It was Bonfire Night. Fourteen years ago. Most years we’d spend it at home; we’d help Dad light our own bonfire in the top field, piling dried leaves and fallen branches, cardboard and old papers. Dad would set up elaborate firework displays while we fetched him coffee to keep warm. Sometimes a school friend would come over, one of Joe’s or mine. Sometimes some of Mum and Dad’s friends came over. They’d drink Glühwein and chat with our parents as they perched, blankets on knees. The garden would be rigged with Catherine wheels, thin Roman candles, and tightly packed rockets dotted around the lawn, ready to be lit. Joe and I would have hot chocolate with tiny little marshmallows melting into gloop on its surface and chase each other around with sparklers, carving our names in light into the air. But we didn’t do that this year, we went somewhere new, which should have raised some red flags at the time but didn’t. That night we went to the county fireworks display at Holkham Park.
We all piled into the Range Rover and Dad drove us out there, the red taillights ahead of us building as we headed toward Holkham. When we got to the gravel car park, we joined the bustling throngs of families carrying rugs and hampers as they poured into the parkland, walking the chalkstone track toward the distant lights of the event.
It was freezing that November. We’d wrapped up warm, hats, scarves, shakable pocket warmers; Mum covered every eventuality. The green was skirted by a temporary village of stalls offering refreshments and early Christmas gifts. Mum trekked off across the half-light of the field and brought us back a steaming jacket potato each, filled with beans and butter and melting cheese, which we scooped greedily into our mouths with plastic spoons, the foil hot in our gloved hands as we made our way on to the main event.
In the distance we could see its peaks burning, past the stalls and over the treetops, the spires of it roaring into the night sky, the bonfire. The biggest I’d ever seen, constructed in the center of flat parkland, towering over the surrounding landscape. The crowd was more thickly packed here, a looping semicircle around the enormous flaming pyre. The low hum of happy chat as everyone stood and watched, bursts of laughter, cheers as a log or some other structure within the flames crumbled in a sudden burst of sparks, the occasional whistle and wave to straggling family members.
We stood pressed close to one another, the four of us. The smell of Mum’s perfume, Dad’s jacket. The orange glow of the burning mound playing across faces, its warmth bathing us.
Dad broke out the sparklers, other families around us shrieking and laughing as they used theirs. I remember him fumbling through his pockets to find the clear blue lighter Mum usually used for the kitchen candle. But after a while he decided he must have left it on the counter at home. Little things like that stick in my mind, the clues he left me sprinkled throughout the night.
Dad asked another man if we could borrow matches and he lit our sparklers with them. I remember looking down at the sparkler in my hand, its sharp white petals flashing in and out between my fingers. Shapes drawn in the air. Afterglow on the eyes. The scents of chestnuts and fire. I burned my fingers holding the stick too long and Joe told me I was stupid not to have dropped it sooner. Mum brought us four bright red toffee apples, the coating thin enough to crack straight through in a bite, the apple beneath dense with sugar.
A full orchestra accompanied that night, playing gargantuan Gothic symphonies and soft dreamscape concertos as we watched crates, logs, leaves, old furniture, and other detritus burst into flames, becoming beautiful again.
We stood and watched it all burn, from the red ember at its center, up into the crisscross maze at its heart, to the pale cream of the cresting flames lapping the black night. And in the sky above, flecks of bright burning gold breaking free and floating. And, higher still above that, the stars, the whole glittering firmament. So many stars.
The music swelled and then the fireworks display began.
The first crack and flash of pure white light shot straight up into the chilly winter air; an explosion of diamond dust.
And then color after color, faster and brighter and louder until the whole sky was lit with pulsing, flashing, magic. And then, as swiftly as it started, it was gone.
The night sky empty but for the afterimage on our eyes and the ghost of smoke in the wind.
—
I stare into the starlit sky above Cuckoo Lodge and I close my eyes. Such a beautiful night. I try not to feel guilt for what happened next. It wasn’t my fault. Not really. But that was the last night any of us saw him. When I open my eyes, I brush the warm roll of tears away.
My phone bursts to life next to me, the ringtone loud and alien in the dark. I fumble for it. Why would someone be calling me at 2:09A.M.? I wonder if it’s Chris, calling about Waltham House. Or if it’s Peter and the story of who I am has leaked already.
“Hello there, is that Dr. Lewis?” It’s a man’s voice, businesslike, professional.
“Yes. Who’s calling?”
“I’m calling from Princess Margaret’s. I’m one of the night nurses on the psych ward. Listen, I’m really sorry to call at this hour but it says in the patient notes to call you immediately if there is any change—”
I sit forward on the bench. “What’s happened?”
“Well, er, I thought you’d want to know that the patient has started talking.”
I freeze.He knows who I am and he’s started talking.“What did he say?” I ask.
“Okay, so, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, to be honest. But when I went in to do checks about half an hour ago the patient was sitting up in bed reading and I said, ‘How are we doing tonight’ or something like that, you know, just to be polite, I knew he wasn’t talking, but then he did. He said, ‘I’m fine, thank you.’ Just like that. And then I asked if he needed anything and he said he’d like to speak to Dr. Lewis. And then he said to tell you that he’s sorry you burnt your fingers that night.”
My heart leaps into my throat. My mind races until I suddenly decide that I just must have heard him wrong.
“Sorry. What did you say?” I hear the wobble in my voice.
“I know, sorry, I have no idea what that means either—”
“No, say it again. What he said,” I bark.
“Er, okay,” he continues, cowed. “His exact words were ‘Tell Dr. Lewis I’m ready to talk to her. Tell her I’m sorry she burnt her fingers that night,’ and that was it really.” He tails off, fearful of further admonishment.
I stare out into the shadows beyond the garden, the suffocating darkness of the wood, my breath shallow.
He knows things about me.Just like Rhoda said.
