Infinity swirl design with trailing dots

The tide came round the back of the Skerrow again last night, the way it always does, sliding in across the flats in a long bend and then doubling back on itself before you can get your boots off the marker posts. Mr Pardoe swears it goes round twice before it commits to anything. I told him that was just the sea showing off for the tourists, and he didn't laugh, which is how I knew he meant it.

I've taken over the crossing bell now that his knees have gone. Every morning I walk the causeway with the tide tables in my coat and count the stones. There are nine flat slabs set into the sand from the mainland end, each a stride apart, and beyond them the dots run out to the island in a scatter that gets smaller and smaller until you can't tell a stone from a gull's foot. Mr Pardoe says the old wardens laid them in pairs, one for going out and one for coming back, so the path always loops home. I've checked. They don't quite. The last pair sits a good yard wide of where it should be, and I suspect that's where the sea gets its figure of eight.

Last Tuesday a surveyor from the council stood on the bank with his theodolite and told me the causeway was a fiction, that the dots were only drainage pits. I let him keep his notebook. The morning after, he walked out to the ninth stone to prove it and came back at a run, white-faced, with his shoes in his hand. He hasn't written since.

I'll leave the bell on the hook for you. Come up at the spring tide, and bring your own boots. Walk the loop with me once, and then we'll see whether you still believe in straight lines.

Love, Meg