Alice had left and Marnie had gone into the laundry room. She’d checked the timer on Alice’s drier. It still had almost an hour to run. She sat on the wooden bench. She took off Mrs deVillars’ hat, put it down beside her and sat there, shoulders slumped, wrists between her knees, eyes closed, listening to the sound of the clothes rotating in the drums of the driers. The skin of her thighs, damp with sweat, was sticking to the slats of the bench. It would hurt when she stood up but she couldn’t be bothered to find something to sit on. The straw in the hat was beginning to smell. Mrs deVillars had told her: ‘You must stay hydrated. You must keep drinking,’ but there was nothing in the laundry room to drink and anyway it hurt too much to swallow.

The laundry room was full of the perfume in the white washing powder spilled on the floor, gritty as sand, and the hot stink of the rubber insides of the machines. It was untidy with the paper cups used to dispense the powder and dropped socks and sticky ice-lolly wrappers that attracted the flies. Marnie knew she ought to tidy up – that it was expected of her – but she felt weak. She’d face a telling-off from Angharad or her father if either of them came in and saw her sitting there amongst the mess but she was too sick to care. The washing machines gurgled and churned, emptying and filling with water and sometimes vibrating madly, jumping around. The flies buzzed around her and every now and then a cross-faced woman in orange shorts came in, with a fat, fractious baby on her hip, to see if her machine’s cycle was finished.

When the middle drier stopped, Marnie heaved herself to her feet, and opened the door, ducking to avoid the gush of heat. She pulled Alice’s clothes into a plastic basket. They were lovely clothes, colourful and flimsy. The scarlet dress was tangled with Alice’s bikini top; her underwear, little strips of shiny, lacy fabric. The sequins gave off a chemical smell and were scalding hot. Marnie took care to smooth them flat against the fabric as she folded the dress on top of the other clothes in the basket. It was such a pretty thing.

Think of what it must have looked like when it washed up on the shore after days in the estuary.

No! Don’t think of it.