The Lie (6 page)

Sheila sent me home, no questions asked. She heard me throwing up in the ladies’ loo and immediately diagnosed me as suffering from an upset tummy. She didn’t even give me the opportunity to object.

“I saw you nibbling the corner of that sandwich and I knew something was wrong. It’s not like you not to have an appetite. Get yourself home, Jane. We don’t want to risk you passing it on to everyone else. We’re short-staffed as it is.”

I think she would have driven me home herself if I hadn’t pointed out that I had my bicycle with me. No point driving me home when I only live a five-minute cycle away and it’s all downhill.

That was two hours ago. I’ve spent the last thirty minutes sitting in front of my laptop. I thought it would be harder to find Al. I thought that, after five years, she’d be impossible to track down, but, unlike me, she hasn’t changed her name. She’s even got a Facebook profile. Alexandra Gideon. There were only three listed and two of them live in the States. Her cover image is of Brighton seafront and the profile picture’s a rainbow, and that’s it, that’s all the information I’ve got to go on, but I know it’s her. She always said she wanted to leave London and move to Brighton.

It’s been four years since we last spoke. We kept in touch for the first few months after we got back from Nepal, talking on the phone every day, trying to make sense of what had happened, but then Al sold her story to the press and everything changed. I couldn’t understand why she’d done it. I called her, over and over again, begging her to explain why she’d gone back on what we’d agreed, but she ignored my calls. I don’t know if it was the money or the attention or what, but it was the worst kind of betrayal, especially after everything we’d been through.

I hold down the delete button and the cursor zips from right to left, swallowing the message I’ve been trying to compose for the last half an hour. I start again:

Al, it’s me.

No. I created this Facebook account as Jane Hughes, and she won’t know who that is.

Al, it’s Emma. I know you probably don’t want to talk to me, but I need your help.

I delete the last sentence.

Al, it’s Emma. I think Daisy’s still alive. Please contact me. Here’s my mobile number …

I touch the button beneath the swipe pad, ready to click send, but then change my mind again. Does she already know? Whoever typed the message onto the Green Fields’ website could already have contacted Al. If I found her in minutes, they could have, too.

I reach for my mobile and click on Will’s name. The call goes straight to voicemail. His tone is professional and impersonal but the sound of his voice is comforting.

“Hi, Will, it’s Jane. Could you give me a ring when you finish school? I need to talk to you; it’s important.”

I place the phone on the desk next to the laptop. I stare at the screen, drumming my right index finger on the button under the swipe pad.

Delete or send? Delete or send? My heart tells me to trust Al. My head says not to.

I click send.

The second Will sets eyes on me, he gathers me into a tight hug.

“Sorry, darling. I thought I’d mentioned that it was parents’ evening tonight.” He pulls away, his hands on my shoulders. “You okay? You sounded worried on the phone.”

“Yeah … I …” I hand him a bottle of red wine. “I’ve had a bit of a weird day and …” The sound of two people talking drifts towards us as a couple of dog walkers stroll past the end of Will’s garden, their high-visibility jackets glowing in the light from the house. “Can we talk inside?”

“’Course, yeah.” He reaches an arm around my shoulders and ushers me into the house.

It’s warm and bright in the hallway. Dozens of black and white photos of Will and Chloe, and Will and various friends and relatives, smile down at me from one wall. On the other is a faux Banksy print of a large
Star Wars
AT-AT walker saying, “I’m your father” to a smaller AT-AT walker (I only know what they’re called because Will told me).

“I need to explain why I was being so obtuse last night,” I say as I head towards the living room. “The reason I was asking about lying was because—”

“Hi, Jane!” Chloe waves at me from the sofa where she’s sitting cross-legged with a loom band maker in one hand and a crochet hook in the other. She doesn’t shift her gaze from the Disney movie blaring out song tunes from the television in the corner of the room.

“Hello!” I glance questioningly at Will. He normally only has his daughter at weekends during term time.

“Ah, yes, Chloe … the other reason it took me a while to get back to you. Sara rang during my last meeting. She sliced her thumb on a food processor blade and needed me to take Chloe so she could go to A&E.” He glances at the clock above the fireplace. It’s after nine. “We agreed it would be best if Chloe stayed here for the night. God knows how long it will take her to be seen.”

Sara is Will’s ex-wife. They’re separated, but amicably so. According to Will, their relationship gradually became more like brother and sister in the years after Chloe was born, but it wasn’t until Sara admitted that she’d developed a bit of a crush on a colleague and Will felt feelings of relief rather than jealousy that they confronted the issue. Sara went on to have a relationship with her colleague, but it fizzled out almost as quickly as it began.

“Here” – he thrusts my bottle of red wine at me – “why don’t you go into the kitchen and get this opened while I take Chloe upstairs? We can have a proper chat once she’s in bed.”

“Okay.”

“I can make a bracelet for you, if you want, Jane!” Chloe says, waving the loom board at me. She’s got the same generous wide smile as her father. “What are you favourite colours? Or I could make you a rainbow one, if you like.”

“A rainbow bracelet would be wonderful.”

“I could make collars for the animals you look after, too. Or you could sell them in the sanctuary to raise money for—”

“Bed!” Will says, with a smile on his face. “You’ve seen Jane now. No more excuses, let’s get you upstairs.”

Chloe’s face falls. “But …”

“We can talk about your ideas this weekend, Chloe.” I glance at Will, who nods. “In fact, we could discuss them at Green Fields. I’ll give you the VIP guided tour.”

“No way!” Chloe throws her loom bands to one side and runs at me. She wraps her arms around my hips and buries her head in my stomach.

I rest a hand on the top of her fine, mousey hair.

