The shells on Bognor beach are the colour of toenails. They lie in clusters, scooped out, open, cracked at their rims. Sometimes a mollusc clings to their centres. An orange-brown curve that falls out then in, like a lung.
There are baby crabs, tiny, white, pink at the knees. They flicker across rock pools like plastic toys on strings, playthings for passing toddlers. Sometimes they reach adulthood, but sometimes not. They die and shrink into little balls the colour of worn car ashtrays.
In summer ice creams gleam white from the shacks on the seafront. The wind blows out skirts and wrappers and helium balloons shaped like monsters. A dragon with a golden tail rises above a lilo-child. 'Look!' he says as he toes the water like the bath at his grandmother's house. The blue string is just out of reach, like a memory.
In winter the joggers wear sunglasses. Their lycra shines back from the pathway like camera flashes at a football match. The dog-walkers bend and show off their puppies' coats like mothers at school gates.
The whitewashed houses crack and leak because of the sea. Everything ' lips, hands, air, thoughts - tastes of salt and Queen Victoria.
