He turned suddenly, leaned one hand against a lamppost and threw up Mr Bradshaw’s breakfast. He let out a great sob. What he wanted to do was fall to the ground and weep for Alice. He wanted her back. He wanted to be kind to her, to be gentle, to tell her he was sorry. He didn’t want it to be left, between them, how it had been left. He wanted to put it right; to tell her that he loved her. That he always would.

That he was sorry from the bottom of his heart that he had shouted at her and made threats and thrown the gravel at the caravan.

That he would do anything, anything, for the opportunity to change things.

He stood beside the lamppost until he managed to get his emotions back under some kind of control. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and returned to the path. Finn was tactfully staring into the screen on the back of his camera. He produced a bottle of water from his jacket pocket and passed it to Will, who drank gratefully.

They walked on, their footsteps falling into sync. Finn kept gazing about him, occasionally lifting the camera to his eye to take a photograph or blowing out air between his lips as if this was the most impressive place he’d ever visited and not some shoddy, long-past-its-best little seaside town.

Will returned to Alice. He remembered how he once held her small hand on his lap while he tweezed a splinter from the base of her thumb, feeling a tenderness in his heart that he’d never felt before or since. He remembered his skin turning deep brown in the sun, walking twice as far as he needed to walk so he could divert along the service alleyway and go past Caravan 49 to catch a glimpse of Alice sunbathing, or eating her lunch beneath the shade of the parasol with a book propped open in front of her. When she went to the pool Will would find a nearby patch of garden that needed weeding, or a path that he could sweep while he watched her sleek head bobbing amongst the other heads, the Lilos and the inflatable balls. In the evenings, she showered in the communal block, and then she came back to her caravan to cook her supper, always leaving the door open, and Will used to smell onions frying, sometimes the sweet, spicy smell of curry. His gentle love, with the pale straps on her skin where the sun hadn’t reached; that kind-hearted young woman who tolerated Marnie Morahan trailing after her like a shadow. He remembered lying beside her for the first time, on the rumpled sheets on her bed, his heart thumping and he knowing, somehow, that this was the best moment of his life, that it would never be surpassed, and he had been right.