Page 12 of A Slow Fire Burning

Theo raised an eyebrow. “Unwelcome suitor?”

She shook her head. “Police.”

He looked at her for a long moment. “You’re not taking their calls?”

“I will. Later.” She bit her lip. “I will, I just... I don’t want to keep going over it, to keep seeing it. To keep imagining it.”

Theo placed his hand on top of hers. “It’s all right. You don’t have to talk to them if you don’t want to.”

Carla smiled. “I think I probably do.” She swung her feet off the chair, slipping them into the too-large slippers she’d borrowed from Theo. She leaned forward and poured herself a half cup of coffee, took a sip, and found that it was cold. She got to her feet, clearing away the breakfast things, placing the silver coffeepot and their mugs onto the tray, carrying them up the stone steps toward the kitchen. She reemerged a moment later, an old Daunt Books tote bag slung over her shoulder. “I’m going to go and get changed,” she said. “I need to get back across to Hayward’s Place.” She bent down, brushing her lips momentarily against his.

“Aren’t you done there yet?” he asked, his hand closing over her wrist, eyes searching her face.

“Almost,” she said, lowering her lids, turning away from him, disentangling herself. “I’m almost done.

“Are you going to do it, then?” she called back over her shoulder, as she headed up into the house. “Are you going tohumanizeSiobhan? You could always give her a dog, I suppose, if you don’t want to give her a lover. A little Staffie, maybe, some pitiful rescue mutt.” Theo laughed. “It’s true, though, isn’t it? You’re supposed to give your character something to care about.”

“She has plenty of things to care about. She has her work, her art...”

“Ah, but that’s not enough, is it? A woman without a man or a child or a puppy to love, she’s cold, isn’t she? Cold and tragic, in some way dysfunctional.”

“You’re not,” Theo said.

Carla was standing in the kitchen doorway; she turned to face him, a sad smile on her lips. “You don’t think so, Theo? You don’t think my life is tragic?”

He got to his feet, crossed the lawn, and climbed up to meet her, taking her hands in his. “I don’t think that’sallyour life is.”

Three years after they married, Theo published a book, a tragicomedy set in a Sicilian town during the Second World War. It was prize nominated (although it didn’t actually win anything), a huge bestseller. A below-par movie adaptation followed. Theo made a great deal of money.

At the time, Carla wondered whether the book might spell the end of their marriage. Theo was away all the time, touring, going tofestivals accompanied by pretty young publicists, mingling with ambitious twentysomethings promoting much-praised debuts, rubbing shoulders at parties with impossibly glamorous Hollywood development executives. Carla worked in the city at the time for a fund manager, in sales. At dinner parties, people’s eyes glazed over when she told them what she did; at cocktail parties, they glanced over her shoulder in search of more stimulating conversational partners.

She needn’t have worried about Theo’s head being turned. He tired quickly of touring life, of the punishing enthusiasm of bright young things. All he really wanted to do was to stay home, with her, and to write—he was planning a prequel to his successful novel, chronicling his protagonist’s mother’s experiences in the First World War. After Carla fell pregnant, he was even less-minded to travel, and once the baby was born, less so still.

Theo had missed two deadlines and was on course to miss a third when, just after his son’s third birthday, Carla announced that she had to go to Birmingham for a sales conference. She’d only recently gone back to work and it was vital, she said, that she make trips like this one if she wasn’t going to be sidelined, shunted onto the mommy track.

“Maybe I could come with you?” Theo suggested. “You, me, and Ben—we could make a weekend of it?”

Carla’s heart sank a little; she’d been fantasizing about the hours she might spend alone, soaking in the bath undisturbed, putting on a face mask, fixing herself a long drink from the minibar. “Thatwouldbe lovely,” she said carefully, “only I’m not sure how that would be perceived. You know, me turning up with my husband and toddler in tow? Oh, don’t look like that, Theo! You’veno ideawhat it’s like. If you showed up to a work do with Ben, they’d give you a medal for father of the year. If I do it, they’ll say she can’t cope, hermind’s not on the job, there’s no way she can handle any more than she already does.”

Instead of yielding, instead of just saying,Oh, all right then, darling, I’ll stay in London with Ben, you go ahead, Theo suggested they leave Ben with his parents.

“In Northumberland? How am I supposed to get him all the way to Alnmouth before Friday?”

“They could probably come and pick him up. They’d love it, Cee, you know how Mum adores him—”

“Oh, forGod’s sake. If you really insist on coming, he’ll have to go to my sister’s. And don’t make that face, Angie adores him too, and she’s five minutes away and I don’t have time to organize something else.”

“But—”

“Let Angie have him this time; next time he can go to your mum’s.”

There never was a next time.

On the Sunday morning, they received a phone call in their hotel room. They were packing, getting ready to return to London, quarreling about the best route to take. The man on the phone asked them to come down to the reception desk, then he seemed to change his mind, spoke to someone else, and then said that in fact they should wait in their room, that someone would come to them.

“What on earth is this about?” Carla asked, but she received no reply.

“I bet some fucker’s broken into the car,” Theo said.

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