Storm Warning

The ferry to Skellan Island left Rosmoor harbour at noon, three hours late, and by the time it reached open water Iris Calloway had stopped pretending to read. For six years she had been trying to interview Edmund Rhys, the novelist who had published one extraordinary book and then vanished from public life. His agent had finally written: one hour, no recorder, no photographs. Iris had accepted before she reached the end of the email.

The captain, a weathered man called Davy, kept glancing at the sky. “There’s weather coming,” he said, handing her a mug of tea so strong that it could have stood up on its own. “If it breaks tonight, this is the last boat until Monday.” Iris laughed. Davy didn’t.

Skellan turned out to be little more than a green hump with a harbour, a shop and a single road that climbed to a house on the cliff. Rhys opened the door himself. He was taller than in his photographs and a great deal older, with a long grey scarf and the expression of a man who had rehearsed saying no. “One hour,” he said. “I keep my word, Miss Calloway. Please keep yours.”

The interview was every bit as difficult as she had feared. He answered questions with questions; he complained about the tea; he described the past as “a country I have no wish to revisit”. Yet twice she caught him glancing at an old typewriter on the windowsill, as though it might interrupt.

When the hour ended, a noise like a giant door slamming shook the windows. The storm had arrived early. Davy appeared at the gate, soaked to the skin, shouting something about the harbour. “Nobody is leaving tonight,” said Mrs Pryor, the housekeeper, taking Iris’s coat as if the matter had been settled long ago. “You’ll sleep in the guest room. We haven’t much, but we have plenty of books.”

The guest room was lined with cheap paperbacks, all with the same lurid cover: a lighthouse, a red sky and a single lit window. The author was someone called M. Tern. Iris picked one up and smiled. Then she noticed that Mrs Pryor was still standing in the doorway. “Those aren’t Mr Rhys’s books,” she said quickly, a little too quickly. “He doesn’t like to talk about them.” The door closed. Outside, the wind began to howl.