She had made a good friend in Honduras, Maria, who still wrote to Jasmine sometimes. Her older sister had gone missing and the police had never found her, although Maria didn’t think they’d looked very hard. Crime in Honduras was a huge problem and it had the more homicides than almost any other country on the planet. She decided to use the Marcus Aurelius quote that her dad had told her once – ‘Poverty is the mother of all crime’ – but it didn’t feel right to talk about Maria’s sister in her homework. Once she had chosen her pictures of her time in Honduras, she decided to move to another room; it was a bit stuffy in the dining room. She took the next set of albums into the kitchen, wishing it wasn’t so warm. It was approaching midnight and her parents were in bed, but she was buzzing and she knew she wouldn’t sleep. She grabbed a bottle of coconut water from the fridge and sat down to her albums. She hadn’t noticed before, but Tim was outside in the dark, digging the hole for the swimming pool. Every day when she looked out there the hole got bigger but she never saw him actually working on it – now she knew why. Seeing him digging in the dark like this was like watching him dig a grave. It would be big enough to fit all three of them in. She shook off the thought – it was ridiculous, she was being melodramatic. She had no proof he was a killer.

The Cambodian albums took a lot longer than anticipated because she couldn’t concentrate. Tim was shirtless because of the heat and she found herself staring at the tattoo on his hip that was illuminated by the soft solar lighting in the garden. It was a black rose with the words forever yours wrapped around it. She shrank as she remembered being with him, embarrassed that she had let him so close. There was also the dagger on his back. There was another tattoo on the top of his arm that she hadn’t noticed before. It looked like a pair of guns crossed over with the letter S over the top of them. If she wanted to get rid of him she had to have proof that he really was bad. She couldn’t let him suspect that she was turning the tables on him.

She poured an ice-cold glass of orange juice and took a sip before going outside.

‘Good evening,’ she said, holding out the drink.

He took the glass and she watched him drink, throwing his head back until every last drop was gone. Her eyes wandered down his neck, his chest, his stomach and then on to his tattoo. She wondered who he’d got that for. Was it the girl who gave him the friendship band he wore on his wrist? The dead girl.