The Unmaking of Ellie Rook Episode 60

Dad sneers. “How touching,” he says. “I knew how devastated you must be, my love, so I brought him home for you. Like a pilchard in a tin can!”

He laughs at his joke. River stares at me, white-faced. What do we do now?

“If only we had a tin opener, eh, River?” In the absence of Offshore Dave, River is the obvious stooge. I try to communicate wordlessly. Don’t play along.

His face is set, an expression I recognise. He’s at war with himself. I clear my throat, finding my voice at last.

“Shelby’s hurt. Let him out.” “Shelby’s hurt.” Dad repeats the words in a mocking sing-song. His arm drops from my shoulders as if I’ve contaminated him, and I can feel the sudden chill work its way into my bones.

“I have a better idea. How about we let your mother in?”

Mum makes a small noise, hardly an objection, but he moves over to her, takes her by the shoulders.

“Imelda, my love. All’s fair in love and war, isn’t that what they say? I’d never stand in the way of what you want. Never.”

I try to grab her attention but her eyes are fixed on him, as if she can’t look away.

Final ride

“I think you two should be reunited,” he continues. “A final ride in the old van.”

He swings around and punches the door of the caravan so hard it leaves a fistshaped dent.

I imagine Shelby wincing on the other side.

I shouldn’t be surprised by this zero-to-60 surge into violence, this combination of slow, cold words and hot, sudden irrationality.

I should be used to it, after all this time, but Dad always has the capacity to shock. Unpredictability is power.

“We’ll get you on board, Imelda, and take a nice little jaunt into the country. Maybe back up the mountain.

“You like it up there, don’t you? You and Shelby, the love of your life, all cosied up in the caravan. Very cosy.” He holds out his hand. “River – the key.”

My brother hesitates. Don’t do it. Don’t give him the key.

It’s Mum who surprises us next. “No,” she says, quite clearly. Her focus swings once more to Shelby. She looks at him through the caravan window. Holding his gaze. Holding the line.

“Leave him out of this. This is between you and me, Lawler.” She shakes herself a little, flexes her arms.

“I’m going to do what I should have done long ago. So many times, I’ve stood on the top of that waterfall and thought about it.

“Just one slip. Just one step, one foot after the other, and it would all be over.”

Something flickers on Dad’s face. Fear, perhaps.

“If I take myself out of the equation,” she says, “what then?”

She smiles – a whimsical kind of smile that chills me almost as much as Dad’s physical violence. River and I speak at the same time: No!

But it’s too late. She has a plan. “What are you saying? Mum!” I launch myself at her, grasp her hand. I don’t realise we’re touching until she slips away from me.

Strides off

She strides off, coat flapping round her legs. And then she starts to run. Like Finella, she starts to run.

There’s a moment where we stand and watch her go.

“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...”

The old story comes back to me now – a fragile thread between us, stretched to breaking point. But it can’t be allowed to snap.

“Mum, come back!”

I hear River’s voice too, a deeper version of mine, but at first his words don’t register.

“Run, Mum! Keep going! Don’t come back!”

I swing round to him. “What are you saying? She’s going to drown herself!”

He points at my father, rooted to the spot, shell-shocked. “Ask him what he’s got in the car boot. Ask him!”

When no one speaks, River gives the game away. “Three containers of petrol. Dad has a plan too.”

I’m swallowed up by the yard, the wasteland, the woods. I dodge the roots, the scrap and the buried parts.

I pass the birches and the pond and the car cemetery, but she is always ahead of me.

I see her coat flapping through the tree trunks, the flash of her hair like a crow’s wing, but she will not stop.

At one point, I hear crashing behind me. I’m being followed but none of that matters now.

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.

Escape

I’m going to do what I should have done long ago. So many times, I’ve stood on the top of that waterfall and thought about it

“They say she took to the trees, walking across the tops of them to escape.” “Could she have? Was she magic?” A wind has got up from somewhere. It takes my breath away.

The topmost branches have a language of their own, a sort of keening, and it’s easy to imagine Finella up there, perched on a limb, looking down.

What would she think of us? You had no choice, Finella, but my mother does.

I don’t know why she would choose to leave us.

I push myself onwards, to the difficult paths that overlook the gorge.

The water is crashing below and, as always, that heady thrill makes my heart skip a beat.

The air is different, moist and cold. One slip and it’s all over.

More tomorrow.

Copyright Sandra Ireland 2019, extracted from The Unmaking of Ellie Rook, published by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd, at £8.99.