After the Clearances: Alison Layland

After the Clearances, a climate-fiction mystery, will be published on 10 July 2025. It’s a vision of life in the near future, 2056, that is loosely connected to my previous (present-day) psychological thriller, Riverflow, referencing certain characters some thirty years on. A government policy known as the Resettlement, but dubbed the Clearances by most ordinary people, has emptied rural Wales of its population. Against this background, a self-sufficient community, the Seeders, have settled on a remote Welsh island (fictional, but inspired by Ynys Enlli/Bardsey) and are forging a new way of life while battling the elements that are intensifying due to climate breakdown. When a mainlander, Sandy, arrives on the island, searching for her partner who has betrayed her and seeking vengeance for her sister who was killed in a protest – an act of terrorism in her eyes – she makes discoveries that threaten certain of the islanders, in particular the family of 13-year-old Glesni.

Meanwhile, on the mainland, a young woman, Bela, who lives by her own rules in close connection with the natural world around her, takes in Winter, a wounded fugitive from a shadowy government programme, forming an unlikely friendship that ultimately leads back to the Seeders.

The novel opens with an extract from Glesni’s diary.

Extract:

The journal of Glesni Jones, July 2056

I can’t believe I ever wanted to be her friend. I’ve been reimagining over and over the way Sandy dealt with Madog before we left for the mainland. I’ve managed to keep it distanced as hideous fact, but the emotion’s starting to ambush me in unexpected moments. And now I’m truly scared. Scared for my family, scared for myself and Taid, here now, and scared for everything we have back on the island.

We’re not safe. Maybe we’ll never be safe again. Maybe we never were; just that some of us were sheltered from knowing it. I thank them for that.

Or maybe I’m over-dramatising. Surely one woman can’t undo all we’ve built up over the years? I hope not. But in case my fears are real, I think it’s important to tell anyone who might find this notebook what we have – or perhaps, and I hate to say this, what we had.

So… Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Glesni Delyth Jones and I was the first child to be born on Ynys Hudol, the magical island, which they sometimes call Aniseed Island because most mainlanders can’t speak Welsh and our pronunciation uh-nis heed-ol sounded like Aniseed to someone once and it stuck, so that’s what it says on the few maps I’ve seen that bother to show it. We don’t even grow aniseed. We do call our community the Seeders, or Hadwyr, though: partly inspired by Aniseed and partly because our aim is to grow a new way of life to cope with the changing world. Empathy-Humility-Frugality as it says on the mural in our roundhouse.

Others have been born, and arrived, on the island since I came into the world but still, it makes me feel a bit special. There are sixty-eight people in our community. When Sandy came, she made it sixty-nine, but Martha has died since – she was very old, so we can’t blame Sandy for that, but now… now maybe even Madog, and who knows whether the three of us will make it back? Sandy’s got plans but we’re not sure what.

Anyway… I live with my mam Helyg, my sister Haf, my stepfather Tom, and Erik Jones, my taid (just so you know, it’s pronounced ‘tide’ – Sandy told me early on that she imagined a name like that for an old man was to do with the unstoppable ebb and flow of life, or some indication of dependability, like the ever-present sea. She looked a bit disappointed when I told her it simply means Grandpa. I must admit her view of it makes beautiful sense). Mam arrived on the island sixteen years ago in 2040, just after Haf was born, and I came into our precarious world three years later. My dad, Gareth, drowned before I was a year old, when he was out at sea and a storm hit suddenly, despite the healthy respect we’ve always had for the unpredictable ways of the ocean. Taid arrived on Ynys Hudol when I was two so he’s been like a father to me. My nain (pronounced ‘nine’) died a long time ago, which is one of the reasons Taid can be moody, but now it turns out her death might have been a lie. We daren’t believe that, especially since it was Sandy who said it, although hope has a way of settling in and refusing to leave, however painful it might be when it’s dashed. But that’s all part of the story and I don’t know the ending yet.

We were only supposed to be here for a night but it looks like the storm’s going to last a good few days so we’re stuck here and I’m going to try and write it all down because things are already starting to feel a bit muddled. Maybe it’ll be like brainstorming and I’ll think of a way to stop Sandy’s scheming or Taid’s self-destruction. Haf says I over-romanticise him but I know he really would give himself up for the sake of the Seeders. Me, I don’t see why he should, and in any case, I wouldn’t trust Sandy to keep her word.

I’m getting ahead of myself.

It’s this place. I can’t concentrate. The house is shaking and the winds are battering and I’m wishing I was in the solid strength of our roundhouse. I hate the mainland already – even if it is Cymru and we’re all supposed to love Cymru, it’s still the mainland and I can’t believe how different it feels. The rocks may be the same rocks that formed Ynys Hudol millennia ago and it may all become the same seabed once again as the sea levels continue to rise, but it’s the people that make the difference.

For years I’ve been mithering them to let me come on a mainland foraging trip, to see it all for myself, but now I’m here I have to admit I prefer security over excitement and I’m beginning to understand why a lot of people don’t want to make the crossing ever again – even if that would mean doing without certain things. Of course, the circumstances don’t help. And I hate to think of Mam worrying about me. She’s had enough worry in her life; all the older ones have. They don’t deserve to be betrayed, none of them do.

However flimsy it feels, I suppose this borrowed house has seen out a good few storms, though they’re getting worse all the time. I’m sure it’ll stand its ground and give me enough time to write down everything I need to. Did I say it was for people of the future to find? It’s also in case I get home (which I hope isn’t entirely impossible). Unlike Taid, I don’t want to forget.

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See more about After the Clearances here

Visit Alison Layland’s website at www.alayland.uk. and her Crime Cymru author page here.