The Lie (14 page)

Normally, I’d find Daisy amusing as she tries and fails to smoothly transition between cobra and downward dog and ends up in a crumpled, red-faced heap on the patio, but I’m too fixated on Leanne to laugh. Her brow is knitted in concentration as her thin limbs twist and contort while she moves lithely between positions. Daisy and I have barely said a word to each other since our little “chat” yesterday morning, which has made things horribly awkward, particularly as we’ve been confined to the house for the last twenty-four hours because of the rain and Al’s strapped ankle.

I didn’t join in with Leanne’s generous offer to play Hunt the Bitch, a bastardised version of Chase the Ace. Instead, I read my book while she, Al and Daisy traded insults and threw cards at each other for the best part of half an hour. I drifted around the retreat for the rest of the day. With the rain falling heavily outside, some people spent their time gathered in the meditation room to chat and play musical instruments, while others slept or read in the dorms or hung out in the kitchen helping prepare the meals. A few hardier types donned their waterproofs and went into the garden to tend to the animals and vegetables, but most people stayed inside. I sat with Al, Leanne and Daisy in the meditation room for a while, but with Daisy ignoring me, and Leanne acting like nothing was wrong, it was more than I could bear and I took myself off to the kitchen to peel potatoes for Raj. He made idle chat with me but the hollow feeling in my chest that I’d been carrying around all day didn’t disappear. If anything, it grew stronger. I’d never felt more lonely, or more isolated, in my life.

The sense of relief when we woke up to a blue sky this morning was palpable. The ground is still wet, too wet to attempt another trip down the mountain, but the patio quickly dried and Isis announced that yoga was on again.

“So now if you’ll all lie down on your mats and assume the corpse position, I’ll talk you through a little guided meditation,” Isis says.

The group take up their positions as one, all apart from Frank, who catches my eye. He doesn’t smile or nod. He stares until I’m forced to look away. Leanne catches him looking and smirks. Despite her “Hey, guys!” faux friendliness and attempts to get us all to join in with countless games of Hunt the Bitch, the Rizla game and charades, she couldn’t be more delighted that a crack has appeared in mine and Daisy’s friendship. There’s a natural pecking order in all friendship groups, and I’m fairly certain Leanne knows she’s on the periphery. It’s not enough that she’s Al’s best friend. She wants to be in with Daisy, too. Two rhinos to feed off is better than one, especially if you’ve frightened the other bird away. The only person who’s been genuinely friendly towards me is Al, and I haven’t been able to get her on her own since our abortive trip back down to Pokhara yesterday morning.

I tiptoe past the group and sit down on one of the steps leading to the garden as Isis leads everyone through the meditation.

Al, who’s spent the last half an hour in the kitchen having her ankle checked over by Sally, appears at the doorway to the house. She raises a hand when she spots me then hops slowly towards me and gingerly lowers herself to the ground. “What’s up? You look pissed off.”

“Have you noticed that Daisy’s stopped talking to me?”

“I noticed that things were a bit weird between you two yesterday, but I assumed it would blow over. What happened?” She digs around in the neckline of her T-shirt and pulls out the packet of Marlboros stashed under her bra strap. She lights one then offers them to me. I only smoke when I’m drunk but I take one anyway. The smoke catches in the back of my throat as I inhale. There’s something strangely satisfying about the sensation.

I exhale heavily. “Someone told her about the conversation we had the other day. The one before we left, when I told you about her trying it on with Elliot and that other guy.”

“Jesus.” She sighs. “Well, I didn’t tell her.”

“I know – someone must have overheard us.”

“And she’s pissed off?”

“She is with me. She wants us to have some ‘space’.” I make quotation marks in the air with my fingers. “Apparently, she had a little chat with Leanne and Johan while we were trying to get down the mountain, and they told her that we’re unnaturally attached and she’d be happier if we stopped being friends.”

“Seriously?” Al pulls a face. “I know Leanne has bought into all this hippy bullshit, but Johan seemed sound when I had a smoke with him the other day. Maybe they were just saying that to placate her? You know what she’s like when she’s on one. Give it a couple more days and she’ll be fine.”

“I just want to go home, Al. I’ve had enough. Yesterday was horrible. I felt like I couldn’t breathe.”

