Fog on the Causeway

Fog has sat on the Holm for nine days, the tides come in hours wrong, and the causeway floods without warning. When the engineer sent from the mainland to condemn it is found drowned at the halfway post, tied by the ankle with the one knot no knot-wife will tie, the island has its witch and the Bridge Company has its excuse. Stella can feel that the knot was copied from a drawing by someone who didn’t believe in it, but nobody wants to hear that from the knot-wife whose own secret has just come out. Clem knows now what she kept from him about Tom, and he has stopped coming to the chandlery. To clear the island’s name, Stella will have to ask her mother the question she has been afraid of for fifteen years, and the answer will lead her to a door she has knocked on all her life.