By Lin Anderson

The village of Blackrig in the Scottish Highlands was shocked when seventeen-year-old Ailsa Cummings went missing five years ago. And a recent pandemic has stirred up old tensions and sparked an animosity towards outsiders in the small community.

After a local estate decides to reopen its luxury ‘party house’ to tourists, an angry mob causes damage to the property’s hot tub, only to unearth the buried body of the missing girl in its foundations. The discovery reignites old suspicions among the villagers, especially the men, who’d known Ailsa.

Men like Greg, who has invited Joanne to stay with him having met her on a recent business trip in London. When questioned about the girl, he angrily refuses to discuss the case. Joanne, disturbed by his reaction, questions how well she knows this new man in her life. Then again, he’s not the only one with secrets in their volatile relationship.

When a police team arrives to excavate the remains, they find a close-knit community who would prefer the past to stay buried . . .

Turn the page to read a teaser now.

Ailsa

Before

Eleven o’clock and the sky was still light. In Glasgow it would be dark by now, she thought.

She hadn’t wanted to come here, to this dead-end village in the Highlands, but here she was.

You could have run away again, a small voice reminded her.

No, I made a deal. Come here, stay clean. Go to art college in September.

She’d hated it at first. Folk looking at her as though she’d just dropped in from outer space. They were friendly enough, she had to admit that, especially the local boys, who’d fought for her attention from the outset.

She smiled, remembering the fun she’d had with that, playing them off one against the other. It was a game that had kept her sane at the beginning. Made her feel good about herself. She’d even tasted some of the wares on offer, and found a few to her liking.

Especially when they took place here in the heart of the woods.

She ran her eyes over the circle of carvings that stood sentinel among the trees, thinking again how beautiful they were. The birds fashioned from stripped pine, some in flight, others resting quietly on a branch. Her favourite was the owl sitting watching her from atop a tree trunk pedestal.

He was so real that she often found herself talking to him.

Then the woodland creatures . . . A roe deer, she could imagine taking off to bound away through the trees. A pair of majestic wolves nearby which might pursue it. Even imagining this didn’t worry her, because she had no doubt who would win that particular race.

Her eyes were now drawn to the centre of the circle and the father and mother of all the carvings . . . literally. The green woman of the woods, together with the green man.