Who’s who
The people of Porth Trevan
Everyone on this page turns up in the opening chapters of Book One, so it’s all safe to read before you start. Characters from later books are tucked away further down until you’ve caught up.
Emma Trelawney
The one who came back
She left Porth Trevan twenty years ago, in the shadow of her sister’s disappearance. In London she built a career on noticing the stories other reporters walked straight past, until a source lied to her and the lie ran on the front page. Now she has sold everything, bought a cheap hatchback and driven home to deal with her mother’s cottage. The old instinct for a story that doesn’t add up is something she has spent years trying to switch off.
Lucas Ward
The fisherman who found her
Works the lobster pots off the headland from the Sea Lark, the same boat that was tied up in the harbour when Emma left. Calm, observant and not one for saying more than he needs to. He was seventeen the night Anna Trelawney went missing, and he has carried something about that night ever since.
Maggie Trevithick
Landlady of the Harbour Lantern
Silver-haired, straight-backed and sharp enough to miss very little that happens in this town. Her coffee has usually been on the warmer a good while, and her advice is usually right. Five minutes after Emma arrives, Maggie already has her sitting at the bar.
Arthur Ward
Lucas’s grandfather
Sits by the fire in the Lantern with a pint and a thick grey beard. For forty years he worked the ferry, running supplies out to the lighthouse before it was automated. He doesn’t talk about those years much. People rarely do, until someone asks the right question.
Inspector Nathaniel Briggs
The detective from out of town
Tall, mid-forties and grey at the temples, with the quiet focus of a man more used to watching than talking. He has come to look into May Hollis’s death, and he remembers exactly who Emma Trelawney is.
Gareth Penrose
The harbour master
Worked around the docks for as long as Emma can remember before taking charge of the harbour itself. Calm, watchful and part of the furniture. He makes a point of knowing who comes and goes in Porth Trevan.
Margaret Ellis
Keeps the guesthouse up the hill
Has run it on her own for nearly twenty years, with framed photographs of the coastline along the hallway. May Hollis took a room there when she came back.
The two women at the heart of it
Anna Trelawney
The sister who never came home
Restless and fearless, always the one who went furthest into the caves while the others turned back. “Come on, Em, it keeps going.” Twenty years ago she went towards the lighthouse cliffs and didn’t come back. The village decided it was an accident. Emma has spent half her life trying to believe it.
May Hollis
The woman in the water
Worked the post office counter as a girl, then left to make a career in science far from Cornwall. She came home only weeks before Lucas found her beneath the lighthouse, and she spent those weeks asking about caves, unlit boats and Anna Trelawney.
Later in the trilogy
Open these once you’ve finished the book before. They won’t give away any endings, but they do assume you know how the earlier story went.
I’ve finished Book One. Who joins the story in Book Two?
Diana Marsh
The journalist
Fifteen years covering defence and security, and she does not do quick and sensational. She turns up on Emma’s doorstep with a satchel that has seen better decades, a book to write and a strong suspicion that the official story stopped short.
Carol Hollis
May’s sister
Lives three streets back from the harbour, in a cottage that faces away from the sea. Everyone has told her May’s death was an accident. She has never believed them, and she is tired of being looked at like grief has made her foolish.
Colin Trewin
The private investigator
Mostly insurance work, and the occasional missing person. He nearly turned Carol’s case down. Then he read the coroner’s report.
I’ve finished Book Two. Who’s waiting in Book Three?
Dean Pascoe
The night shift
Six years watching the monitoring boards at a cable landing station on the Cornish coast. At 4.12 one morning he sees something on his screen he can’t explain, writes two careful lines in the log, and decides not to call anyone.
Arthur Ward, again
The man with the oldest story
In the final book, Lucas’s grandfather is asked to go back to 1961 and tell the whole of a story he has only ever told in part.
Ready to meet them properly?