"The quay is heaving with expectation. Each yell and whistle bounces from boat to boat to harbourside. Plastic bottles bob on the restless turquoise surface of the English Riviera. Summer revellers still arriving in their droves, grumpy babies with fed up parents sweating through the streets, alco-popped teenagers chanting “Torbaydos!”, trying their luck with the bored bouncers at the bars. Everyone is readily stretching out their days like wet clay, while Odette watches clocks and calendars, longing for the on-season to switch off."

On the hottest day of the year, Odette is sweltering behind the counter of a Torquay chip shop and questioning her life choices. An original short story for radio by Malaika Kegode.

Malaika is an award-winning writer, performer and creative producer who grew up in Devon and is now based in Bristol. She is an Associate Director of Theatre Royal Plymouth and an Associate Artist at Bristol Old Vic. Her work is focused on uplifting and celebrating the overlooked and misunderstood. Winner of the Kevin Elyot Award (2022) and the Eslpeth Kydd Memorial Prize, she has written an autobiographical gig-theatre show, Outlier, and three books of poetry.

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