Her thoughts did not seem her own - they were piped down to her, thoughts instead of oxygen.Īnd in this condition she had been aware of a stately, simple musical phrase, playing and repeating itself, in the shadowy ungraspable way of auditory memory, following her to the bedside, where it played again as she took a shoe in each hand. Entering the bedroom, she had plunged into an uncomfortable, dream-like condition that encumbered her like an old-fashioned diving suit in deep water.

She was aware of her husband's enchanted gaze, but for the moment she did not feel quite so agitated or pressured. The bride was not hurried in her movements - this was yet another of those delaying tactics that also committed her further. They were of soft pale blue leather, with low heels and a tiny bow at the front, artfully twisted in leather of darker blue. These were going-away shoes she had bought with her mother one quarrelsome rainy afternoon in Debenhams - it was unusual and stressful for Violet to enter a shop. WHEN FLORENCE reached the bedroom, she released Edward's hand and, steadying herself against one of the oak posts that supported the bed's canopy, she dipped first to her right, then to her left, dropping a shoulder prettily each time, in order to remove her shoes. In this extract from Ian McEwan's new novel they confront their private fears about the night to come.

Newlyweds Edward and Florence have arrived at a hotel on the Dorset coast to begin their honeymoon.

On chesil beach by ian mcewan