Opposite The Pond pub, in Gloucester Street

In two weeks Mark will be a father. That changes things.

Maybe he’ll get a full time job now, something ethical... perhaps become a teacher. Or he could stay at home and be dad.

He puts his key in, opens the door, crosses the brown carpet to turn off the alarm. Wires trail from a mixing desk. A guitar case propped against the wall.

He remembers the first time he saw this recording studio three years ago, full of ambitions for the place.

In his 20s Mark had done well. He and some friends had set up a telecoms company, made good money. But when the

industry moved on, music started to draw him back in. He’d played keyboards in bands since he was 16. He still plays in five or six bands. (That will have to change too.)

Brighton seemed full of unrealised talent – musicians too edgy for the mainstream, too good to overlook.

Now he walks down into the basement. A drum kit. A synth. On the walls, the logos they all painted so enthusiastically – Round The Corner – the name of the studio and label that would showcase his talented friends. (The absence of piano amuses him. In his enthusiasm it hadn’t struck him that you can’t even get a live piano down here. )

What does he have to show for three years? On the plus side, he has learned a lot – mostly that he doesn’t want to run a commercial studio. He has no interest in recording people he doesn’t think are good. And he has the two albums he recorded here that he played on – one by a group called Mab, the other by The Big Hairy Band. They wouldn’t exist if he hadn’t bought this place. He has released the Mab CD himself. He hopes one day people will understand how good it is.

If he’d thought through he wouldn’t have bought this place, but thinking that way doesn’t do you any good. He’s had a couple of valuations done. He’s talking to the agents about putting it back on the market soon.

"Can we go in one that’s a bit more gay?"

The pub The Fortune of War predates almost all of the new businesses that revitalised the seafront arches in the 1990s. 157 King’s Road Arches

Sophie’s father came unprepared for the weather. He’s so cold they have to buy him an extra layer – a red No Fear hoodie. It’s hilarious to see it on her dad, the hood flying back up in the wind and him trying keep it back down.

She takes him to Doctor Brighton’s because he says he’s never been to a gay bar before in his life. Now his daughter’s a student in Brighton, he insists she shows him one.

He’s never really been around gay culture. He just wants to see.

They have a half there, but he’s not impressed. "Can we go in one that’s a bit more gay?" he asks, as if he was expecting people in a Brighton gay bar to be walking round in leather thongs or something.

So she takes him to Kemptown. What she likes about today is that her father has come alone – without his wife. Sophie’s parents divorced when she was just three. Growing up, she would go and visit him at weekends. Back then it would just be Sophie and dad; the two of them. Since he married again it’s never like that any more.

He actually came down to Sussex with his wife to see his brother-in-law; the trip’s not even about Sophie, it’s about his wife’s family. But it’s given them a chance to be together while she’s with her brother.

The St James is more gay. They stand out as different here. Over another half, dad winds her up in front of the other customers by flicking through a hardcore magazine, eyebrows raised, giving Sophie looks. He texts his wife: "Guess where we are!?"

Later they come down to The Fortune of War. The wind here wild, so strong you can lean right into it without falling. Dad’s red hoodie is flapping around his face, both of them laughing hysterically, wind whipping tears from their eyes.

At that moment she is thinking, "I’ll remember this for ever."

The older her dad gets the more she fears him leaving her, her being left with only memories like this.

The first time she saw him, she thought, "Oh, I should stay away from him"

The writer Patrick Hamilton once described the West Pier – now gone – as "a sex battleship." The town’s remaining pier, The Brighton Pier, still retains something of that ambience

Yesterday was Gemma’s last day at work.

She’d given in her notice at the Forestry Commission in Cheshire weeks ago. They drove all the way south last night, finally getting to John’s place in Hampshire at 2am. She woke today, the start of a new life, and announced, “I need to go to a beach somewhere, somewhere full of people.”

These are turbulent days. Two years ago, at 22, she had everything. A boyfriend called Simon, a beloved Rhodesian Ridgeback named Siba, a job, and a dream home in the country with round windows on the first floor. All of that, she’s given up.

Her job as an education ranger had been hard – the politics, the bullshit, the testosterone. She started getting sick; she had a bowel condition that wouldn’t go away which she now realises was part of her unhappiness. Then John arrived on a work placement.

The first time she saw him she thought, “Oh, I should stay away from him.”

She remembers sitting cross-legged at the children’s workshop, their knees touching, feeling this amazing electricity passing from him to her.

One day, she woke up in her dream house alone; Simon was away on a fishing trip, and without him there she suddenly felt free. Oh my God.

So she left him, left the job, left Cheshire. She feels like John is her soul mate, the man who saved her in her hour of need, but neither is sure where their relationship is leading. She loves Simon still, too. She’s riding the wave, confused, exhilarated, guilty, giddy.

In the North Laine, Gemma says, “I want chips.” So they wander down here.

They eat lunch, strolling up the pier. Watching the crowd makes her feel alive. The sunlit sea is beautiful. Looking out at it you could be at any point in history.

At the end of the pier, she and John pause, hold each other tightly. They watch the people swinging through the air screaming. People in their own lives, with their own things going on. She’s thinking, They’re so brave. I wouldn’t dare go on that.

"We’re not a couple!"

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 864