‘This area is known as the “back parallels”. Years ago, back in the 1970s and ’80s, it was a bit of a dump full of second-hand clothes shops and junk shops. See that shop there? It used to be a laundrette, and one night my dad got arrested because he kicked the huge glass window and it smashed to smithereens. He was angry with Mum about something. It went to court and he was fined fifty pounds. He made my mum pay off the fine by taking money from her housekeeping every week for a year… See that chemist there? It’s been here since I was a kid. My friend Louise and I used to steal little bits of makeup from the racks and sell them at school… That’s the Theatre Royal, we would go to the panto every year as a school trip. One year a lad called Eddie Bryson took all his clothes off and ran down the aisle singing the theme tune to SpongeBob SquarePants. We never saw him again after that… This is Churchill Square. It’s where all the teenage girls and boys used to come and eye each other up on Saturday afternoons. Louise got off with a boy called Callum once and they went down to the beach for a snog. I just watched on from the promenade up above. I was really jealous, to be honest. He had very good hair. Louise told me afterwards that I hadn’t missed much. He kept his eyes wide open as they kissed and as the kiss developed his eyes started to move around his eye socket as if trying to count a swarm of midges.’

‘Do you still keep in touch with Louise?’ I asked.

‘No, haven’t heard from her in years. I often wonder what she’s doing. Something cool I expect.’

Eventually I had seen all she wanted me to see and we drove a couple of miles out of town and parked up on the seafront. Emily ran straight to a small newsagent’s shop that also sold buckets and spades and all manner of seaside tat. She told me to stay by the car till she returned. When she emerged from the shop she beckoned me to follow her to a wooden bench overlooking the English Channel. She had a paper bag of goodies for me: a stick of rock, some foam bananas and a jelly snake.

‘Hope the rock is long enough for you,’ she said before biting the head off the jelly snake and chewing on it like a soft-hearted Labrador.

She pointed to a terrace of grand houses and hotels further up the seafront.