‘I’m going to look at the memorial garden.’ Gloria walks on past the playground. She pushes the iron gate inscribed with the words, This is the site of the Pantglas School. William follows and they stroll amongst the neat rectangles of manicured lawn with small trees and plants bordering tidy, clear paths. ‘It’s the footprint of the school.’ Gloria points at the patches on their left and right. He wonders how much more she knows. How much time she’s spent finding out about this place that has such a hold on him.

He nods, momentarily transfixed by the marigold orbs in the borders between the path and the lawns. The calm order of the place offends him. For all she thinks she might know, Gloria has no idea. No visitors will have any idea of what happened here. He turns his back to the mountain and looks across at Moy Road. The old houses to the right look so normal, so intact, their windows edged with brick surrounds, like gappy white teeth. Who’d know that he peered through those windows and saw black piles of filth, with branches, bricks, toys, parts of broken piano sticking out of them? He remembers a stiletto shoe poking out from a black mound halfway up a staircase, white and bone-like.

The air smells of grass. A magpie lands on top of a small cherry tree. To the left, sloping down and away from them, are two rows of modern houses. This was where the original houses were completely destroyed. Is one of them Betty’s? Is she still alive? William looks to the right, the route from the school to the mortuary.

‘I want to go to the chapel. You don’t have to come.’ He’s starting to wish he was alone. He has nothing to say about this Aberfan to Gloria.

‘I’ll come.’ Gloria puts her hands in her pockets.

They walk along Moy Road for a few yards, then left down a short, steep side street that leads to the chapel. William doesn’t remember the gullies that run between the houses, grass poking up through the tarmac and washing hanging across them. He doesn’t remember anything beyond the chapel and the school, but this metal handrail that runs down the path he does, because he saw a woman hold on to it when her knees buckled.

Halfway down the incline he stops dead.

‘What?’ Gloria says. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘It’s gone.’

‘What’s gone?’

He rubs his temple to stop the buzzing and walks to the bottom of the path. He stares at the dark building with its modern brick tower that only now, he notices, has the shape of a cross embedded into the stone.

‘This isn’t it!’ He looks left and right to see if he’s got the wrong place.

‘They must have knocked it down and rebuilt,’ Gloria says softly. ‘You can understand why.’