SPOILERS!!!
The novel grows more and more intriguing. The chapters alternate between the present and Finn’s memories with Layla. In those flashbacks we see that Layla and Finn met on New Year’s Eve. Finn was about to take the underground when he saw her, cowering against a wall because she was scared of the crowds. When Finn approached, she told her that she needed to go to Piccadilly where there was a youth hostel. When she admitted that she had no reservation, Finn told her that it would be almost impossible to find a room on New Year’s Eve. So he took her to his flat, which he shared with his boss Harry, and she stayed there for several weeks. Finn was smitten and broke up with his girlfriend. After those weeks Layla told him that she needed to find her own way, and for several weeks he didn’t hear from her, and then one night he saw her standing outside his place, and Layla explained that she had been unable to find a job and someone had stolen her money at the youth hostel.
After that, she moved in with him and they started a relationship. Layla found a job, waitressing, and Finn was just happy. Harry, his boss and friend, didn’t like Layla, and when he said something about her, Harry got so angry that he beat him up. We gradually learn that Finn has a violent side, and in the past when he was still living in Ireland, he had an incident with a former girlfriend when she told him that she had fallen in love with his best friend. The girl ended up with several stitches in her head, and Finn had to leave, or else the girl’s brothers would have kneecapped him.
After the incident with Harry, he and Layla moved to Devon where he got a cottage next to the sea. Things were okay, but Layla felt constrained by their loneliness, so when her former colleagues in the bar asked her to come to London for some party, Layla jumped at the chance. After she returned, Finn noticed that she acted peculiar. She kept saying how much she loved him, and then when they left for France, she still was too clingy. So when they were in Paris, she confessed that during her weekend away she had slept with someone else. We know that after that Finn showed her his most violent side, but we don’t know yet what he didn’t tell the police. Did he hit her? Did he kill her? Sometimes Finn sounds as if he knows that Layla is dead, so that leads me to think that he killed her. But then there are moments when he wonders what happened to Layla. So I am not sure what took place that night. Did Finn scare her so much that she fled and someone else kidnapped her?
At present the little Russian doll is not the only one that Finn gets. He finds another one on the wall next to his home, another held by the windscreen wipers of his car, and another one with the bill for a meal he and Ellen had at the local pub. Finn thinks that the person who is behind these disturbing gifts is Ruby, the owner of the pub. Finn and Ruby dated for a while, but then Finn started seeing Ellen and left Ruby. The way he treated Ruby was terrible, so he thinks that Ruby still holds a grudge. Then he also gets some emails from Rudolph Hill, and he think that Ruby is behind it. The name Rudolph could well refer to Ruby and her favourite animal, the dolphin. So after he gets the Russian doll with his bill, he confronts Ruby, but the woman says she doesn’t know anything about Russian dolls and Layla, and Finn can see she is telling the truth.
When Finn got the doll in London attached to his windscreen, Ellen was with him and she reacted scared and cowered against a shop window. Ellen then said that she had thought she had seen Layla. Finn doesn’t know what to think, and the person sending him the emails claims that Layla is alive and when Finn asks where she is, they say that she is just there. So remembering what the detective told him about the neighbour seeing Layla, he decides to go to the cottage, but he is told that the man has been taken ill and is in hospital. So Finn calls Tony, the detective and tells him that he would like to know more about what Mr Winter saw because Ellen thought she had seen Layla as well. When Tony gets back to him, he tells him that Mr Winter has passed away, so he couldn’t get any more details.
I have the hunch that the person behind this harassing campaign is Ellen. She happens to be around when the Russian dolls are left: in London, at the pub, in the home she shares with Finn. And she is the only one who has seen someone resembling Layla. What we can’t explain is what Mr Winter saw, but maybe it was Ellen he saw. After all, the most conspicuous feature of Layla was her long red hair, so even though Ellen doesn’t look like her sister at all, she could well have put on a wig and adopted a similar body posture to make a very old man believe that Layla is alive. But then why is Ellen doing this now? Why not after Layla went missing? Maybe she has found something among Finn’s things that made her realise that he hurt her sister. We know that it was Ellen who took the first step and kissed him, so it is not far-fetched to think that she might have wormed her way into his life so that she could find out what happened to her sister that night.
If Ellen is not the person harassing Finn, then who? Could Layla be alive? If that is true, why hasn’t she made contact before?
My Reading Journal 