The Tide Office

The tide office stood at the seaward end of the pier, where the planks stopped pretending to be level and the railings wore their paint thin. Inside, it smelled of damp ledgers and the particular cold that comes off water at the turn of the year.

Merrin had kept the records for eleven seasons. Every six hours she walked to the gauge, read the mark, and wrote it down in a hand so even it looked printed. The numbers were not interesting. That was the point of them. A town learns to trust what is dull and on time.

She had inherited the post from a man named Oste, who told her only one thing before he left: never round. Whatever the water says, write exactly that. People will want you to make it tidy. Do not.

For eleven seasons the water had said ordinary things. Then, on a grey morning in the off-season, the gauge read a number that should not have been possible at that hour — a low so deep the mud flats lay bare to the channel — and the sea, when she looked up, was perfectly, impossibly still.