He remembered the feeling of Alice’s hair tangled in his fingers, the soft down on her jawline, the gold studs she wore in the rim of her left ear, the sweet, musty taste of her breath. He wondered what she would be like now, if she had not disappeared, if she was here, with him. If they had stayed together, married, had kids – Alice had told him she wanted dozens of children – become settled, middle-aged. Would she still laugh like she used to laugh, still skip around, her arm linked through his? Would she have put on weight, run marathons, baked cakes, become an environmental activist?

Whatever she had become, he would have loved her.

The sea was lively, almost violent. Grey rainclouds scudded closer. There’d be a downpour when they reached this side of the water. Will’s eyes tracked back towards the path and he saw two people coming towards him: a girl riding a pony and an older man with a terrier at his heels.

For a moment Will was confused. The girl looked exactly like Marnie and the man beside her was her father, John Morahan, with Trip the dog, only the man looked too old to be John. He was in pain, hunched over his stick, tapping his way along the seafront, and Trip must be long gone. It was John. The girl, Will realised, must be Marnie’s daughter and the dog was the same dog that had been with Marnie the other night. It spotted Will and began to yap so vehemently that its front paws lifted off the concrete with every bark.

Will didn’t want to have to talk to John, especially not after Marnie had told him that John believed Will was responsible for Alice’s murder. He turned at once so that they could not see his face, climbed down the sea wall and walked along the grass, the rain soaking his trouser legs. From this lower level he could only see the top half of the young girl. She had Marnie’s shoulders, Marnie’s upright stance, her hair hanging straight down her back. She was sitting loose-limbed and long-legged on the fat little pony, holding the reins in one hand. The pony’s hoofs clip-clopped on the paving slabs. The girl was chatting to her grandfather, telling him some convoluted story and he was nodding occasionally as if he was paying attention, but Will could tell that he was not. The dog still yapped.

‘Shut up, TT,’ John Morahan said. ‘Be quiet.’

When the two of them were almost level with Will, they stopped. The girl, who was closer to Will, and almost above him, turned to look out over the estuary, one hand resting lightly on the pony’s back. She was so close that Will, pressed up against the wall, could hear every word when she spoke.

‘Look, Granddad, the rain’s coming.’

‘We’d best get back then.’