‘One of the travelling women,’ said John, ‘she’d been waitressing and was on her way home. She came to find me.’

Will looked at his hand; extended the fingers, turned them over. ‘Was I that bad?’

Angharad sniffed. ‘We’ll be lucky if we don’t lose our home and our jobs over this.’

‘I brought you back here before you could do any real damage,’ John said. ‘I put you to bed.’

‘It was bloody lucky the woman fetched John and didn’t call the police,’ said Angharad.

Will realised the situation must have been serious for his mother to say something even mildly positive about a traveller.

‘Did you see Alice?’ Will asked John. ‘Did you talk to her? Was anyone with her?’

‘I knocked on the door and told her that you wouldn’t bother her any more.’

‘Which would have been the end of it,’ said Angharad, ‘if you hadn’t bothered her any more.’

Will groaned. He dropped his head into his hands.

‘What else did I do?’

‘Who knows? Who the hell knows? When I went to bed last night you were on your bed snoring like a trooper and when I got up this morning you were back but there were bloody footprints leading from the chalet door, which was open, by the way – any Tom, Dick or Harry could’ve come in – and the footprints led to your bedroom. You did go out again, Will. You went out in the early hours and God knows if you went back to Caravan 49 and were shouting your mouth off again, and if that girl makes a complaint about you to Mr deVillars and I lose my job and my home then I swear to God I don’t know what I’m going to do.’

To Will’s utter horror he saw tears stacking in his mother’s eyes, tears that escaped and ran down her face.

‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled.

‘I didn’t bring you up to carry on like this, to go making threats to young girls on their own and—’

‘I was upset, I was drunk, I…’

A second awful thought crept into Will’s mind. If Guy had been inside Caravan 49 when he was outside making his threats, then Guy would certainly tell his parents. Angharad wasn’t exaggerating, it would kill her if she was kicked out of the holiday park in shame because of this. She loved the place. She used to say if you cut her in half you’d see the words ‘Channel View’ running through her.

‘I’ll tell Mr deVillars that any trouble was all down to me that it was nothing to do with you and that I’m going away anyway. I’ll go and see him now. I’ll leave straight away. I’ll—’

‘No!’ Angharad looked up, her eyes blazing. ‘Don’t go confessing to something Mr deVillars might not know about.’

‘But if someone complains…’