When the work was done, she scratched Seashell’s woolly forehead while she watched the dogs. Tessy had scented something at the edges of the hedge and was tracking the nocturnal progress of a fox or badger. Mister stood gazing out towards the direction of the sea, head held high, sniffing the air. The sun announced its progress with a paler patch in a charcoal sky, like a rubbed-out piece of a drawing. Marnie imagined Alice being here with her, standing behind her, out of sight.

I’m tired, Alice, she told her.

I know you are, sweetpea. I know.

I couldn’t sleep for thinking about you.

I know.

Marnie had been woken in the night by the sound of barking, not one of her dogs but a dog from the town, and then she’d heard a distant siren – an ambulance, perhaps, making a dash from the motorway – and once she was awake she knew she wouldn’t sleep again. She’d lain in bed, her body supported by a nest of pillows, with her bedside light on, Tessy curled beside her, and she thought of Alice being dead and she cried quietly. When she ran out of tears, she made tea and thought how strange it was that Will was somewhere nearby. At one time she’d have been overjoyed to know he was back in Severn Sands. Now she felt unsettled. He shouldn’t be here. He didn’t belong any more.

What was he doing in Severn Sands anyway?

Why had he come back?

And why had he been sneaking around the holiday park on his own, in the dark?

Then she thought of Alice leaning on the wall outside the launderette, pursing her lips as if she was about to blow a kiss, but instead puffing a stream of blue cigarette smoke into the sky. Guy had been watching her as if he’d never seen anyone smoking in his life.

‘Cigarettes taste best on dry summer days,’ Alice told Marnie once. ‘Don’t bother with them in the winter when the air’s cold and wet. All you get then is a mouthful of smoke that’ll make you cough. But on hot days…’ she’d narrowed her eyes and pulled an expression of rapture, ‘… honest to God, there’s nothing better.’ Marnie had never smoked but if she had, she would have rolled her own cigarettes using her thigh as a table, as Alice had. She would have picked strands of tobacco from her tongue. She would have had a little red tin, like Alice’s, for her resin.

Oh, Alice, I miss you.

I’m sorry.