Spanish City (novel)

After the war, Hal returns to Setton and becomes a teacher who enjoys dancing at the local Palace ballroom in the company of his cousin Ray Clarke, an undertaker.

Delaval intends to fulfil his father's dream of building a funfair named Spanish City in Setton, with the hope of luring Stella to the town.

As the funfair is about to open, Hal spots Perkins at the Palace and discovers that the body of a woman believed to have drowned in a boating accident has been delivered to Ray's premises.

Back in the present, Victor receives a message and takes Will and Hal to the abandoned Palace ballroom, where they are met by Ray Clarke and Irene Trench, a friend who knows the truth about the relationships between Perkins, Stella, the Price family, and the Delavals.

Setton is loosely based on the north-eastern English coastal resort of Whitley Bay, where the funfair, ballroom and pleasure palace collectively named The Spanish City was once located.

As in the map of Setton provided at the beginning of the novel, Whitley Bay contains a cemetery, a Co-op, a seafront promenade and a former railway station now used by the Tyneside metro system.

There is no colliery, although a quarry and a number of small coal pits were dug before housing development firmly established the town as a residential and recreational area in the late 19th century.