‘Murphy . . . I don’t think that’s likely,’ said Gabriella. ‘Butch has had plenty of times to hurt Jasmine if he wanted to. Besides, you both have an alibi.’

‘No,’ said Murphy. ‘We don’t. I don’t know where I was when the girls went missing: I was high on angel dust.’

Gabriella’s eyebrows flew up. She turned to Con and mouthed, ‘What the fuck?’

Con shook his head. ‘Butch was there when Constable Cavanagh came to your house to get you: I know, I read the report, and then talked to her about it myself.’ Gabriella tried to catch his eye again, but Con put his hand up. ‘I don’t believe Murphy did it, Gab.’ Con clicked on the next video.

Jasmine spoke to the camera.

‘If you’re watching this, it’s been six months. No, we weren’t taken by the Hungry Man. We left of our own accord. And these are our reasons why.’

The video cut to Georgia, sitting on the same bed. She sat up proud, her glasses catching the light. ‘People say that teenage girls are helpless.’

The video shifted to Bree, long blonde hair and blotchy face. ‘That we are weak.’

Cierra, with a blue wig. ‘That we’re nothing but a pretty face.’

Back to Jasmine. ‘Everyone assumes that if four girls go missing, they must have been taken. They couldn’t possibly have left for their own reasons.’

Bree: ‘Isn’t it strange that a whole community will come to the rescue when a girl is missing, but when she’s right in front of you, crying out for help, no one gives a damn?’

Cierra: ‘So we disappeared. Because we chose to.’

Georgia: ‘My whole heritage is ignored, and no one gave a damn about my museum. Now that people think I’m dead, my vision is alive. That’s what it means to be a teenage girl.’

‘She didn’t intend to die,’ said Gabriella softly.

Jasmine: ‘When my mum died, my dad went a bit crazy: depressed, anxious. He lost his job, our house. People avoided me in the street because they didn’t know what to say. My dad turned to his criminal brother for help, because everyone else abandoned us. I had to move into the house of a drug dealer. I watched my dad, once happy doing landscaping like he loved, become one too, just to provide for us. Now that I’m missing, you’ve all rallied around him again. Why is it that a missing girl is so much sadder than a dead wife? Why did no one in this town reach out to him when they saw him struggle to keep his job, struggle to help me?’

‘Fair to say Jasmine got that one wrong,’ said Con.

Murphy snorted.

Jasmine: ‘But where were all of you when my uncle raped my mum?’