Only the truly devoted manage to swim every day at Whitstable, because the sea's only deep enough at high tide. So when Deb (ageing bikini, sunglasses) and Maisie (black wetsuit, swimming shoes, goggles) keep meeting on Reeves Beach, they strike up an unlikely friendship based on their love of swimming and their recent divorces. They swim early in the morning and late at night; through sea-fogs, rain and glorious sunny days. Soon, they are joined by other high tide swimmers, each with a crisis of their own to weather. Ann, a bossy organiser, is caring for her elderly mother at home; Julie has somehow (although she's not quite sure how) managed to produce three children under school age; and Chloe, a bright, brittle girl of fifteen, finds calmness in the water. Quiet, anxious Bill is initially thought to be a peeping Tom, before being welcomed into the heart of the club. When the swimmers discover plans for their beach to be paved over for a leisure complex, they find a higher purpose that bonds them together, and exposes their fragile worlds to public scrutiny. The Whitstable High Tide Swimming Club is a book about the power of female friendship, that never loses sight of the complicated truths behind the lives of women who - from the outside - seem to take everything in their stride. It's also a song to the author's home town of Whitstable, where the sea is smooth, the shingle is painful on bare feet, and the air is full of possibilities.
