PREMISE
Some five thousand years ago, a father returns to his home on a remote Scottish peninsula to find that his four daughters have been abducted. In his grief, he raises four great standing stones on a headland and he lays a curse on anyone who takes them down. Their family, too, will be scattered and lost as his has been.
Fast forward to the 1920s when wealthy industrialist Charles Blackmore plans to build a brand-new house on the headland and discovers that the legendary standing stones known as the Four Sisters of Skara are blocking the view from his drawing room. Charles is a modern man. He believes in technology and the future, not legends or curses. He has the stones laid flat and he gives his dismayed wife, Amelia, a necklace instead. The necklace is made of four beautiful blue gem stones – an opal, a sandstone, a moonstone and a sapphire – to represent their four daughters who are all different, unique in their own ways, but, like the stones in the necklace, meant to be together.
Now, ancient curses are not things to mess with, and it is not long before everything starts to go wrong. There is the Great Recession – coincidence perhaps? – and a run of bad luck and poor choices which see Charles lose his fortune and turn to drink. By 1931, he is bankrupt, unable even to afford a doctor for his dying wife. Fearful of what would happen to her daughters, Amelia has the necklace made into four rings before her death and gives one to each of them before she dies, making them promise to keep it always as a connection to home and their sisters.
Things unravel quickly after Amelia’s death. The four Blackmore sisters are scattered around the world, never to meet again, just as the curse foretold. Without money or the experience to find a job, they are forced to find distant relatives who they hope may be able to help them stay together as a family. That search will take them to Ceylon and Australia, to Egypt, the French Riviera and the glamorous golden age of Hollywood, but they will never be a family again. Each must undertake the journey alone and make a life for herself, with only the ring that binds her to her sisters and the home she has had to leave far behind.
Passed down through the generations from mother to daughter, it is the rings that will eventually draw their descendants back from the four corners of the globe to Skara where they must find a way to resolve the curse at last.
THE SISTERS
IRIS
Iris is the eldest sister, and like many eldest children, she feels the most responsible member of the family, even if she doesn’t always want to be. Why is up to me to decide? she wonders at one point. Why must I always be the one who has to sort out the mess? But the other sisters look to her to make things right and it’s only when Iris leaves that things really start to unravel.
Iris is someone who will always do the right thing, even if breaks her heart. She is a gentle soul, artistic like her mother, and her love for Scotland and Skara is bound up with her love for Ian Malcolm, who represents everything she has ever wanted. Her tragedy is that once she leaves Scotland, she will never return. She must learn to let go of that dream and open her heart to a new place, and a new love. Her journey takes her from Skara to the lush heat and intense greens of Ceylon, and then on to the dusty red Australian outback, both as different as could be imagined from the soft light of Scotland and from the misty hills and silver sea that Iris loves so much.
Iris’s stone is a blue opal. When Amelia, her mother, gives her the ring, she says: the opal has always reminded me of you, so clear and simple at first glance, but so much more colourful and interesting when you look closer. Blue opals are associated with wisdom and courage, and are believed by some to encourage a wearer to live fully in the present instead of dwelling on the past or worrying about the future.
ROSE
Rose and Iris are separated by only 15 months, and neither can imagine life without the other. But they are very different in character. While Iris is quiet and steady, Rose is restless and reckless and apt to plunge into situations without thinking. She is the closest to their father, Charles, and shares his confidence and enthusiasm for life. For as long as she can remember, Rose has yearned to travel, preferably to wild places that will satisfy her adventurous spirit. Ironically, it is Rose who is the last sister to leave Scotland but her journey takes her to a place she has long wanted to visit, Egypt.
Amelia gives Rose a blue sandstone, its deep blue colour flecked with gold. The blue sandstone is associated with ambition, self-confidence and courage, all of which will help Rose as she travels to Egypt and later to Morocco where she learns that the bravest acts are not always the most obvious ones.
LILY
A classic third child, Lily doesn’t feel the need to draw attention to herself and is happier observing than taking part. At their last happy Christmas, Charles gives Lily a camera of her own, starting her on a lifetime of taking photographs. She is thrilled, but her mother, Amelia, worries. Don’t hide behind the camera, she tells Lily as she is dying. Come out and show the world how special you are.
Amelia gives Lily a blue moonstone ring. The moonstone, she thinks, is subtle and elegant like Lily. Perhaps it is not as striking as the other rings, but it has its own beauty. You think you are overshadowed by the others, Amelia tells Lily, but you are not. You are yourself.
The blue moonstone has traditionally been worn to bring good fortune and enhance intuition. It has, obviously, close links to the moon and to feminine energy and is associated with serenity and emotional healing.
DAISY
Daisy is the youngest, the undisputed star of the family. From her earliest years, she’s been a performer: she sings, she dances, she twirls her way through life. Even as a small child, she’s had the ability to light up a room when she comes into it, and the camera loves her. It’s almost impossible for Lily to take a bad photograph of her younger sister. Daisy’s older sisters tease her, but they are all secretly proud of her talents. Not that Daisy is all sweetness and light. She has a monumental temper and a stubborn determination to succeed that makes her family certain that she has the makings of a star of the silver screen. Although desperately sad at having to leave home and her beloved sisters behind, Daisy is also excited at the idea of going to America and she boards the transatlantic liner vowing to make the best of things. Things generally go Daisy’s way, but the curse of the Four Sisters follows her, and she hasn’t even reached America before tragedy strikes …
Daisy’s stone is the blue sapphire. Since ancient times, the sapphire has been valued not only for its beauty but also for its symbolic power and its associations with nobility, protection and loyalty.
INSPIRATION
Usually when I write a novel, I spend some time at the outset thinking about a plot and digging around ideas to find a story. But not this time. The prologue wrote itself. It is a strange and wonderful feeling to see words appearing on the screen without being aware of having conjured them up yourself. When it came to The Sea Stone Sisters, it feels as if instead of me finding the story, the story found me.
I’ve always been fascinated by the connections between the past and the present, by everything that makes us different from our ancestors – and by everything that makes us the same. Our technologies change, but our emotions don’t. I remember standing at the Callanais Stones on the Isle of Lewis and feeling the power of these extraordinary standing stones – and thinking, too, of how much we share with the people who lived in the Neolithic period. The curse of the Four Sisters of Skara taps into emotions that are common to us all, whether we live in the Stone Age, in the Thirties or in the present day: grief, loss, love. The ties of family and the longing for home, and the tension between wanting to belong and wanting to explore the wider world.
