Sitting at the dinner table with her parents was hard for Jasmine. She felt as if she was lying to them all the time, because she was. Her biggest fear was that she would tell them that she’d seen Tim rifling through their belongings and they wouldn’t believe her. She knew full well how manipulative Tim was. If they asked, he could tell them anything. She suspected, maybe unfairly, that they had their doubts about what happened with Mr Morrell. There were lots of carefully crafted questions at the time about how much she may or may not have led him on. She knew other people had accused her of being the instigator of the incident, even with the video evidence. She didn’t think it would be a total leap for her parents to imagine she might have been less innocent than she had claimed to be.

The silence at the dinner table had become unbearable and so Jasmine grasped for something to say to fill the void.

‘I have lots of washing to do, I’m out of summer clothes. It’s been so hot,’ she said.

‘I’ll put a load in after dinner. How are you feeling? You’re very quiet.’

‘Just a lot going on at the moment, you know?’

Lisa jumped on the opening. ‘I didn’t realise you were friends with the Torrence girl. You’ve never mentioned her before.’

‘I don’t mention a lot of people,’ Jasmine said, trying not to sound snippy.

‘How did you know her?’

‘Just from around. I heard some talk about the vigil. The police say the evidence points to Mr Morrell. He did it and now he’s gone and they have no idea what he did with her body.’

‘What else have you heard?’

‘Just the usual crap. People found out about him coming after me at the fair. Some people said it should have been me, that I was the one he wanted to take and not Hannah. They are saying it like it’s my fault she’s missing.’

‘What happened to her wasn’t your fault, darling,’ Frank said. ‘That creep was always going to do something crazy like that. He’s got form. Would you rather it was you?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Thank goodness Tim was there. That was some luck. He’s like your guardian angel.’ Her mother smiled, resting her knife and fork on the plate to indicate she was done.

‘Your mother and I finish work early on Friday. We thought maybe we could do a trip to the Indian restaurant and then go to the cinema together or something. We haven’t done that in a while.’

‘Maybe, I don’t know, I’d like to go to the vigil,’ Jasmine said, before excusing herself from the table. She knew her parents would chalk it down to fallout from Mr Morrell’s suicide and she was happy for them to think that for once.