Matthew has come with his mother to the north Norfolk coast where she has rented a cottage in the grounds of an abandoned old manor-house. A local boy, Roly, becomes his guide through a lonely and mysterious landscape of dunes and creeks and sea. These and the derelict mansion begin to haunt Matthew's imagination and he gradually senses a shadow of fear lurking beneath his deepening friendship with Roly. The truth proves to be stranger than anything he could have foreseen. In this haunting story with a richly poetic climax, Nicholas Wilde, a master of the English ghost story, deftly combines a supernatural theme with a sensitive understanding of the emotions of a young boy as he explores the joys and the hurts of friendship, the reaching out, and the letting go.