I don’t live there any more. I don’t paint any more, either. I’ve rented a flat in Bristol, not too far from the hospital. The children come and see me sometimes. They are grieving but they have their own lives to live. Our house is on the market. They think I’m selling it because I can’t afford to live there any more and because it’s associated with their father’s death. They are partly right.
Cannop has gone back to the Forest where he came from. I never saw him again after that night, after he ran down the stairs and streaked through the cat flap. Slip-slap. I looked for a photograph of him the other day, but I could find none that showed him as he really was. Black cats are hard to photograph.
It will take months, if not years, for Jack’s estate to work its way through the procedures that the law requires in cases of intestacy and come to Gerald, or rather to Gerald’s estate. Gerald left everything to me, as I had to him.
I’ve told the solicitor that I don’t want anything at all that belonged to Jack. I have given her instructions that his estate is to go to the Soldiers’ Charity. I can tell that she thinks I’m being altruistic to the point of absurdity, if not insanity. The children have tried to argue me out of it, which made it harder because the money would have helped them.
But maybe the money wouldn’t have helped them. Maybe it would have harmed them.
My decision to give it away had nothing to do with altruism and everything to do with fear, both for myself and my baby. Jack believed that he had disturbed and perhaps killed a cat in that cave in Afghanistan, and that the cat had given him the scratch that wouldn’t go away. Did he see that scratch as a token of punishment for his friend Simon’s death, Simon with the wife and children? Perhaps he had thought of the scratch as his mark of Cain. Was that why he was so desperate to find the wild cat at Spion Kop? In the hope of somehow making amends, of making the scratch go away?
It’s the only explanation of Jack’s behaviour that really makes sense to me. Given the premise, strange though it is, and Jack’s state of health, the rest follows logically enough. He wasn’t acting or thinking normally. The psychiatrist at the inquest had made that quite clear. He was suffering from post-traumatic stress. He wasn’t taking his medication. He felt guilty for being alive.
Except it isn’t really an explanation at all, and I don’t understand the sense it makes. Whatever Jack had started didn’t stop with his death. When he died, the scratch passed to Gerald.
Had Cannop scratched Gerald? That was surely more likely than a wild cat in the Forest or some other thing with claws. Had it happened on the day of Jack’s death, before Gerald came back to the house?
Coincidence? Or cause and effect?
Was it possible that Cannop was in some way connected to whatever had been in that cave? I remembered that he had found his way into the Hovel more than once, that he had killed, plucked and eaten the magpie on Jack’s sleeping bag. I remembered touching his fur in my studio when he wasn’t there.
Why hadn’t Gerald mentioned the infected scratch to me? Why had the wound festered, just as Jack’s had done? Was Gerald afraid that telling me about the scratch might lead to his revealing too much? Had he killed Jack? Had he done it because of what he had seen us doing in the Hovel? Or simply for his money?
All the questions. Here are three more, the most important.
Were Jack’s death and Gerald’s enough of an expiation? Now that I have left the Forest, if I do not profit from what Jack has left behind, will that be enough? Will we at last live in peace?
All these questions scare me.
I know the baby is a girl; the scan told me that. I know she is Jack’s, too, though I don’t know how I know.
Every morning when I wake, I feel my belly. Then I roll up my sleeve and look at the smooth, soft skin on the underside of my forearm. Every morning it is unblemished, and I start the day afresh.
But I still have bad dreams. I dream of the scratch.
If you enjoyed Fireside Gothic, try one of Andrew’s bestselling historical crime novels…
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About the author
Andrew Taylor is the author of a number of crime novels, including the ground-breaking Roth Trilogy, which was adapted into the acclaimed TV drama Fallen Angel, and the historical crime novels The Ashes of London, The Silent Boy, The Scent of Death and The American Boy, a No.1 Sunday Times bestseller and a 2005 Richard & Judy Book Club choice.
He has won many awards, including the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger, an Edgar Scroll from the Mystery Writers of America, the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Award (the only author to win it three times) and the CWA’s prestigious Diamond Dagger, awarded for sustained excellence in crime writing. He also writes for the Spectator.
He lives with his wife Caroline in the Forest of Dean.
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www.andrew-taylor.co.uk
By the same author
The Ashes of London
The Silent Boy
The Scent of Death
The Anatomy Of Ghosts
Bleeding Heart Square
The American Boy
A Stain On The Silence
The Barred Window
The Raven On The Water
THE ROTH TRILOGY: FALLEN ANGEL
The Four Last Things
The Judgement Of Strangers
The Office Of The Dead
THE LYDMOUTH SERIES
THE BLAINES NOVELS
THE DOUGAL SERIES
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