The Unmaking of Ellie Rook Read online

  Praise for Sandra Ireland

  BONE DEEP

  ‘In themes that ripple through the ages, Bone Deep is a taut, contemporary psychological thriller about love, betrayal, female sibling rivalry and bone-grinding, blood-curdling murder’ Sunday Post

  ‘Gripping from the outset, an atmospheric, fluent book which kept me reading into the small hours’

  Dundee Courier, Scottish Book of the Week

  ‘The final chapters take Bone Deep from being a beautifully written and thoughtful constructed psychological study into sheer gothic novel nightmare territory . . . a tremendous example of writing and plotting’ Scotland on Sunday

  ‘A psychological thriller drenched in suspense’ Sunday Herald

  ‘Atmospheric, with a delicious build-up of tension, and beautifully observed throughout’ Michael J. Malone, author of House of Spines

  ‘Captivating, compelling and infused with Sandra Ireland’s evocative sense of place’ Noelle Harrison, author of The Gravity of Love

  BENEATH THE SKIN

  ‘Ireland writes about powerful and troubling subjects and shows how the past can have devastating consequences’ Daily Mail

  ‘This debut novel is an exceptional calling card . . . an in-depth psychological thriller packed with suspense and loaded with eerie excitement’ Dundee Courier

  ‘A powerful exploration of PTSD from an astonishing new voice in fiction’ Blackwell’s Bookshops

  A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

  Sandra Ireland was born in Yorkshire, lived for many years in Limerick, and is now based in Carnoustie. She began her writing career as a correspondent on a local newspaper but quickly realised that fiction is much more intriguing than fact. In 2013 Sandra was awarded a Carnegie-Cameron scholarship to study for an MLitt in Writing Practice and Study at the University of Dundee; she graduated with a distinction in 2014. Her work has appeared in various publications such as New Writing Dundee and Furies, an anthology of women’s poetry. She is the author of Beneath the Skin (2016) and Bone Deep (2018). The Unmaking of Ellie Rook is her third novel.

  The Unmaking of Ellie Rook

  Sandra Ireland

  First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Polygon,

  an imprint of Birlinn Ltd.

  West Newington House

  10 Newington Road

  Edinburgh

  EH9 1QS

  www.polygonbooks.co.uk

  1

  Copyright © Sandra Ireland, 2019

  The moral right of Sandra Ireland to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN 978 1 84697 482 3

  eBook ISBN 978 1 78885 187 9

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library.

  Typeset by 3btype.com

  To my boys, Jamie and Calum.

  Love you lots xx

  Prologue

  June, 2001

  ‘Tell me again, about Finella.’

  ‘I’ve told you a million times!’ my mother laughs, teasing me. We’re swinging hands in the dim, cool green of the woods. It’s a safe place for stories and secrets: the wind and the screaming gulls can’t snatch them away. ‘Once upon a time . . .’

  ‘No! I’m too old for once upon a time!’

  She squeezes my hand and grins. She has a little gap between her front two teeth that makes her look like a pirate. ‘Oh, I forgot, baby – you’ve a birthday coming up. Eight – so old. I can tell you the gory bits now!’

  I’m not sure I want the gory bits, but I don’t say that. We perch on a mossy log and listen to the water tumbling over the rocks.

  ‘Imagine this place teeming with deer and game, and wild geese overhead, and the rivers filled with salmon. A rich place, full of rich men. It was the time of Kenneth, King of the Scots, and all his court, and the east coast sea lords. Finella was the daughter of one, wife to another. History remembers the men, but not always the women.’

  ‘And Finella was so strong and wise you named me after her.’

  ‘Yes!’ A swift hug. ‘You are the one and only Finella Rook! Although Ellie is less of a mouthful for a little girl.’

  I scowl at the ‘little’, but she is already plunging on, and I let myself curl up in the rise and fall of her voice.

  ‘There was another man too, remember. Crathilinth.’

  ‘Finella’s son.’

  ‘Yes, executed by King Kenneth for who knows what. Kenneth seriously underestimated Finella’s love for her son. Mothers are fierce, and Finella was a huntress. She came up with a cunning plan – we’ll call it Plan A. She invited the king to her castle.’

