Evan Price and Peter Rufford don’t know each other from Adam, but each receives an unsigned invitation to a remote pub in a part of England neither has ever visited. Each has a reason to comply, and here, deep in the Fens, they get wind of a mutual acquaintance who presents them with an opportunity to assist him in an investigation into a centuries-old legend relating in some way to his own more recent past.

His motives are opaque and his manner vague, but his guests quickly come to realise that he really does need their help: they just can’t quite figure out how or why.

Enthralled by a situation which constantly throws up more questions than it answers, they are drawn into the heart of the mystery and embark upon a strange odyssey through landscapes and seascapes whose lonely beauty seems to conceal an existential threat … just as their host seems increasingly prone to conceal the truth about the very story he says he wants them to unravel.

Eventually, the summer ends with storms – both literal and metaphorical – and the drama plays out in the pounding surf and shifting sands of a fragile island harbouring a fragile secret on north Norfolk’s beleaguered coast.