Marnie didn’t blame the police for giving up their search for Alice when the details of her past came to light. She had lived a chaotic life. She was one of those young people who attracted trouble, choosing the wrong friends, making bad decisions, lurching from one difficult situation to the next. Her teachers, friends and colleagues at the numerous places where she’d worked said she was kind, loving and generous, but a drama queen. She flirted with danger: not waiting for the lights to turn before she crossed the road; jumping from the bus before it stopped. Walking down to the sea in the dark of night was exactly the kind of thing she would do.

Most people favoured the theory that she hadn’t meant to kill herself, but had walked out too far, underestimating the power of the currents in the estuary, and been carried away by the tide. Alice was not one to pay attention to the signs along the seafront warning of the dangers and telling people not to attempt to swim.

Marnie remembered watching the police from her bedroom window, those eyes-down officers with sticks in their hands, searching the mudflats.

‘What are they looking for?’ she’d asked her father.

‘Shoes,’ her father had replied.

He meant Alice’s shoes. Marnie didn’t know this. She didn’t know that people believed some harm had come to Alice. She understood that Alice was missing, but in her childish way, believed she was lost as somebody playing hide and seek might be lost. Nobody had thought to explain the situation to her; all she had were dribs and drabs of information.

Before Alice came to Channel View holiday park, things had been difficult for Marnie. Her mother was gone, her father was enmeshed in grief. Mrs deVillars wanted to help but was reticent, as if she was afraid of interfering or upsetting John. Marnie believed there must be something repellent about her. Her father didn’t like touching her and other people literally moved away to avoid her. Angharad, the one person apart from Mr deVillars who wasn’t scared of John, did her best, but John wouldn’t let her do much. Marnie’s hair hadn’t been cut in months. She could feel the tangles knitting together but didn’t know what to do about them. She knew she was dirty. She knew that she smelled. She knew she was a disgrace. She was ashamed.

She developed a way of walking, with her chin down and her shoulders hunched, which meant she never had to catch anyone’s eye, never had to see the expression on anyone’s face. The holidaymakers called their children away from her. ‘Leave her alone,’ they’d say. ‘She doesn’t want to play.’ Sometimes the kids called her names. If Alice hadn’t come along when she did, the whole summer would have been terrible. But Alice came and she saved Marnie.