Deal Seafront, August Evening

We came down late, when the day had let go of its heat and the beach had emptied of everything but the sound of the shingle. The tide was far out and easy. The pier stood on its long legs, holding the last of the light the way a hand holds a candle against a draught.

Nobody was in a hurry. A woman sat at the water's edge with her shoes beside her. Somewhere behind us a door opened and closed. It is a particular kind of quiet, the seaside at the end of an August day — not silence, but a softening.

I filled my pockets, as always. Two flat stones the colour of milky tea, a scrap of blue net, and a photograph of rope that I will think about all winter. It is the texture I keep returning to: something plain, worked hard, softened by weather.

The seafront palette writes itself — bleached timber, faded indigo, chalk, and that thin apricot the sky turns just before it gives up. Linen takes those colours kindly.

We walked back along the front with chips and no plan, past shuttered huts and windows going gold. Nothing happened, which is rather the point of a wandering. It will surface later — in a lining, a name, a colour I cannot quite explain.