"The fascination with the bucket continued throughout the week. There was always at least one of them guarding it, furtive, shouting at the adults to stay back".

A new short story for radio by Sophie Mackintosh, the author of Cursed Bread and The Water Cure. On a Pembrokeshire beach, a group of children find something in a rockpool. Something they bring back from the beach in a bucket. Something they're unwilling to let their parents see.

Sophie Mackintosh's fiction, essays and poetry have been published by Granta, The White Review, The New York Times and The Stinging Fly, among others. Her debut novel The Water Cure was published by in 2018 and was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Her third novel, Cursed Bread, was published in March 2023 and long-listed for the Women's Prize. She was picked as one of the 2023 Granta Best of Young British Novelists.

From Pembrokeshire to Penwith, Coastlines is a series of five original short stories for radio, each anchored at a different point along the coast of Wales and South West England.

Produced in Bristol by Mair Bosworth for BBC Audio Show less