Excerpt from The Tide is Running

The tide is running. It confused Paula as a child how the pebbly beach was there one night and covered in water the next. She disliked the unpredictability of not knowing what the landscape would look like when she woke up. So, she watched. Every day. By the time she started school she knew if she was looking at an ebb or a flow. The unused boatshed and battered pier give the beach a forlorn look. Funny to think of Uncle Tom, Mam and the others dipping together there, decades earlier. Mam and Uncle Tom used to tell her stories. Paula is not sure what is true, mis-remembered, or longed for, but both sets of stories mesh into disjointed fragments. ‘In a pair of togs, everyone was the same’ Mam used to say.

Contoured into the frame of the sash window, Paula sits on the floor of the boatshed, connected to the sea through gaps between wood and glass, the high tide sliding along the banked-up shingle, rustling the round pebbles, creating pockets of soft foam. The sound of home. That comforting regularity that four years in Belfast failed to smother. Sleepless nights curled up in bed; traffic, streetlights and late-night revellers were blocked out by closing her eyes and sensing the ripple of the tide amplified within, its flow lulling her to sleep against the sharp bleep of the traffic lights below her draughty window.