Will didn’t make a habit of spying on the holidaymakers, but this young woman’s voice was so sweetly out of tune, so cheerful, that this time he did. Whoever she was, she was on the other side of the privet, only a few feet away. He let the handles of the wheelbarrow down carefully, so as not to alert her to his presence, and he crept forward to look through a gap in the leaves. Alice was hanging her swimming things on the wire rack attached to the caravan window frame, dancing to the beat of the music. The colours of the memory were so bright they were almost blinding. Will saw Alice wring out her lime-green towel, twisting it from both ends and shaking it, the drops of water catching the sunlight and sparkling before they disappeared. She flapped the towel straight and then folded it over the rack. Then she picked up her tangerine bikini, and squeezed it in her hands, water dripping onto her bare feet, before she pegged the two pieces onto the rack. She had her back to him. She was wearing a strapless, splashy yellow dress, that held itself up just above her breasts and a different towel was wrapped around her head like a turban. Wisps of damp hair had come free around her ears and at the back of her neck. There were delicate, paler vertical stripes between her neck and her shoulders where the straps of her bikini had protected her from the sun. Will, hot, parched, sunburned, had looked at her through his peephole of dark green leaves and it was like looking into a pool of clear water. She was dazzling.

The memory brought a lump to the adult Will’s throat. He squeezed his free hand tightly shut, digging his fingernails into the flesh.

Alice. Alice. Alice.

The most alive person he had ever known; she was like the wind gusting over the hilltops, or a snowfall, or a sunrise, something as immense and intense as the moon drawing the great tides or as small and vital as a swallow darting through the summer skies. She was such a part of the world and she was dead. She would never come back and it was all because of that pathetic, weak, privileged coward.

Will Jones unclenched his fist, stretched out his fingers, straightened his shoulders.

He looked around him. Apart from the train driver, who had exited his compartment and was now walking towards the public lavatories, Severn Sands station was deserted.