  ‘Tell me that bit again – about the castle.’

  ‘The castle is long gone now, just a pile of stones on a hilltop, not far from here. Grandma Rook told it to me this way: Finella invited the king to a hidden chamber within the castle, a treasure trove of sculptures and curious objects. No doubt he was a bit put out that one of his subjects might have something that he didn’t, and the lady possessed the most amazing statue of a little boy, which fired arrows into the air when you tried to take an apple from its hand. Of course, the king couldn’t resist anything mechanical…’

  ‘Like Daddy?’

  ‘Like Daddy, yes. But Finella had tampered with the arrows. As soon as the king picked up the apple, an arrow pierced him through the heart and he dropped down DEAD!’

  I jump, even though I’ve heard all this before. ‘And she RAN and she RAN!’

  ‘She did!’ Mum leaps up, play-acting now, leaves crackling beneath her feet. ‘The king is bleeding all over the place and the servants are hammering at the door!’

  I jump up too. ‘Run, Finella! Get out of there!’

  ‘And Finella slips through a hidden tunnel and runs, and keeps on running, dodging the king’s men-at-arms. She leads them a dance across the Howe of the Mearns, over the hill which now bears her name, Strath Finella, and here to this deep, dark gully. She’s a woman of the woods – she knows when to hide and when to break cover…’

  Mum is dancing now, through the bracken and heather, and I’m skipping after her. I can hear hounds whining, men shouting. Mum stops for dramatic effect within sight of the waterfall. The tremendous thunder of it enters our hearts and snatches away our voices.

  ‘They say she took to the trees, walking across the tops of them to escape.’

  ‘Could she have? Was she magic?’

  ‘Who knows what you can do when you need to escape the inescapable? And then she came to the waterfall.’

  ‘Uh oh. Time for Plan B,’ I whisper.

  Mum takes a step closer to the edge of the falls. Stares straight ahead, hands on hips like a warrior queen. Beyond her there is only nothingness and wet mist. When she glances back at me, the storytelling buzz has left her and her face is in shadow. There are dark mysteries in her eyes which I don’t understand. ‘At the end, she had no choice. It was jump or be killed.’

  ‘Do you think she survived?’

  Mum stoops to brush the hair away from my face. ‘What do you think?’

  1

  Two Days After

  The bus brakes at the end of our drive. Hefting the rucksack onto my shoulder, I get ready to jump. So many buses, so many stops in the last couple of years, never knowing where my boots will land: tarmac, mud, sand, flood.
/>
  A single phone call from halfway across the world was all it took to bring me home. Ellie, something bad has happened.

  As the bus pulls away in a fug of diesel, I’m left staring at the house: mossy green roof blending with the trees and the hedge running riot. It’s doubled in size since my last visit. The only sign of life is a lone crow perched on the chimney. It eyes me with suspicion.

  The scent of leftover bus fumes makes me feel sick. Hitching my rucksack higher, I begin the familiar trudge. The drive has been carved up by an endless procession of vehicles en route to the scrapyard behind the house. For most of them, this is a one-way street, and they’ve left unwilling claw-marks in the surface – deep ruts brimming with rainbow-coloured water. Even the trees have grown wild in my absence, holding hands above my head like playmates. ‘The Grand Old Duke of York’. I am six again, jumping off the school bus with my Polly Pocket book bag, picking up a stick to beat the rain from the branches. I was always the kid with the longest stick, the grubbiest shirt, the biggest mouth. The kid from the scrapyard.

  It’s been two years since I last walked down this drive. Then, Mum had tied balloons to the gate and was waiting for me with a big hug. But not today. Not today.

  Today, there is a police van in the yard.

  I let myself in the back door. It’s like falling through a hole in time, with all the usual suspects sitting round the table: my father, River, Shelby Smith. The teatime smell of cucumber and tinned salmon makes my stomach cramp. Unable to face airline food, I’ve flown nearly 6000 miles fuelled by only water and crisps.

