The Fire Baby

Postscript

As the ambulance took Dryden away from Adventurer’s Fen the rain fell. Fizzing droplets turned to tiny clouds of gas over the burning forest and dripped from the open rafters of the house that Laura had built. The house she had built for them.

It hadn’t just been her secret; she’d shared it with her parents. Six months before the accident at Harrimere Drain they’d come back from Italy, from retirement, on a visit. She wanted to take the money left to her in trust to build the house Dryden wanted, for the family they both wanted. She took them out to the spot and let them feel the thrill of the secret too. The secret she hugged to herself that last summer, even as she understood the shadow it cast over Dryden. But with her parents she agreed to keep the secret, at least for a few more weeks, until his birthday.

After Laura’s accident her parents flew back to be at her side in The Tower, and after the weeks in which she might have died had passed, they asked Dryden what he wanted to do with the money in the trust fund. They’d agreed a plan on the flight: if he said he wanted the money they’d tell him about the house on Adventurer’s Fen. If not, they’d rent it, bank the money as an investment, and keep the secret in the hope that when Laura came out of the coma she, and Dryden, could enjoy the surprise – at last. It was a sound investment, and a clever compromise. Dryden had told them to invest the money safely. He carried the key she’d given him, and they carried Laura’s secret.

Which is why Dryden’s key was made to fit a lock in a house which should have existed only in a dream.

Andy ‘Last Case’ Newman retired happily a month after the deaths on Adventurer’s Fen. All three killings, of Bob Sutton, Johnnie Roe, and Winston the people smuggler, appeared on his file as solved. Lyndon Koskinski was Johnnie’s presumed killer. Dryden and Estelle kept her secret to themselves. Newman was commended by the Chief Constable. He moved to the north Norfolk coast and shortly afterwards identified a new sub-species of Arctic Tern: Borealis Newmanii.

Estelle gave birth to a baby girl on Christmas Day at Black Bank Farm. She was christened Margaret at St Matthew’s. Dryden was invited and they stood before Lyndon’s grave in the churchyard afterwards. He’d been buried with Maggie and Don. Dryden, hospitalized after the burns he received at Adventurer’s Fen, had only just escaped a wheelchair.

‘What will you tell her?’ he’d asked.

‘Everything,’ said Estelle, hugging the baby.