Rex still walked the beach early each morning with Charlie, before the nudists arrived with their sun cream and sandwiches. Rex told himself it was because the dog needed walking; he didn’t acknowledge, even to himself, that it had become a morbid obsession. As soon as Rex let Charlie off the lead, the dog raced across the shingle, scattering the gulls like sheets of newsprint into the wind. Rex kicked through the debris of the night’s high tide, looking for the remnants of other people’s lives – items lost, or discarded, or like Freya’s clothes, left in a tidy pile on the sand.

***

I’m currently working on my second book, playing around with ideas and characters, and this is one proto-scene. There’s definitely a character who lives beside the sea, so this was a perfect picture for me, provided by E.A Wicklund for this week’s Friday Fictioneers writing group – where writers from all over the world write about 100 words using a photo as inspiration. Click here to read other people’s and to join in. And please comment below with any suggestions for improvement on mine.