The house they just passed – the mother worked in a clothes shop and the father as a mechanic, and Jasmine knew that they fought, violently. They had a little girl, who got caught up in it once, over a year ago; the father, drunk, smacked her so hard across the face with a bottle she suffered a brain injury. They told everyone she slipped and hit her head in the playground, and even tried to sue the school. When the mother told a friend how it really happened, it got around town, and Dad found out. He told the cops, but as far as they were concerned there was no proof, and they didn’t look any closer.

A house a little further along belonged to a lawyer. His son ran a woodcraft workshop from the garage, with ‘OPEN’ and ‘SALE ON NOW’ flags out the front. The lawyer was married, but he had still flown in an ‘au pair’ from Vietnam, who was actually his mistress. A girl in Year 11 at Jasmine’s school – Julie Jacobson – was technically his son’s girlfriend, but she also got ‘private tutoring’ from the lawyer.

How many other stories like that did she know? Riddling the town like cavities in a tooth. Abuse, corruption, sex, drugs . . . Jasmine was going to get out of there as soon as she could.

That was one of the few secrets she hadn’t told the girls yet. They didn’t understand: they liked being in Limestone Creek, where everything was easy and simple and Madison was a celebrity and everyone rode in her shadow. When you didn’t know about the underbelly, she supposed it was quite a nice place. And Madison was convinced they were all going to live here together forever, probably in a mansion she’d build with her internet income, and that they’d start some sort of saucy Instagram reality series.

The other girls didn’t understand how much Jasmine needed to leave, needed to get Dad out of here, too. That she was the only one who could get Dad out of here.

And then she could also be as far as possible from Madison. Because this was another secret Jasmine had: she hated Madison Mason. Hated her guts, her soul, hated her right down to the cells that made up her marrow, her stupid red hair, her stupid voice, her stupid red smirk.

Jasmine felt Madison squeeze her arm affectionately, and she turned with a smile, patted Madison’s leg, snuggled closer. I hate you so much, bitch, she thought.

They were driving through the middle of town now, over the wide stone bridge across the namesake river of Limestone Creek. Built by convicts, the bridge was said to be haunted. One of Jasmine’s ex-boyfriends swore black and blue he’d seen the ghost before, a man wearing a straw hat.