Sadly for Chantelle the phone reception on the beach that evening was not her friend and the picture of the sunset she was trying to post kept buffering unsuccessfully. All the while the sunset she was in the middle of was evanescing in the manner of sunsets, and just out to sea the water rippled and glistened in the fading light, and still she stared impatiently at her phone and swore and the sun grew faint and the temperature dropped, and slowly and imperceptibly the wind picked up. When she at last looked up her eyes were hurting and dark was all around her.

The beers were no match for the heat of the afternoon and were flat and tepid. Charlie started mouthing off about not seeing the fucking point in drinking warm fucking beer for fucks sake and went off in search of a beach bar. Leanne scowled in the passive aggressive manner she had been perfecting since their relationship had begun to sour a few months back after reading the texts she wasn’t meant to read, and turned her back, tipping the bottle over which began to seep slowly through her beach towel.

With the surging adrenaline that comes from a story well told, an anecdote about getting a tug from the waiter in the carpark of the Mexican joint, T-J swan-dived into the water, deaf to the screams from his entourage that the evening’s entire stash of coke was in his pocket.

This is living.