This is a first novel, and sadly, a last one too.

That’s the opening line of the epilogue for Manx woman Elly Kelly’s novel ‘The Nihilist & The Butterfly Catcher’, written by her mother Margaret Claydon.

Elly, who wanted more than anything to be a novelist, died suddenly from Covid last year, a few months before her 50th birthday.

Margaret, previously a member of the Arts Council and director of the Sayle Gallery as well as an artist, is using her knowledge of the arts in memory of her daughter.

She told Island Life: ‘ Elly had been writing all her life and her dream was to have her own ISBN number so we gave that to her as a remembrance.

‘Indeed it has become for me the obituary I never could bring myself to write. She was my only child and the shock is still with me every day.’

It’s been a journey with many twists and turns to get the book published.

‘Her computer passwords were not known and as a digital forensics expert for the police she had high security which made it impossible to retrieve this novel from her files,’ she said.

‘I thought it was lost but suddenly I had an email from a writers’ retreat in California,after I posted on her Facebook page that she had died, to say that the editor of Winter’s Daughter Press had a copy.

‘The address was Elk River Valley in Eureka which i found quite appropriate.’

The owner of the retreat, Claire Josefine, offered to edit and publish the book.

The story doesn’t end there though – it is currently being converted into a film script.

‘My daughter was an avid travel blogger and would have loved to have known that I made contact with an infant school friend, Nigel Goodwin, now an actor in Australia, who offered to write the script and then market it to a film company in Scotland,’ Margaret said.

‘The travels of this book would have delighted Elly.

‘She laughed at me, probably in disgust, when I said I’d like to see Hugh Grant play the love interest in the novel not ever knowing I could get as far as having a film script written for her .

Elly worked as a digital forensics expert for the police, examining seized computers in order to prosecute child abuse.

Margaret said she thinks the book reflects the distress her daughter felt over the work, a stress that led to her eventually giving it up.

She said Elly was spooked when a case she was working on involved a child with the pseudonym Grace as that was the same pseudonym she had given to a child in her story.

‘The real child could be dead now, as is Elly who noticed her existence on a seized computer while she worked on the case being prosecuted,’ Margaret said.

‘This book is for them both in remembrance.’

The story is dark and about a journey for two strangers who meet by accident and try to work out their lives together.

Kate is travelling alone around the far north of Scotland in a dilapidated van when she unexpectedly finds a scared and runaway child who calls herself Grace.

The landscape art which forms part of the narrative was all done on the island as part of exhibitions at the Sayle Gallery where Elly worked with Damian Ciapelli for a while.

The cover shows a facemask from one of her photos on Port Erin beach.

The graphics are Elly’s too – bugganes that she imagined as sinister butterflies in another series of artwork.

The title of the book had not been finalised by Elly, who lived in Port St Mary. She had left two options and the chosen title combines the two.

‘The Nihilist & The Butterfly Catcher’ is available to buy at The Bridge Bookshop in Port Erin and Ramsey.

Margaret said the proceeds from sales would go towards other projects she is working on to benefit Manx artists and writers as well as island charities.