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

‘Yes. And the landscape doesn’t help – all those brooding rocks, next to the wildness of the waves. There’s a famous line from a travel book which describes that bit of road: ‘the landscape reaches a crescendo of evil at Morvah’. Very apt. Hold on, another stile. Give me your hand.’

Together we jump the warm stone stile, and continue down the dried-out mud of the footpath. We’ve barely had rain in the two weeks of David’s summer holiday. It’s been an almost flawless fortnight of sunshine. And David has been equally perfect – loving, charming, generous: taking me to local pubs, buying me wine in the Lamorna Wink, and fresh crab sandwiches in riverside Restronguet. Introducing me to his rich, yacht-owning friends in St Mawes and Falmouth, introducing me to the hidden caves of Kynance Cove, where we made love like teenagers, with sand in our hair, and little seashells on my tingling skin, and then his dark, muscled arms, turning me over.

It’s been lovely. And for this reason I’ve stayed silent about my doubts. I haven’t mentioned Jamie’s odd behaviour, the staring, the silence, that odd dream about blood on my hands, and a hare. I haven’t wanted to fracture our summery happiness with some vague misgivings. The dream, I have decided, must have derived from Jamie’s traumas, his grief. The silences are the confusion of a child getting used to a new stepmother, such a painful transition. I want to share this pain, and so dilute it.

Besides, all three of us have had a happy time this last fortnight. David’s continued presence has apparently calmed Jamie down. I have brilliant memories of David, Jamie and myself, these past two weeks, walking the coastal paths at Minack, watching the seabirds playing with the waves, or lying in the warm clifftop grass, sharing picnic sandwiches, admiring sea-pinks on the way home.

Today, however, it’s me and David. Jamie’s friend Rollo has a birthday party. Cassie is picking him up later. I’ve got precious time alone with my husband, before he goes back to work. Before the perfect summer ends.

We are still talking about language. I want to know more. ‘So did you ever try to learn Cornish?’

‘God, no,’ he says, striding along the stony path. ‘A dead language. What’s the point? If Cornishness survives as a culture it won’t be because they revive the language, it’ll be the people. Always the people.’ He gestures at the weathered scenery, the eroded boulders, the stunted trees. ‘You know these little paths were made by the miners? They would walk for hours over the moors, through the woods and heather.’ He is facing away from me now, talking into the cooling breeze. ‘Imagine that life: stumbling through the dark, walking to the mineshafts, across the cliffs. Then climbing down hundreds of fathoms, for an hour – then crawling for a mile under the sea, and digging the tin from the rocks all day.’ He shakes his head, like he is doubting it himself. ‘And all the time they could hear the ocean boulders rolling above them in the storms; and sometimes the seas would break through, pouring into the tunnels—’ He stares wildly, at the sky. ‘And then they would try to run, but the sea usually claimed them. Dragged them back, sucked them in. Hundreds of men, over hundreds of years. And all the time my people, the Kerthens, we sat in Carnhallow. Eating capons.’

I gaze his way. Not sure what to say. He goes on:

‘And you want to know something else?’

‘Uhm. Yes?’

‘According to my mother, on really quiet summer evenings, when the stamps were silent, and the family was in the Yellow Drawing Room, sipping their claret, they could hear the picks of the miners half a mile beneath them. Working the tin that paid for the wine.’

His face is shadowed by a passing cloud. I have that urge to heal him, as I want to heal his son. And perhaps I can try. Coming close, I stroke his face and kiss him, gently. He looks at me, and shrugs, as if to say: What can I do?

The answer, of course, is nothing.

Clasping hands, we stride uphill, nearing the highest point of the moors. Here is another ruined mine, with noble arches, like a Norman church.

Regaining my breath after the climb, I lean a hand on the fine brickwork of the Engine House. The view is magnificent. I can see much of West Cornwall: the dark vivid green of the woods surrounding Penzance, the grey road snaking to Marazion, and the dreaming mysteries of the Lizard. And of course the vast metallic dazzle of the sea around St Michael’s Mount. The tide is in.

‘Ding Dong mine,’ David says, slapping the sparkling granite wall. ‘Reputedly the oldest in Cornwall. It was said to have been worked by the Romans, and before them the Phoenicians. Or maybe the fairies. Shall we sit down, out of the wind? I’ve brought strawberries.’

‘Why thank you, Mr D’Urberville.’

He chuckles. We sit down together on a rug from David’s rucksack. We are in the lee of the high moorland breeze, protected by the Engine House at our backs. The sun casts vivid warmth on my face.

A couple of hikers in lurid blue windcheaters are navigating a valley below. Otherwise we are alone. David gives me a strawberry from a plastic punnet.

