A copy of his favourite picture of Alice was saved onto his phone. She was sitting on the step outside the door of Caravan 49 with a colander between her knees. She had been hulling strawberries that John Morahan had given her, picked from his garden. She was looking at Will over the top of her sunglasses, a playful expression on her face, bangles on her arms. She was wearing her tangerine bikini. It showed off her deep tan and her neat, little figure. Will didn’t like the picture because it was sexy – although it definitely was – but because it summed up Alice. Playful, vivacious, happy.

They were lovers by the time he took that photograph. Alice and Will. They were in love. And that afternoon, the afternoon of the strawberries, Will had watched Alice licking juice from her fingertips and had wondered how it was possible for a person to be as happy as he was without exploding like a firework. For ever after he would remember the sunlight falling on Alice’s cheek, she tucking her hair behind an ear, the sweet, sweet taste of the strawberry that he stole.

It was perfect; how it always was when they were together, until Guy deVillars started coming between them, spoiling things.

For three weeks, from the day Alice arrived in Channel View holiday park, almost until the day she disappeared, Will had existed in a state of beautiful tension. He hardly slept, tossing and turning under the sheets in his bed in the chalet that he shared with his mother, while she, Angharad, snored on the other side of the wall. He went out to run in the moonlight because the days were too hot, and swam illicitly in the park’s pool. During the days he dug over Mrs deVillars’ flower beds, although the soil was dry and hard, then he stood at the side of the estuary throwing stones into the water, doing anything he could to alleviate the pressure building inside him because of Alice, trying to wear himself out so he could sleep. For three weeks she was all he thought of, all he dreamed of. She filled his every waking moment with a longing like a thirst that couldn’t be quenched, like an itch, a pain, an earworm. For three weeks he’d existed in a state that veered between blissful agony or agonising bliss, that was either heaven or hell but never anything in between, and all the time the only stain on Will’s happiness had been Guy deVillars and the way he watched Alice, the way he tried to insinuate himself into her company and come between Will and the girl he loved.

It was Guy’s fault that Will and Alice had argued that last evening; Guy’s fault that they’d ended on a bad note.