“I know what you mean. Listen, I’ll have a word with Johan about the weather and when he thinks it might be safe for us to give the trek another go. Leanne thinks that’s it, now – that it’s going to piss down every night. You’d have thought she’d have known it’s monsoon season here at this time of year, given the amount of time she spent on her laptop researching Nepal before we—”

She stops speaking as a wiry figure appears beside us. Frank crouches down and helps himself to one of Al’s Marlboro Lights.

“All right, ladies,” he says through the side of his mouth as he sparks it up. “Sorry to interrupt, but Isaac wants everyone in the meditation room for an emergency meeting. Apparently someone’s died.”

The meditation room is heaving. Warm bodies fill every space in the room, pressed together at the elbow and hip, necks craned towards the altar, where Isaac is standing, arms spread wide, fingers gripping the wood, eyes closed. Daisy is sitting on the right of the room with her back against the wall, sandwiched between Johan and Raj. As we squeeze into the room on the tail of Isis and the yoga group, Leanne spots Daisy, too. She raises her hand in greeting then she’s off, picking her way between the cross-legged bodies on the floor. Al follows her then pauses halfway across the room and looks back at me. Her smile falters. She doesn’t know whether to keep following Leanne or stay with me. More people file in, and the pathway between us is blocked. As Al continues across the room, I drop where I am. I pull an apologetic face at Minka, one of the Swedish girls, and wrap my arms around my knees to make myself as small as I can.

The atmosphere is thick with expectation. No one is talking, and each time the floor squeaks or creaks as someone shifts position, everyone looks round.

A man I’ve never seen before sits at Isaac’s feet. He’s heavy-set with a shaved head, long dark beard, AC/DC T-shirt and cut-off combat trousers. He can’t be much older than twenty, twenty-two tops, but he surveys the room with the weary gaze of a man twice his age.

“Hi, guys.” The sound of Isaac’s voice startles me. “Thanks for gathering here so promptly. As you will have noticed, Gabe is back.” He gestures to the man at his feet.

Several people shout hello and wave, but Isaac silences them with a shake of his head.

“But there’s bad news about Ruth. Terrible news …” His voice cracks and he closes his eyes. When he opens them again, tears spill onto his cheeks. He makes no attempt to wipe them away and a low murmur fills the room. “A group of men in balaclavas tried to rob Gabe and Ruth on their way back up the mountain, and, when Ruth objected, one of the men shoved her out of the way and she fell and hit her head. The men took off with the donkey and the provisions, and Gabe tended to Ruth, but … there was nothing he could do. Ruth died before he could get her back to Ekanta Yatra.”

There is a collective gasp followed by a crescendo of noise. Sally, sitting in the middle of the room beside Raj, clutches hold of him and buries her head in his chest. The only person in the room who doesn’t react to the news is Gabe. He keeps his head down, his hands clasped in his lap.

Isaac holds up his hands and the roar dims to a dull murmur. “We’re going to hold a memorial celebration for her on Wednesday night. Anyone wishing to attend should meet on the banks of the river at ten p.m. If you’d like to help collect wood and build the pyre you should meet us there this afternoon at three.”

“You’re going to cremate her?” I’m on my feet and the words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. “Here?”

Isaac nods.

“Without telling her family that she’s dead?”

“We are Ruth’s family, Emma.”

“You know what I mean. Her proper family. Her parents, sisters, brothers.”

“We are her sisters and brothers,” calls out Isis from the corner of the room.

“It’s what she would have wanted,” shouts someone else.

Voices ring out, one after another, after another:

“She loved Ekanta Yatra.”

“This place was her life.”

“Ruth belongs here.”

All eyes are on me and suddenly I feel suffocated, as though the oxygen has been sucked from the room. I glance at Daisy for help but she looks away. Al won’t meet my gaze, either. She’s folded over herself, her face pressed into her knees, her hands gripping her calves. She can’t deal with talk about death – not Tommy’s, not anyone else’s. She left the pub once when Daisy asked us what songs we’d want played at our funerals and then started drunkenly ranting about how it was up to us to make sure her arsehole of a dad shouldn’t be invited to her funeral.