I snuggle closer to my husband. Here is a lovely moment. Us, alone, together: in the sun.

He says, abruptly, ‘Don’t worry about Jamie.’

My heartbeat quickens. If there was ever a time to mention it, to speak out, this is it. But I don’t want to hurt or upset David. I’m not sure I have anything important to say, so I shall say nothing direct.

‘Jamie is still grieving, isn’t he? That’s why he is kind of distant sometimes?’

David sighs. ‘Of course.’

My husband slings a protective arm around my neck. ‘It’s not even been two years … And it was horrific as well as confusing. So he can be absent, or distracted, but he’s getting better. He’s been good these last two weeks. Please don’t worry about it. He will come to love you, and accept you.’

‘I don’t worry.’

David up-tilts my chin with a hand, as if he is going to kiss my lips; instead he kisses my forehead.

‘Are you sure, Rachel?’

‘Sure I’m sure! He’s a lovely boy. Angelic. Fell for him the moment I first saw him.’ I smile and kiss David on his lips. ‘In fact, it was when I met him that I began to really fall for you.’

‘Not when you saw pictures of Carnhallow, then?’

‘Oh. Listen. Funny man. Idiot.’

We fall companionably silent. David sucks a strawberry, and tosses the green stalk into the grass.

‘When I was a boy we used to come up here, my cousins and I, during the summer holidays. When my father was away in London.’ He pauses, then adds, ‘I think that was the happiest time of my childhood.’

I squeeze his hand, listening.

‘Endless summers. That’s what I remember, endless summer days. We’d go down to Penberth, beachcombing, looking for driftwood, old masts, crab-pots, Korean pickle packets. Anything.’ He hugs me as he talks. ‘The sea has a unique colour, at Penberth. Kind of a transparent emerald. I think it’s the pale yellow of the sand, seen through the blueness, the unpolluted waters. And there would be these amazing sunsets. Tingeing the hills and rocks with gold, filling the valleys with this purple glow. And I’d look at the shadows of me and my cousins, on the beach, the shadows getting longer and longer – going on for ever, until they were lost in the warmth, and the haze, and the midsummer dark. And then we knew it was time to go back to Carnhallow, for supper, heading home for cold meats and hot drop scones. Or strawberries and clotted cream in the kitchen. With the windows thrown open to the stars. And I was blissfully happy, because I knew my father was away in London.’

I am surprised, and touched. David is a lawyer, he can be very eloquent, but he seldom talks like this.

‘Were you really that lonely, the rest of the time?’

‘In the holidays, no. But the rest of the time? Yes. Before I toughened up.’

‘Why? How?’

‘They sent me to boarding school, Rachel, at eight years old. And there was no reason to send me away, Mummy wasn’t working. It was simply his choice. He had one son, one child – and he sent me away.’

‘Why?’

‘That’s the worst of it, I don’t really fucking know. Because he was jealous of the bond between my mother and me? Because he was bored with having me around? Mummy wanted me to stay, and there are plenty of good day schools in Cornwall. Perhaps he did it to hurt her. A pure act of sadism. And now he’s dead. So I will never know.’ He hesitates, but not for long. ‘I sometimes think the best thing a parent can do is live long enough for the children to grow up, so the kids are old enough to ask their parents, How the fuck could you get it so wrong?’

Another strawberry. Another stalk, hurled into the grass. The sun is dipping its chin in the west, turning rags of cloud to purpled gold. Some of those clouds look ominous, anvil-shaped: a summer storm, perhaps. Storms come so fast in West Cornwall, summer idylls to brutal squalls in bare minutes.

‘On clear days you can see the Scilly Isles from here,’ David says. ‘I must take you there one day. They’re beautiful, the light is marvellous. The Islands of the Blest. The pagan afterworld.’

‘I’d love that.’

He eats half of the last strawberry, then turns, and gives it to me, lifting it to my mouth. A strawberry taken from his hand. I eat the strawberry, taste its lurid sweetness. Then he says, ‘One day, perhaps, you could tell me about your childhood?’

I try not to flinch at this.

He goes on, ‘I know you’ve told me a bit of it. You’ve told me about your father, the way he treated your mother, but you haven’t told me much more.’ He looks at me, unblinking, perhaps seeing the anxiety in my expression. ‘Sorry. Talking about my past – it made me think of yours. You don’t have to tell me anything, darling, if you don’t want.’

I look at him, also unblinking. And I feel a huge desire to yield, and confess. Yet I am blocked, as always. Can’t tell, mustn’t tell. If I do tell everything, he might shun me. Won’t he?

David strokes my face. ‘Sorry, sweetheart. I shouldn’t have asked.’