  My father is buttering a slice of white bread, wiping his knife compulsively on the side of his plate as he always does. He stops, mid wipe, when he sees me and remains very still. River gets up in slow motion, comes to engulf me in a bear hug that blocks out everything else. He’s taller than me now, with muscles of iron. He lets go eventually, leaving me smelling of some cheap teen cologne. There’s a new sharpness to his face, his eyes.

  I shed my rucksack and sink into a chair. River gets a mug from the dresser and pours tea. My father still hasn’t moved. He rubs his silver beard, but it’s Shelby, the adopted Rook, who reaches over to grasp my hand.

  ‘Tell me again.’ I’ve barely spoken to anyone in twenty-four hours and my voice comes out all croaky. ‘Tell me what happened.’

  ‘It was an accident,’ River says.

  He’s still standing there with the teapot, beside our mother’s empty chair, and he looks so like her – that hesitant stance, the way he hides behind a shock of dark hair. I rise and take the teapot from him.

  ‘Go on. It’s okay. Tell me everything. You were at the Den of Finella?’

  I replace the teapot carefully on its iron trivet.

  ‘We’d gone for a walk, Mum and me. How many times have we done that? I – I was standing right next to her, at the top of the waterfall.’ I nod slowly, rub his bony shoulder as if to ease the words out of him. ‘I didn’t actually see what happened. I turned away for a second and she must have slipped somehow. I heard her cry out and then—’ His eyes are fixed on the floor tiles.

  ‘What? What did you see?’

  He looks up, but his gaze flinches from mine. ‘I didn’t see anything after that. She was just – gone. I didn’t have my phone, so I ran back and got Dad and Shelby and Offshore Dave, and Julie called the police.’

  ‘We drove along to the bridge. It was quicker,’ Dad says. He looks at Shelby, but Shelby is studying his plate.

  ‘And? Did you see any sign of her? Did you go down to the bottom?’ My patience is slipping.

  ‘The police did. They sent divers upstream from the beach end.’ My father’s voice cracks. He’s rubbing his beard in little frantic movements. ‘The coastguard, search and rescue helicopters – all there within minutes, really. But no sign of her. There’s been no sign.’ The last bit is a whisper. It hangs heavy in the air.

  At the end of the table, Shelby hasn’t uttered a word. He and my mother are of the same clan. They come from a world of fairgrounds, where folk keep things in the family. Shelby followed her up north, claiming to be ‘just passing through’. The reality is he has nowhere else to go. He reaches for his dusty black fedora and jams it onto his head.

  ‘I’ll be getting back then, boss.’

  We all know he’s going no further than the caravan across the yard, but we mumble our goodbyes. Although it’s a Thursday, he’s wearing his Sunday-best shirt under his denim jacket – stripes of blue and gold, like a seaside deck chair.

  ‘Ellie . . . I’m sorry. We’ll talk later, my love.’

  I nod, watch his departing back. Shelby has been so much a part of my life it’s hard to see where kinship ends and blood ties begin.

  ‘So what do we do now?’

  ‘We wait.’ My father looks at me, dry-eyed.

  ‘Not fucking likely.’ I slip my iPhone from my bag. ‘I didn’t come all this way to sit and wait.’

  ‘She’s dead. Your mother’s dead. It’s a sixty-foot drop, with rocks at the bottom, and she couldn’t swim. How could she have survived?’

  ‘You can’t say that! It’s too soon. Maybe she’s stuck somewhere. There are caves all along the coast. Remember the legend. No one knows if Finella survived when she jumped over the waterfall.’

  My father rolls his eyes. ‘Bollocks. That’s nothing more than a fairy story!’

  River droops over the table, buries his face in his arms. I want to argue, but I feel drained. I turn to my mobile, scroll through a ton of enquiries on my Facebook feed. Someone has posted a link to some local headlines: MOTHER OF TWO MISSING PRESUMED DROWNED AT ABERDEENSHIRE BEAUTY SPOT. Countless questions. Is this your mum, Ellie? We’re all thinking about you. Are you home? Ellie – get in touch!

  I click back to my home screen. There are text messages too. I cannot deal with this right now. Dad reaches over and snatches the mobile. A sudden gust of memory chills me: my old Nokia; my father hurling the device against the wall. My heart smashing into a million pieces.