“So that’s it, then?” I say. “You’re just going to go ahead and cremate her without telling her family? Without telling the Nepalese police what happened? And you think that’s okay?”

Isaac gives me a long, sorrowful look as though I’ll never be able to understand.

“How do you suggest we do that, Emma? We don’t have the internet, phones, or post boxes. Even if we risked these bastards attacking us again on another Pokhara run, then what? We don’t have any contact details for Ruth’s parents. I’m not even sure what her surname was.”

An image of us glibly handing over our passports on our first day flashes into my mind. “What about her passport? If you give that to the British Embassy, they’ll be able to track down her parents, even if she hasn’t filled out their details in the back.”

A dark-haired man sitting in front of me turns and hisses, “Sit down, you’re embarrassing yourself,” but Isaac dismisses him with a wave of his hand.

“Emma’s new. She doesn’t understand.”

The man gives me one last scathing look before he shrugs and turns away.

“Ruth burned her passport after her detox,” Isaac says. “Everyone does when they make the decision to abandon their old selves and become part of our community. It was her decision. I understand why you’re having trouble processing all this, because it’s not what you’re used to. I’ll happily talk it through with you later, if you’d like.”

I want to ask Isaac what a detox is and what it involves, but I don’t want anyone else to shout me down. They’re all staring at me, willing me to sit down and shut up. The air is hazy with incense. I can taste it on my lips, my tongue, at the back of my throat. There’s no air in the room and it’s hot. I glance behind me. Why is the door shut? Frank catches my eye and frowns.

“Would you like that?” Isaac says. “A chat later?”

“Yes,” I say, without looking up. “Yes, fine.”

I’d agree to anything if it meant everyone would stop staring at me.

“Great.” Isaac claps his hands together and smiles, and the atmosphere in the room immediately lifts. “The other thing we need to talk about is security. We haven’t had an issue with it before, but we don’t know who these guys are, or how dangerous they might be, so we need to take precautions. I suggest we start patrolling the grounds at night, just for a few weeks. Johan, you’ll be patrolling with Emma. Isis, you’ll be with Daisy. Cera, you’ll be with Frank. Raj, you’ll be with—”

I stop listening and sink to the floor. Frank reaches out a hand to steady me.

“It’s a shame we didn’t get paired.” He leans so close that his lips graze my ear. His breath is hot and tangy with the scent of cumin and cardamom. “I’d really like the opportunity to chat to you alone sometime, Emma.”

“I’m sorry.” I force myself back onto my feet. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

It’s cold on the floor of the pantry. I’ve been sick twice, into an empty margarine tub I found in a pile of plastic in the corner, and the chill from the floorboards soothes my burning cheeks. The sound of footsteps and chatter drift under the door as everyone files out of the meditation room and heads outside.

A noise from the kitchen startles me and I shuffle further into the pantry and squeeze myself between a sack of rice and a sack of flour as the voices – one male, one female – draw closer.

“Are we safe? I don’t want to get into trouble.”

“It’s okay, there’s no one here.”

“I’ll shut the door.”

A door clicks shut then footsteps creak across the wooden floor of the kitchen. They grow louder as they approach the pantry, and I curl up, tucking my head into my knees. It’s a pointless move; the second someone walks in, I’ll be discovered. The door rattles on its hinges, as though someone is pressing themselves up against it, but it doesn’t open and a second later I catch the wet, squelchy sound of two people kissing.

The kissing continues for several minutes then suddenly stops.

“Gabe didn’t bring any food back. Nothing, not even a bag of rice.” I recognise Raj’s voice. “What am I supposed to do with no new provisions? I can’t conjure meals out of thin air, and we’re nearly out of lentils. Even if I ration out what’s left, we’ve only got one week, two tops, until we’re all out.”

A woman makes a sympathetic sound.

“Why Isaac sent Ruth with Gabe, I don’t know,” Raj continues. “Gabe’s been down the mountain with the donkey before, and the Maoists have never had a problem with him. He gives them a share of the supplies on his way back up, and they let him on his way.”

“That’s assuming it was the Maoists.”

“Who else would have attacked them?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you okay?”

“No, I’m not. Ruth was my best friend, Raj. I know we hadn’t got on for a while, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m never going to get to talk to her again. I’ll never be able to say sorry.”