In the car Jasmine tried to remember how she had behaved the last time Tim drove her anywhere. She was aware that she couldn’t let on that she’d seen the photo, that she knew he was up to something. She was too tired to feign lust, praying that she didn’t have to.

They drove past the turning they should have taken and instead Tim headed to the eastern side of town and through the ford. It wasn’t the way home.

She looked over at Tim; he stared at the road unflinchingly. Where was he taking her? She couldn’t jump from a moving car but her heart was bursting out of her chest.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked, trying to sound a lot calmer than she felt.

‘I want to show you something.’

He drove up to the highest point on Cliff Road, stopping next to a path that overlooked Pennington Point, the place where Mr Morrell had committed suicide. The place where she suspected Tim had pushed him from.

Tim opened the door and helped Jasmine out of the car, keeping hold of her wrist as they walked down the path towards the clifftops. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t do anything but follow him. It was still so warm and there was no breeze at all; the air was so stagnant that she could barely feel herself breathing. The silence around them magnified the sense of danger. They reached the edge of the path and the sea stretched out before them. It looked magnificent and inviting in a deep dark indigo, a star-peppered sky above them with a full moon painting haphazard stripes of light across the water.

‘We had better get back home,’ Jasmine said, aware that she wasn’t far from the edge, a few metres maybe, and it would be nothing for him to pick her up and toss her over the side. Jasmine could see the narrative now. Lovesick girl commits suicide in the same spot that teacher lover took his life just days before. Her parents would probably even believe it.

‘We’ll go back in a minute. I just wanted to talk to you. To make you understand.’ She felt his hand on the small of her back and she resisted every urge that was telling her to turn back and run away. Stay calm.

‘Let’s just go home,’ she said. Why had he brought her here?

‘Are you cold?’ he asked, rubbing her back a little as he got closer. She should never have got in the car with him. She should have walked home, it wasn’t even that far.

‘No, actually I’m warm. I’m just tired,’ she said, pulling away. ‘Why did you bring me here?’

‘I thought it might help. I know you feel guilty about what happened to your teacher. I thought being here and seeing this might make you feel better.’