We see sandpipers out on the exposed, fetid-sweating bay sifting through the mud like jaded prospectors. We see the scattered glint of the sea playing hooky two hundred metres out. We see the sunken ribcage of the old lifeboat yawning at the sky, its bones stripped and bleached by the seasons.
An exchange has taken place. She has been given back to us, and he has been taken away. Who are we to say whether we got the better end of that deal or not? There’s just a certain symmetry to it.
It starts with the heat.
The heat is everywhere, oppressive and exhausting. The town’s a-whirring with a thousand fans variously indolent and geriatric, the shops’ fridges and freezers are gouged empty, and the dead are sweating in their graves beneath the crippled spire of St Martin’s.
The sandpipers sc
