The Devil’s Music
While his parents argue over whether or not to send Elaine away, Andy sleeps beside her cot each night, keeping guard and watching as his mother – once an ambitious, energetic nurse – withdraws into her private, suffocating sadness.
Knots keep treasures safe, Andy’s rope-maker grandfather tells him; and, as he listens to stories of the great Harry Houdini, and learns how to tie knots with names like the Carrick Bend, the Midshipman’s Hitch and the Monkey’s Fist, young Andy dreams of becoming an escapologist too. Then a young painter seems to call Andy’s mother from the grief in which she is lost. But one day at The Siding – the old railway carriage that serves as the family’s seaside retreat – Andy is left in charge of his baby sister on a wind-chopped beach where he discovers that not all treasures can be kept safe forever.
