She came to the sea because she had nowhere else to go. She packed one bag and walked out of the door and she just kept on going. She bought a ticket as far as the line would take her and when she got there she stepped off the train, leaving its dusty seats and gritty-eyed windows, Kasey4Con finger-written in the grime, and she walked out through the ticket barrier and the once-white-tiled underpass, past the pound stores and the pale people with tight faces who surely never saw the sea and its light from one month to the next, and she kept on going until the light, the light just opened everything out and there was the sea, as wide as her arms could stretch, as far as her eyes could see, and further. So she sat down on the pebbles and she watched it.

food print fiction S J Butler short fiction