Hove

Hove is both a remembered setting and a landscape Bunny passes through in the present. A pebbled beach holds an intimate memory of Libby while she was pregnant; later, the Regency terraces of Adelaide Crescent and the public gardens frame a quiet family scene that brings Bunny an unspoken pang.

Setting and Landmarks

One recollection places Bunny and his heavily pregnant wife, Libby, on Hove’s pebbled beach beneath a full yellow moon, leaning against a concrete groyne. In another scene, Bunny passes the descending Regency terraces along Adelaide Crescent and watches a family in the public gardens. The specific landmarks give Hove two distinct settings: the exposed shore and a cultivated civic space.

Family Images

The beach memory centres on Libby’s pregnancy and the child she is carrying, making Hove a place associated with the family before the child’s birth. The later scene offers a compact picture of domestic ease: a father throws a Frisbee to his young son while the mother lays out a tartan rug and attends to a wicker picnic basket. Bunny and his companion watch in silence, and Bunny’s reaction registers the image as painful rather than merely picturesque.

Narrative Significance

Hove links an earlier memory of Bunny and Libby to a present encounter with another family. The contrast does not require explanation: the remembered pregnancy and the picnic scene place family life at different stages, while Bunny’s pang signals the emotional weight the ordinary scene carries for him. The location thus serves as more than a coastal backdrop; its beach and gardens hold separate images of family that converge in Bunny’s response.