The coast wall was shored up with rocks. Further on, the road veered away inland, and there was a bulge of land facing the estuary that housed a straggle of odd little factories and lock-ups, a good half of them empty, behind a stretch that used to belong to the Ministry of Defence. This was Catbrain Point, the place where the travellers used to come in their rickety old trucks and converted ambulances. This was where they hobbled their shaggy ponies and tied up their whip-thin dogs, where they lit their fires and sat huddled, talking, or sang to the accompaniment of tinny guitars. Will’s mother hated the travellers. He remembered her shouting at the nut-brown women, with their tattooed arms, babies carried in slings wrapped around their bodies. She hated the bearded men, their slow way of speaking, their constant hanging around smoking pungently scented cigarettes, looking for cash work in the summer season. Channel View relied on them but Angharad called them vultures and she wouldn’t allow them into the bar. There must have been some reason for the bad blood. A psychologist Will was seeing once mooted the idea that his father might have been a traveller who abandoned Angharad when she fell pregnant. It was possible – Angharad refused point-blank ever to discuss the circumstances of Will’s conception – but it could have been something less significant that triggered her dislike. She was a woman without compromise. ‘Either you’re with me, or you’re against me,’ she used to say. If you were with her, she would love you unconditionally. She would see you right in any way she could. But if you were against her, then you’d better watch out.

The travellers had come under suspicion when Alice disappeared, along with the men who were building the Severn Bridge, hundreds of workers, many from overseas who lived in their own village ten miles from Severn Sands. The local press had been full of speculation but no link between either the travellers or the builders and Alice was ever found.

15

John Morahan had moved out of the caretaker’s cottage opposite the holiday park and into a retirement bungalow on a complex on the outskirts of the town. As she approached, Marnie could hear music blaring: ‘Layla’. Her heart sank. ‘Layla’ was John’s song of choice when he was feeling sorry for himself. For it to be this loud, he must be feeling really low and almost certainly drunk. The sound grew louder as she approached the bungalow, and she noticed the twitching of curtains. One of the neighbour’s doors opened and a flossy white head appeared above a pink housecoat.

‘I can’t hear the television,’ the old woman complained shakily, ‘and the cat is too scared to go out. I was going to call the warden.’