Symbols A Slow Fire Burning Paula Hawkins

The Saint Christopher Medal: A Talisman of Lost Protection and Grief

Symbol Overview

In Paula Hawkins’ A Slow Fire Burning, the Saint Christopher medal is a small gold medallion engraved with the initials BTM and the date 24/3/00 — the christening date of Carla Myerson’s son, Ben Thomas Myerson. Saint Christopher is the patron saint of travelers, traditionally invoked for safe journeys and protection. Within the novel, the medal functions as a tangible object that embodies Carla’s promise to keep her child safe and her subsequent failure to do so. It appears in key scenes involving Carla, Laura Kilbride, and Irene Barnes, and its meaning shifts from a cherished keepsake to a painful emblem of grief, guilt, and the loss of maternal protection.

Occurrences and Meaning

The medal is introduced when Laura Kilbride steals Carla’s tote bag from Angela Sutherland’s house (Chapter Thirteen). Inside, she finds a ring and the medal in a brown leather box. Laura notes the engraving and assumes it was a christening gift, but the wrong initials for Daniel Sutherland — cueing the reader to its actual owner. Later, in Chapter Eighteen, Carla confesses to Irene that she brought the medal with her to Angela’s house because she was “in despair” and considering suicide. She explains that she had promised to keep the medal safe for Ben, but now she has lost it. The medal was meant to be a protective object, yet it becomes a tangible reminder of Carla’s helplessness: she could not protect Ben from his death (a suspected drowning or accident), and now she cannot even keep his medal safe.

In Chapter Twenty-One, Carla frantically searches her house for the tote bag, ignoring Theo’s calls. She recalls that Ben loved to look at the medal but she always refused to let him play with it, saying she would “keep it safe for him.” The search culminates in her discovery of Angela’s ashes in a shoebox — a parallel between the lost medal and the lost sister. The medal thus becomes a focal point for Carla’s unprocessed grief and her sense of ruin. When she finally fails to find it, she holds the ashes instead, symbolically replacing one loss with another.

Character Connections

Carla Myerson is the medal’s primary owner. Her attachment to it is rooted in maternal love and guilt. She describes how Ben “loved to look at it” but she kept it away from him because it was precious — an irony that magnifies her subsequent feeling of failure. The medal represents the promise she made to protect Ben, a promise left unfulfilled. Her desperate search for it in the middle of the night, and her confession to Irene that she wanted it with her when she was contemplating suicide, illustrate how the object has become a proxy for her dead son. Without it, she feels utterly unmoored.

Laura Kilbride steals the medal without understanding its significance. She considers selling it (though the engraving reduces its resale value) and later feels guilt over her theft, calling herself a “piece of shit.” Laura is a character who makes “bad choices” — as she repeatedly hears — and her theft of a grieving mother’s precious keepsake deepens her moral complexity. She is not merely a victim; she is capable of causing harm, even if impulsively. The medal thus also serves to highlight the theme of victimhood and predation: Laura, a victim of a hit-and-run and betrayal, also preys on others.

Theo Myerson is indirectly connected; his volatility and secret dealings with Angela emerge in the same chapters where the medal is lost. The medal’s absence mirrors the absence of truth in Theo’s marriage. He is searching for Carla while she searches for the medal — a parallel that underscores the couple’s fractured communication.

Themes Linked to the Medal

  • Grief and Guilt: Carla’s grief for Ben is channeled into the object. Her guilt over not protecting him is physically manifested in her frantic search for the medal. The engraving fixes the date of his christening — a moment of promise — and contrasts with his early death.

  • Memory and Trauma: The medal operates as a memory object, a “keepsake” that anchors Carla to the past. For Laura, touching the medal triggers no memory, but her theft is a trauma-driven act (she has a brain injury and struggles with impulse control). The object thus bridges two characters’ traumas.

  • Protection and Vulnerability: Saint Christopher is a protector, but the medal fails to protect Ben. Carla’s inability to even keep the medal safe reinforces her vulnerability and powerlessness. This theme connects to the novel’s epigraph, which sets up a world of predation — those who are “circled” cannot rely on talismanic protection.

  • Betrayal and Trust: Carla trusted that she could keep the medal safe; its loss feels like a betrayal of her own promise. The theft also involves betrayal of trust between Laura and Irene (Laura steals from Irene’s purse) and between Carla and Laura (who commits a crime against a grieving woman).

Four Study Questions with Answers

1. Why does Carla bring the Saint Christopher medal to Angela’s house, and what does this reveal about her state of mind?
Carla brings the medal because she is experiencing intense despair and is contemplating suicide. She wants her son’s medal with her as a comfort object, clinging to the last tangible link to Ben. This action reveals her overwhelming grief and her feeling that, without the medal, she has nothing left. It also shows that she equates the medal with her son’s presence — losing it deepens her sense of abandonment.

2. What does the engraving “BTM 24/3/00” signify, and why is it important that Laura misinterprets it?
BTM stands for Ben Thomas Myerson, Carla’s son, and the date is his christening. Laura assumes the medal belongs to Daniel Sutherland because the initials are not “DS,” showing her ignorance of Carla’s family history. This misinterpretation emphasizes that Laura is an outsider to Carla’s grief and that the object’s true meaning is known only to those intimately connected to it. It also foreshadows the revelation that Daniel is Angela’s son, not Carla’s — a key twist.

3. How does Laura’s theft of the medal develop her characterization?
Laura steals the medal impulsively, along with the ruby ring, and later feels guilt, calling herself “a lying, thieving lowlife.” The theft shows that Laura, despite being a victim of trauma and betrayal, is herself capable of harming others. It complicates the reader’s sympathy for her and aligns her with the predatory “carrion birds” referenced in the epigraph. Her subsequent guilt, however, suggests a moral awareness that she struggles to act upon.

4. In what ways does the medal’s meaning shift over the course of the novel?
Initially, the medal is a cherished object symbolizing Carla’s love and her promise to protect Ben. After Ben’s death, it becomes a relic of loss. When Carla loses the medal, it transforms into a symbol of her failure — she could not keep Ben alive, and now she cannot even keep his medal safe. For Laura, it is merely a commodity, a theft object. Ultimately, the medal’s meaning remains unresolved: it is never recovered, and Carla ends the novel in prison, still without the talisman. This absence mirrors the novel’s open-ended questions about regret and redemption.

Internal Resources

For further exploration of related themes, see:

For character analyses, visit:

Return to the main book page.