK. A wood. I love woods.’

‘The trees in Ladies Wood are predominantly rowans, with some ash, hazel and oak. We know that these same rowan woods date back at least to the Norman Conquest, because they are marked on Anglo Saxon charters, and continuously therefrom. That means the rowan trees have been here for a thousand years. In Carnhallow Valley.’

‘I still don’t get it.’

‘Do you know what my surname means? What “Kerthen” means, in Cornish?’

I shook my head, trying not to be distracted by his smile, the champagne, the photos of the boy, the house, the idea of it all.

‘This might amaze you, David, but I didn’t do Cornish at school.’

He chuckled. ‘Kerthen means rowan tree. Which means the Kerthens have lived in Carnhallow for a thousand years, amongst the rowans from which we took our name. Shall we have some more champagne?’

He leaned close to pour; and as he did, he kissed me full on the lips for the first time. We got in a taxi ten minutes later. That’s all it took. Just that.

The memories fall away: I am back in the present, as David finishes his call, and frowns.

‘OK, sorry, but I really do have to go. Can’t miss the one o’clock flight – they’re panicking.’

‘Nice to be indispensable.’

‘I don’t think you could ever call corporate lawyers indispensable. Viola players are more important.’ He smiles. ‘But corporate law is ludicrously overpaid. So what are you going to do today?’

‘Carry on exploring, I guess. Before I touch anything, I need to know the basics. I mean, I don’t even know how many bedrooms there are.’

‘Eighteen,’ he says. Then adds with a frown: ‘I think.’

‘David! Listen to you. Eeek. How can you not know how many bedrooms you have?’

‘We’ll try them all in time. I promise.’ Shirt cuff pulled, he checks his silver watch. ‘If you want to do some real research, Nina’s books are in the Yellow Drawing Room. The ones she was using, for her restorations.’

The name stings a little, though I hide it.

Nina Kerthen, née Valéry. David’s first wife. I don’t know much about her: I’ve seen a couple of photos,I know she was beautiful, Parisienne, young, posh, blonde. I know that she died in an accident at Morvellan Mine, eighteen months ago. I know that her husband and in particular her son – my brand-new, eight-year-old stepson Jamie – must still be grieving, even if they try not to show it.

And I know, very very clearly, that one of my jobs here in Carnhallow is to rescue things: to be the best stepmother in the world to this sad and lovely little boy.

‘I’ll have a look,’ I say brightly. ‘At the books. Maybe get some ideas. Go and catch your plane.’

He turns for a final kiss, I step back.

‘No – go! Kiss me again we’ll end up in the fourteenth bedroom, and then it will be six o’clock.’

I’m not lying. David’s laugh is dark and sexy.

‘I’ll Skype you tonight, and see you Friday.’

With that, he departs. I hear doors slam down long hallways, then the growl of his Mercedes. Then comes the silence: the special summery silence of Carnhallow, soundtracked by the whisper of the distant sea.

Picking up my phone, I open my notebook app.

Continuing Nina’s restoration of this huge house is not going to be easy. I do have some artistic talent to help: I have a degree in photography from Goldsmiths College. A degree which turned out to be utterly pointless, as I basically graduated the same afternoon that photography collapsed as a paying career, and so I ended up teaching photography to kids who would never themselves become photographers.

This was, I suppose, another reason I was happy to give up London life: the meaninglessness was getting to me. I wasn’t even taking photos any more. Just taking buses through the rain to my cramped and shared Shoreditch flat. Which I couldn’t actually afford.

But now that I have no real job, I can, ironically, apply these artistic gifts. Such as they are.

Armed with my phone I begin my explorations: trying to get a proper mental map of Carnhallow. I’ve been here one week, but we’ve spent most of that week in the bedroom, the kitchen, or on the beaches, enjoying the blissful summer weather. Much of my stuff from London is still in boxes. There’s even a suitcase left to unpack from our honeymoon: our gloriously hedonistic, sensuously expensive trip to Venice, where David bought me his favourite martini, in Harry’s Bar, by St Mark’s Square: the gin in a shot glass, chilled nearly to ice ‘and faintly poisoned with vermouth’, as David put it. I love the way David puts things.

But that is already the past, and this is my future. Carnhallow.

Striking south like an Antarctic explorer, I head down the New Hall, examining furniture and décor, taking notes as I go. The walls here are linenfold panelling, I think, decorated with engravings of the many Cornish tin and copper mines once owned by the Kerthens: the adits and tunnels of Botallack, and Morvellan, the shafts and streamworks of Wheal Chance and Wheal Rose. Elsewhere there are ancient photos of the mines in their heyday: wistful pictures of frozen labour, forgotten industry, men in waistcoats pushing wheelbarrows, chimneys smoking by the sea.

The New Hall ends at a grand double door. I know what lies beyond: the Yellow Drawing Room. Pushing the door and stepping through, I gaze around with a kind of helpless longing.

Because this room, already restored, with its leaded windows overlooking the dreaming flowery green of the south lawns, is probably the most beautiful room of all, and therefore one of the most daunting.

I need to make the rest of Carnhallow as impressive as this. It won’t be easy; Nina had excellent taste. Yet the beauty of the Yellow Drawing Room shows the potential of Carnhallow. If I can match what Nina did here, Carnhallow will be startlingly lovely. And mine.

The idea is so dazzling it makes me giddy. And happy.

I have some notes in my phone about the Yellow Drawing Room. They don’t do much, however, but show my ignorance. I’ve noted a ‘blue pig on the table’, ‘18th-century funerary urns?’ and ‘Mameluke knives’. Also ‘David’s father’s pack of cards’, ‘they played chouette’, and ‘tortoiseshell inlay in brass’.

What do I do with all this? How do I even begin? I’ve already had a quick skim through Nina’s books: books full of wise but puzzling advice on Georgian furniture and Victorian silver, books full of words that enchant, and confuse – hamstone quoining, aurora wallpaper, antique epergnes.

Everything sounds so exotic and obscure, and impossibly luxe. I grew up in a crowded little council flat. The most expensive thing we owned was an oversized TV, probably stolen. Now I am about to spend thousands on ‘Stuart silver fingerbowls’, and ‘fill them with rosewater’. Apparently.