The Slack Water Knot

About this book

Eighteen-year-old Nell Robson is nobody. She mudlarks the Tyne without a permit, sells clay pipes on the Quayside on Sundays, and keeps her mam's Byker flat afloat with whatever the mud gives up. Then, on the night of the March spring tide, a red ring rises on her wrist and a stranger's heartbeat starts beneath her skin. The river has knotted her to Cal Errington, heir to the oldest of the Hostman houses that have ruled Newcastle's river for four hundred years. Their law says the river never binds its own to a dry girl like Nell, and that such a knot must be cut on the September equinox tide. The cut kills the dry partner. Nell has six months, a boy she never asked for, and a pulse she can't stop feeling. Is the knot a mistake, or fate?