Beautiful. Smart. Weird. Crazy. The words most often used to describe Ellie Hale aren’t always nice but they’re never truly vicious. She was never bullied, was never really short of friends, and was never short of admirers even if she never really went for any of them. Nobody understood how Ellie had wandered into town on her own at the age of ten and never had anybody come looking for her. But that’s something that Ellie has learned not to talk about because people still don’t believe her and some think she’s insane if she does. A terror that she suffered as a child that has haunted her despite the happiness she found in the very town that caused her pain.

At the age of ten she and her loving parents were driving to Silvervale from Glasgow to view their new home. This was the wonderful place they would be moving to and, surprisingly, it had been snowing here in the middle of summer. Which had been incredibly strange but also fascinating and all they’d done is laugh as they’d continued driving down the winding roads, deciding they could be quite happy in such a beautiful place. Ellie was gazing outside the entire time, window wide open and the freezing air blowing in her face. That was when everything had gone wrong - her father had turned from the steering wheel for just a moment to tell her to close the window but before she could react the car swerved violently and was suddenly sinking down into the lake. Screaming filled the car and Ellie remembers twisting out of her seatbelt and leaning forward to help her parents. Her father yelled at her to get out, crawl through the window before the whole car went down, they’d meet her on the riverbank. She refused but he kept shouting at her, her mother joining in and eventually she obeyed and swam clumsily towards the shore, hitting ice and sliding the rest of the way.

By the time Ellie made it to land the car had disappeared and she stayed there, waiting for a long time until night came and she huddled up behind a tree, terrified, and fell asleep. She’s lucky she didn’t freeze to death overnight but a passing dog walker found her and called the police and an ambulance. She woke up in the hospital, confused and told everybody what happened, but when people investigated the lake they noticed that there was no hole in the ice where a car could have gone down. No way could it have frozen solid again overnight, right? The doctors concluded that little Ellie had suffered a head injury and simply wasn’t thinking straight. She was kept in for a couple of weeks and then nobody knew what to do with her. If the Hale family hadn’t come to her rescue she had no idea what would have happened to her.