  ‘We’ll keep this between ourselves, as we always do.’ He places the mobile in the centre of the table, beside the plate of leftover sandwiches.

  River raises his head. I hadn’t noticed how red his eyes are. ‘We’ll need to post a picture on Facebook,’ he says, ‘and write something nice. A memorial. You’re good at that, Ellie.’

  ‘Not yet! What is wrong with you?’ I glare at each of them in turn. My father glares back; River picks his grimy nails. ‘We need to organise a search party, ask for help.’

  ‘What do you think the police are doing?’ Dad snaps. ‘Let them do their job. The house has been full of folk since it happened. Last night we had Julie and her family – and Offshore Dave, the Duthies. Some dame from the village who brought enough soup to feed an army.’

  River nods. ‘We stayed up all night.’

  ‘I need to do something.’ I get to my feet. ‘I’m going to the den. I just need to be there.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. What can you do? Nothing.’

  I ignore Dad and look to my brother for support. ‘Come with me, River.’

  ‘No!’ Dad slaps his palm down on the table. ‘The light’s fading. We don’t want another accident.’

  ‘Whatever. I’ll go on my own.’

  ‘Ellie!’

  I unlace my boots and toss them aside. Mum’s wellies are waiting at the door. I put them on.

  2

  Outside, everything reminds me of my mother.

  I walk as if my limbs are frozen, as if a wrong step might dislodge the frost. Past the police van and Shelby’s immaculate, green-painted caravan, curtains drawn against unwanted intrusion. There’s an unmistakeable scent of bacon. I slow down, spend way too long deliberating over whether it’s a just-cooked sort of smell or a days-old lingering one, and trying not to judge him on it.

  Somewhere on the caravan are my mother’s initials. She helped him paint the gold and red curlicues and fleur-de-lis, the loopy fairgr
ound lettering between the windows: ‘Value & Civility’. Her initials, I. S. R. – Imelda Smith Rook – are hidden there somewhere, but I am too fragile to look. I am an icicle, waiting to snap.

  I remember the morning Shelby towed his caravan into the yard. I must have been about twelve; River was still a toddler, clutching my hand. The caravan’s curtained windows were heavy-lidded, giving nothing away. Handfuls of grass festooned the undercarriage, as if the vehicle had been pulled free from a place where it shouldn’t have been. All the men came from the yard to witness this strange spectacle, and there was a lot of banter, a lot of revving and general kicking of tyres. I’ve noticed guys do that a lot when faced with a strange vehicle, as if they need to put their mark on it. Kicking is more civilised than pissing, I guess.

  When I think of that time, I remember my mother’s expression. She never ever looked like that, all lit up from the inside. Shelby Smith was the closest thing she had to family, a distant cousin many times removed. He brought a blast of fresh Nottingham air to the Aberdeenshire coast, I suppose. It turned back time for a small while. Made her sparkle.

  His hair was dark back then, the hat less dusty. I can still see him sliding out of his Land Rover to plant a kiss on my mother’s cheek. I was fascinated by the faded denim jacket, the single gold earring. We had a campfire in the yard that night. The men got legless on cheap lager and Shelby played some old tunes on a battered melodeon. River fell asleep against my shoulder and turned all rosy in the firelight. It was a good night.

  Despite his claim to be ‘just passing through’, Shelby’s caravan hasn’t moved since. When was that? I try to calculate. Thirteen or fourteen years ago. I’m not sure when we realised his wheels were down for good. Maybe when Mum went out with her paint pots and covered all the dents and scrapes with roses and oak leaves and curlicues. Mum was good at covering things up: shabby paintwork, stained school shirts. Bruises.

  I make my way along the steel palisade behind Shelby’s colourful caravan, the fearsome electric gate, with its spikes and security cameras. Beyond it, the mechanical grabber rears up like some stalky steampunk heron, neck arched, getting ready to pounce. The place is closed, given the circumstances; the only movement is the black flap of the crows in the car stacks. They caw and fight like gulls on a cliff face. My mother likes to talk to the crows.