On Chesil Beach -

Arthur looked at her. "I was wrong. We didn't stay, and look at us. We’re still jagged in all the wrong places."

Arthur watched her walk away. He didn't follow her this time. He simply stood on the ridge, listening to the pebbles grind against each other, a sound that Ian McEwan once used to signify the "elegiac tone" of lost opportunities. On Chesil Beach

He wasn’t Edward, and the woman he was waiting for wasn't Florence. But they were ghosts of a similar kind. Arthur looked at her

Arthur stood at the crest of the ridge, his boots sinking slightly into the shingle. To his left, the pebbles were the size of peas; miles to his right, at Portland, they would be as large as oranges. He checked his watch. It was July, nearly sixty years since the summer that had defined—and then erased—his future. We’re still jagged in all the wrong places

A figure appeared at the far end of the path, walking with the careful, deliberate gait of someone who remembered when these stones were easier to navigate. It was Claire. They hadn't spoken since the night of the Great Storm in 1979, when a different kind of silence had settled between them.