“He said he reckoned as you’d understand why the dinghy was for you…”

Xanthe Ribiero is in hiding. She has made an unforgiving enemy and has taken refuge on a redundant lightship in the Essex marshes. The River Blackwater sparkles in the early summer sun and the weather is set fair for sailing, but the children Xanthe has come to teach are oddly fearful - as if they are in hiding too?

The local families have been feuding for generations. Their motives and relationships are as muddy as the puddles across the saltings and it is not long before Xanthe begins to suspect that there is evil in the present as well as in the past. A complex knot of secrets is beginning to unravel…

Also available on: