After, they’d lain together and it had been so nice, so peaceful until Marnie had come to the door with Alice’s laundry and Alice had pulled on some clothes and gone out to talk to her. Will had stayed on the bed, sleepy and satisfied, looking around the small bedroom in Caravan 49, Alice’s things scattered about, and he’d never felt happier.

Until he heard her talking to Marnie.

Until he heard her lower her voice, and then he’d listened harder, wondering what she was trying to keep from him, and he’d heard the words ‘special date’ and then her shushing Marnie, telling her it was a secret.

All his happiness had come crashing down then. Before that moment he wouldn’t have believed it possible for his emotions to flip so quickly from a state of near ecstasy to one of terror. Alice had just made love to him, and already she was making plans for seeing someone else, someone special, later that night!

He had known it was Guy straight away. When he’d challenged Alice, she hadn’t denied it per se and later he’d asked Marnie. At first Marnie said she didn’t know who the date was, but when Will had lost his temper big-time she’d looked evasive and then said quietly: ‘All I know is it’s someone from the Big House.’

‘Guy?’ Will had demanded.

Marnie had squirmed.

‘Marnie, is it Guy deVillars?’

‘I don’t know!’

‘Well, who else could it be?’

Marnie muttered something.

‘What?’

‘They were talking earlier. Alice and him. She said she was going to see him later.’

‘You’re sure that’s what she said?’

‘Yes.’

‘I knew it!’ Will shouted. ‘I knew it!’

And so Will’s worst suspicions had been confirmed, and although he’d wanted to know to the point of bullying Marnie into telling him, it had killed him to find out the truth. It was still killing him now.

If Guy was a ‘special date’, what had Will really been to Alice?

Had he been deluding himself that she cared for him, as he did for her?

The toxic mix of love, jealousy and regret raged in Will’s heart. He’d been here a thousand times before. The paradox seemed irresolvable.

Alice had never said the words ‘I love you’ to Will, but in her smile and her eyes and her actions she had told him that she did. And she knew how he felt about Guy. She’d promised him a dozen times that there was nothing between them, nothing ‘like that’, yet still she had arranged to meet Guy that evening.

She shouldn’t have lied.

Look how her deception had turned out.

Will stood up, and began to walk back along the seafront.