Rottingdean is the setting for a customer call that turns into a revealing confrontation between Bunny, Bunny Junior, and a girl on a bicycle. What Bunny presents as a routine stop to visit a loyal buyer is, in fact, a sexual encounter with Mylene Huq; the girl’s blunt challenge makes the private arrangement visible to his son and unsettles the journey.

The planned customer visit

At breakfast in the Queensbury Hotel, Bunny Junior tries to read about Mata Hari in his encyclopaedia but cannot concentrate because he is worried about his father. Bunny is restless: he alternates between eating, talking rapidly to the waitress, spilling coffee, and disappearing into the bathroom. When his son asks where they are going next, Bunny names Rottingdean and describes the intended visitor as a loyal customer whose body cream sells well. He has the client list with him, giving the stop the appearance of ordinary sales business.

That account conceals the personal purpose of the visit. Bunny, hungover and gloomy, recalls Mylene Huq and gets her address through Poodle. The account of Mylene’s estranged husband and her subsequent sexual encounters frames Bunny’s visit as part of an opportunistic pattern rather than a straightforward customer call. Rottingdean is thus introduced through the contrast between the language of repeat business and Bunny’s sexual expectations.

The encounter at the house

Bunny Junior sees his father enter the house behaving erratically, hopping across the lawn like a rabbit. The boy wishes Bunny would come back out and leave, though he thinks his father looks better on his way out than he did going in. A girl on a bicycle asks whether the man in her house is Bunny Junior’s father. The boy answers uncertainly, having already spent the morning anxious about Bunny’s agitation and driving.

When Bunny approaches the girl, she confronts him directly about having sex with her mother. Bunny confirms the accusation and answers with a crude, self-satisfied remark before getting into the Punto. The exchange turns the stop’s concealed purpose into an openly spoken fact in front of Bunny Junior. The girl’s presence also makes the visit more than an encounter between adults: the son is made to witness the consequences of his father’s conduct within the household.

Departure and significance

As Bunny drives away, wisps of sea mist curl around the Punto and the car moves onto the ocean road. Bunny Junior explains that the girl had simply come over to talk to him. The boy had wanted his father to turn back because he suddenly had many things he wished to tell her—about outer space, African veldts, and insects—even though he did not know her name. His curiosity and desire to talk contrast with Bunny’s sexualized reading of the interaction: Bunny asks whether the girl fancied his son while lighting a cigarette.

Rottingdean therefore marks a small but pointed breach in Bunny’s effort to keep his sales journey and private appetites separate. The customer pretext brings father and son to the house; the girl’s accusation exposes what the visit was really about, while Bunny Junior’s concern and brief interest in her register the encounter from a markedly different perspective. The sea mist accompanies their departure, but the scene offers no resolution between father and son: Bunny drives on, and the boy’s unease remains.