‘He just said some weird stuff about it, that’s all. The night of the fair, when I bumped into Mr Morrell by the toilets, he grabbed me and Tim came and helped me. He threatened Mr Morrell and not long after he died. Tim’s not a good guy; I knew then that he wasn’t. The other night he took me up to Pennington Point and was acting really erratically. Saying things about punishment and mercy and other things that didn’t make sense.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us? Oh my God. Did he hurt you? Did he touch you?’ Frank said. His voice was full of concern but his eyes were flat. Maybe she was imagining it.

‘I thought he was just looking out for me in the beginning, but he just got weirder and weirder.’

Jasmine didn’t know whether just to come clean about everything, including the conversation she’d had with Tim on the clifftop. She didn’t want Frank to know about her secret relationship with this stranger in the house; he would never forgive her; he might never forgive himself. She couldn’t remember all the lies Tim had told her over the last few weeks; she could barely even sequence everything that had happened today. All she knew was that she wanted things to go back to how they were before she ever even knew Tim existed. He had done this, he had ruined their lives. Nothing would ever be the same again and she felt she was the one who let it happen. If only she had told her parents about the night he gave them weed and made out with Felicity. They would have got rid of him then. Or maybe she could have told them about the time she spent alone with him. It was no use thinking about that stuff now; it was too late. The damage was done.

‘I’m sorry, Dad. Can we just go home?’ Jasmine asked just seconds before everything came to the surface and she burst out crying. Her dad came and sat next to her on the sofa, putting his arms around her. She buried her face into his chest and sobbed. How had she messed everything up so badly?

‘I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I never should have invited him into our house. I thought he was a good guy, you know? I wish you had said something sooner, I would have got rid of him. And now he’s upset you with all these lies about Belize. I’ll call the police and then call your mother and warn her not to go home yet. We don’t have to go home until he’s out of the picture.’

Her dad stood up and left the room. Jasmine could hear him talking on the phone in the hall. Felicity came back into the room and put her arms around Jasmine.