Security lights had been mounted on towers around the perimeter of the park, illuminating new warning signs: ‘Danger!’ ‘Keep out!’ Light spilled across the pavements and the roads, lighting up the trenches and holes already dug in the field where the caravans used to be ranked. It was like a high-security prison. Moths flitted around the bulbs, drawn by the brightness of the false moons.

Will stood there alone. He stared into the glare, and saw how much of the park had already been destroyed. This wasn’t the world he had known and it didn’t feel right. Things should have stayed as they had been. It should still be summer and the park should be full of families, and Alice Lang should be there, sitting cross-legged on a towel spread on the grass beside her caravan, practising her yoga. Will saw her there in her tie-dyed harem pants and bikini top, the bangles clattering down her arm as she held it up to him, inviting him to take her hand and join her. Her arms were slender, her wrists slim. She had a tattoo on the inside of her right forearm, a Celtic trinity knot, which she told him meant ‘family’. Will liked to turn over her arm and tilt it so he could trace the never-ending line of the knot with his fingertip, making Alice shiver.

She’d been here all the time. She’d been here and he’d gone as far away as he could go. He’d left her alone in the cold and the dark.

He should have stayed.

He had never felt so wretched.

Will stepped into the shadows to avoid the TV crew who were setting up ready to broadcast during the ten o’clock bulletin. He overheard a conversation, confusion over Alice’s surname – ‘Long? Lane?’ – and his phone pinged. A message from Saoirse. Will deleted it. He couldn’t be distracted now when he was focused on Alice, when he was so close to where her body had lain hidden; his sweetheart, his love. He could almost feel her presence, hear her laughter; see her beside him, a full head shorter than he was, so that when he looked down he could see the parting of her hair, the stripe where the dyed blonde was growing out to reveal the darker hair at the roots, something he found heartbreakingly endearing. So close that he could see the precious curl at the top of her ears and the studs glinting, the balls of honeyed skin that were her shoulders and the cups above her clavicles, small hollows that stretched over the fine bones. He imagined his arm round her, the feel of her body against his, the sweet, clean smell of her hair, her absolute femininity.