Back on the marsh path and alone, two hundred metres from the fire, Will reaches into his rucksack for his camera. There’s a guilt that almost stops him raising it to his eye, like he’d feel if he were to take a picture of someone burying a loved one. But he knows anyone claiming to be a photographer has a duty to document this. Because he can’t shake the sense that this is a moment of change: a town losing a piece of its soul. And in among the sorrow he feels, there’s an inexplicable satisfaction too, like this is inevitable: a billion words, burning to nothing, just atoms now on this charred and sour-smelling wind. Order turning to chaos.

With a black-and-white film loaded, Will knows there’s potential for a picture so dark with smoke and foreground, and so light with raging fire, that it could look apocalyptic. He frames and shoots three times. But it’s not right. He’s too low down and unable to position the watching crowd between him and the inferno. Without the digital camera advantage of being able to immediately judge his work, he’ll have to wait for the darkroom to know for sure, but he suspects all he’s got is a snap.

He grabs at the vegetation between the path and the railway line, drawing himself up to the edge of the tracks. There’s no fence, despite it being part of the coastal mainline with express trains charging across the marsh every hour. Will looks both ways – once, twice, three times – before leaping across like a ballet dancer. He heads towards the beach and a vantage point for a picture that will do this story justice.

Will doesn’t recognize the guy at the tripod straight away, nor the heavily embellished Nikon attached to it that really should be familiar to him, given the amount of classroom mockery that’s been directed at it. Standing at the top of the beach, squinting through the viewfinder, Kris Tring is dressed all in black: drainpipe cords, roll-neck sweater, three-quarter-length leather jacket.

‘Find your own shot, Parks,’ he says, not looking up. There’s a machine gun rattle from his camera.

The shore is deserted save for one crazy old person having a swim in the rough sea, their orange cap bobbing in the haze of spray blurring the surface. There’s a brief moment in which the wind doesn’t whip and crack around Will’s head and he becomes aware of somebody yelling his name. Fifty metres away he sees her, sitting on the stones with her knees drawn to her chest, her hair plastered across her face.

‘Miserable, isn’t it?’ April says as Will approaches.

He nods. With a common spectacle for them to stare at, he feels comfortable enough to stop and risk a conversation, albeit at a distance.