It’s a meditative act. You can stand outside of yourself, quite separate from it

• Bone Deep by Sandra Ireland is published by Polygon (£8.99, pbk). Sandra Ireland’s latest novel, The Unmaking Of Ellie Rook, is available now (Polygon, £8.99.)

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There’s something timeless about building a fire.

I could be my mother going through these motions, or my grandmother.

It’s a meditative act. You can stand outside of yourself, quite separate from it.

You can watch your sins turn black as soot.

I should have made this particular fire many months ago. Before Lucie came.

The girl is responsible for stirring up all these old memories.

All this carry on with Reuben – the girl is another Anna Madigan, stirring up trouble, causing grief. Perhaps it’s a good thing that she did.

There are things I need to deal with before I become too frail. This bonfire will be a cleansing. A ritual flame.

A way of getting rid of those things I have held on to for too long.

In the dark, I assume a prayer position among the mud and dead leaves.

As I crouch and steady myself I feel earth beneath my knuckles; damp, peaty mould.

Something crawls across the back of my hand. My nose stings in the cold air, as though I’ve been dunked in icy water.

My ears find every chirrup, every last squeak in the night.

Rotted

The old ticker is pumping so furiously I think I might collapse right here on the bare ground. They would never find me out here.

My body would disappear beneath a coverlet of organic matter.

I would become a rotted layer of the past. I’d simply dissolve and everything would right itself.

But I can do this. I am here to build a fire, a fire bigger than any grate or chimney will allow.

It will be uncontained. Yes, there’s something timeless about building a fire.

First, twist greasy old newspaper into fat croissants; next, add a firelighter that makes your fingers stink of paraffin; build a little tent of kindling, paper-white slivers of pine and ash.

Always keep your axe sharp for the kindling. Don’t leave it embedded in the block – the sap will rust the edge.

Chopping kindling with a good, sharp axe should be effortless, like slicing through a Viennetta.

I’ve already prepared the kindling. Disarticulated it. The axe was sharp. It was a lot like slicing through a Viennetta.

Lucie

Sleep comes in fits and starts. I wake up after only an hour and take myself through the house to glug down two paracetamol at the kitchen tap.

The water is icy, freezing a track down into my deepest parts.

I can’t stop shivering, and have to boil the kettle to make up a hot water bottle.

After 20 minutes the pain in my back starts to subside and I wander off to bed.

I miss Floss. I miss her undemanding presence. I doze.

Some time in the night, the pain creeps around to my front.

It’s a foreign ache that grips me low in the belly, and I have to lie with my knees drawn up.

I clutch the hot water bottle to the sore place, but I start to sweat and fretfully throw off my covers.

The gap where the curtains aren’t quite closed is still showing midnight black.

Sleep vanishes, and, cursing, I get up again, feel around for my slippers and stagger back to the kitchen.

Thoughts of tea and toast make me nauseous. I could go outside for a fag, but I gave up smoking around the same time I gave up Arthur.

Worried

I’m worried about Floss. Pulling a smelly old quilted coat of Mac’s over my nightie, I stick my feet into wellies and unlock the back door.

Thoughts start to whirl around in my brain. Could Floss really be Anna Madigan’s dog?

Perhaps Anna Madigan wanted to leave her husband, to just disappear.

You hear about that all the time; people getting so overwhelmed with life that they take off, leaving no trail.

I thought of it myself, on that Aberdeen to London train. Anything to get away from the guilt.

It would be classic Mac, to take the dog. I can just imagine that conversation, in Mac’s draughty kitchen: “Well, you run off if you want to, Anna, but don’t abandon the damn dog!”

Although I call her name softly, there is no sign of the little spaniel.

I look up at the sky, a deep navy blue, speckled with stars. I wonder where Anna Madigan is, whether she and Mac ever kept in touch.

Far off, a bird of some kind sets up a piercing alarm call. I can smell smoke.

I sniff the air sharply, like an animal – the acrid bonfire scent is unmistakeable.

My first thought is the mill, with all that dodgy wiring and rotting timber.

I hurry round the corner. Smoke hangs in the gloom, and the stone walls hover in and out of focus like ghosts.

Off to the left, a good distance from the building, flames leap and crackle.

A dark figure, witch-like in the fiery glow, is doing something with a rake.

Sparks pop and scatter like Champagne bubbles. I release my tightly held breath with a groan.

For goodness’ sake, Mac. What next?

She greets me from across the bonfire, as if this is a normal autumn garden tidy-up; as if I’m not standing there in the pitch black, bewildered, in my nightclothes.

“Hello, Bella!” she says. “What a blaze!”

Burning

She appears to be burning a vast quantity of branches and leaves.

The heat is so fierce I have to shield my face with one hand as I edge closer.

I can only see her top half, arms bunched as she brandishes the rake.

Her face is a waxy orange ‘O’, wavering and reforming in the heat haze.

I think she’s grinning, but the smoke gets in my eyes and everything blurs.

Without warning, something cracks in the centre, and the blaze caves in, flinging burning embers my way. I jump back.

White-hot heat engulfs me, and my streaming eyes make it impossible to make sense of what I’m seeing – noirish impressions of things that shouldn’t be there.

There are twigs that look like ribs; a charred twist of something long and bony; black fingers set into claws. Painted nails.

I recoil, rub my eyes. What?

More on Thursday.