Joe sat on his park bench in the village square, watching while the removal truck and it’s men dissected his childhood home. Ten days had past since the council declared Newark-on-Sea unsafe for human inhabitants, but the wound, for him, was still fresh. He knew that costal erosion and flooding would eventually turn his home inside out; but the uniformed intruders, vindicated by their official court order, presented a far more dangerous and immediate threat. Watching them carelessly cast family heirlooms into cardboard boxes, he could not help but grind his teeth. Thank goodness Erica isn’t here to see this.

He turned his head to face the centre of the village square. Everything around him was changing, but he could still take comfort in the steadfastness of its uneven cobbled streets and leaning thatched cottages. Even with his fading eyesight, memories developed before him in a series of neighbourhood polaroids. A chunk in the post office wall; accidentally engraved by the handlebars of the bike he received on his thirteenth birthday. A parched fountain, which once watered the surrounding foliage that successfully snatched a rogue bouquet on their wedding day. The moss coated steps of Erica’s bakery, stained with jam dripped from the centre of fresh scones, had been left unchecked since her heart attack took centre stage in the village square only six months ago. All relics of a lifetime that, to the common eye, would be invisible. The remains of a village he was reluctant to leave behind.