Marnie tied up her horse and tentatively approached the caravan door which was slightly ajar. She wanted to call for her mother, but she was afraid: afraid that her mother would be inside and be cross that Marnie had bothered her when she was trying to have some peace and quiet, but more afraid that she wouldn’t be there. In the end she had knocked on the side of the caravan and, when there was no answer, she’d climbed the step and looked through the crack in the door.

Alice had been sitting on the banquette, one tanned leg up on the table, painting her toenails with a lime-green polish. She was wearing yellow shorts and a white cheesecloth top with orange stripes. Her shoulders were bare and a band was tied around her hair, fastened in a floppy bow on top of her head. She’d turned at the movement and smiled when she saw Marnie at the door. Her teeth were the prettiest, whitest teeth that Marnie had ever seen, with a neat gap in the middle of the top front two.

‘Hi,’ she said, ‘who are you?’

Marnie said nothing.

‘I’m Alice,’ the young woman said. ‘It’s nice to meet you, Girl-With-No-Name. Why don’t you come in and make yourself at home?’

Marnie looked around the caravan, which smelled musky and sweet – a perfume that forever after she would associate with femininity – and was gloriously, artistically untidy without in any way appearing dirty.

‘Is my mummy here?’ she asked in a small voice.

Alice shook her head.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Sorry, but she isn’t.’

Marnie nodded. She felt like crying. How stupid she was, what an idiot. There were millions of jars of honey in the world – there must be at least ten on the shelves of the park stores – how babyish to think it meant something just because she’d seen a jar where she hadn’t expected to see one. She stared at her feet, her big toenail peeping through the hole in the rubber of her left dap, her legs dusty and scabbed from where she’d scratched at insect bites. She thought of her imaginary horse tied up outside. She felt ridiculous.

The young woman in the caravan was looking at Marnie; not in the way that people normally looked at her, with a varying ratio of sympathy and disgust, but in an interested, friendly way.

‘Have you lost your mummy?’ she asked.

Marnie nodded and looked at her feet.

‘Properly lost her? Has she died?’

Another nod.

The young woman was leaning towards Marnie, her eyes full of kindness. ‘What was her name?’

‘Denise,’ Marnie whispered. She wiped her nose with her wrist.

‘Denise Morahan?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is your name Marnie Morahan?’ Alice had asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Well,’ Alice murmured. ‘Wow!’