Human remains had been uncovered at the old Channel View holiday park and people who had forgotten the name, Alice Lang, were remembering it again. They were remembering the blisteringly hot summer, the days of hosepipe bans and parched grass, of sunscreen and sunburn; the summer when the dreadfully intimate photograph of Alice’s bedroom inside Caravan 49 had been leaked to the press, the impression of her body on the bed, the sheets rumpled, her underwear on the floor. They were remembering that the young woman had gone missing and Will Jones had been blamed. Then someone came forward to say they’d seen Alice walking down to the water and her dress had washed up at the side of the estuary. After that everyone said she must have drowned but no trace of her had been found.

Until now.

6

Will Jones stood on the platform at Severn Sands station, his rucksack hooked over one shoulder, and looked about, seeing himself as if he was watching a film.

To Will, the present was black-and-white arthouse, but the past was in full colour like an old Super 8 video, the definition turned up too high, oranges and bright pinks, a blinding golden backlight, the film shakily unspooling, a juddering projector throwing images onto a wall.

The first time he saw Alice properly he had been clearing the drainage rhyne at the edge of the holiday park. The water levels were low and the rhyne had stagnated and was beginning to stink. He’d spent the afternoon pulling out reeds, irises and weed, and was pushing a wheelbarrow full of wet foliage along the service alleyway behind the hedge that ran behind the caravans. The contents of the barrow were heavy and they stank, steaming as they wilted in the heat. Midges drifted in the miasma.