“You’re very lucky, you know,” Will says. “They don’t let just anyone wander around Green Fields.”

“I’m afraid you won’t be able to meet the dogs,” I add. “They get upset when too many strangers visit.”

“That’s okay.” Chloe gazes up at me. “I only really want to see the cats and the ferrets and the mice. And the swearing parrot.”

“The what?” Will pretends to look aghast, and Chloe giggles. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. Come on, teeth time.”

“Night, Jane.” Chloe gives me another squeeze then skips past her father and climbs the stairs, two at a time.

Will and I exchange smiles then he presses a hand to my cheek. “Thank you. You’ve made her very happy.”

I shrug. “It’s nothing.”

“Still …” His gaze lingers, the emotion behind his eyes weighty and intense. We had a discussion on our third date about how neither of us wanted to get into anything “heavy”, and we’re still not officially “together”, even though Will insisted I meet Chloe three weekends ago. We “bumped into” each other while they were feeding the ducks at the pond in the centre of the village, and he introduced me as “my friend Jane”. She accepted the introduction unquestioningly, but her eyes grew wide and round when I told her what I do for a living. She’s been badgering her dad to spend time with me ever since.

My chest tightens with anxiety. I shouldn’t have told Chloe about visiting the sanctuary this weekend, not when I’m about to tell Will that I’ve been lying to him since the moment we met. I got carried away by her excitement; I forgot that none of this is real.

“I should open the wine.” I touch his hand briefly then break eye contact with him and step away. “Give Chloe a goodnight kiss for me.”

He turns and heads for the stairs. Like his daughter, he takes them two at a time then disappears into the bathroom off the landing.

It’s cooler in the kitchen than the rest of the house. Will’s cooking prowess is demonstrated by the well-stacked spice rack to the right of the cooker and the shelf full of cookery books, the pages rippled and stained. The wine rack to the left of the cooker is well stocked with a variety of red, white and rosé bottles and two magnums of champagne, and there’s a plentiful supply of chocolates in the cupboard above the mug tree, too – presents from grateful parents, no doubt.

I dig around in the cutlery drawer until I find the bottle opener then yank the cork out of the bottle of red wine. I don’t wait for it to breathe. Instead, I half-fill the largest wine glass I can find in the mis-matched selection in the cupboard and down half of it. Then I refill the glass and pour another one for Will.

As footsteps reverberate on the ceiling over my head, I wander down the hallway and back into the living room. I turn off the television, tidy the spilled loom bands into their correct colour compartments then, with nothing else to do, I sit on the sofa and reach for Will’s iPad.

I swipe from left to right to unlock the screen, Will only bought his iPad a few weeks ago and he still hasn’t got round to setting a password. I sent Al the message at seven o’clock. Has she read it? If she’s as addicted to Facebook as half the girls at work, she’ll have read it the second her phone bleeped with a new message notification. She may even have replied.

The sound of Will’s laugh and Chloe’s high-pitched giggle floats down the stairs as I log into Facebook.

The messages icon at the top of the screen is still blue. No message from Al. She hasn’t even read it yet. I’m just about to log out when I notice there’s another tab open in the browser. Will’s been reading a tabloid newspaper online – one he’s ranted about several times. I click on it.

The headline alone fills a third of the page.

HUMILIATED, ABANDONED AND BETRAYED.

BRITISH WOMAN ESCAPES DEADLY CULT THAT ROBBED HER OF

TWO OF HER FRIENDS AND NEARLY STOLE HER OWN LIFE.

Alexandra (Al) Gideon, 25, from London talks exclusively to Gilly McKensie about the dream vacation that turned into a holiday from hell when she and her three friends – Daisy Hamilton, 26, Leanne Cooper, 25, and Emma Woolfe, 25 – journeyed to Nepal. Now Al puts the record straight about what really happened and the mystery behind Daisy and Leanne’s disappearance …

I stop reading. I already know what it says. It’s the article Al sold, the reason we haven’t spoken for four years.

But why has Will been reading it? There’s no way he could connect me with that story. Unless …

I reach into my back pocket, but the note’s not there. It’s still in my work trousers, lying in a crumpled heap on my bathroom floor after I took them off to have a shower after work. Did the same person who sent me the note contact Will to tell him I’m not who he thinks I am? That might explain the real reason he didn’t reply to my voicemail for a couple of hours – he wanted to check me out on the internet first.

A floorboard creaks above my head.

Unless he was the one who sent the note?

I reach for one of the school exercise books on the coffee table and flick through it. On one of the pages there’s an image of a plant, drawn in pencil, with the various parts labelled in school kids’ untidy handwriting – stem, stamen, petal, etc. Underneath, written in blue biro, are the words:

A great piece of work – well done.

The handwriting is small and neat.

The floorboard creaks again, louder this time and, panicking, I reach for my messenger bag, slip the book into it then walk into the hall.

“Sorry, Will,” I shout up the stairs. “I’ve got to go. There’s been an emergency at work.”

“Hang on, Jane,” he shouts back. “I won’t be a—”

The door clicks shut behind me before he can finish his sentence.

“Help yourself to a beanbag and make yourselves comfortable,” Isaac says as he ushers us into a cool, dark room. His voice is deep and resonant with a soft Scottish burr. He rubs a hand over his stubbly jaw. “Just dump your backpacks wherever. I’ll just grab you some chai. You must be knackered after your trek.”

“You’re not kidding.” Daisy flashes him a smile as he slips back out of the room. She groans as she wriggles out of her backpack. It slips to the floor with a thump. Al, Leanne and I do the same and then grab a beanbag each from the pile in the corner of the room and collapse onto them.

“This is the meditation room,” Leanne says reverently. “It says on the website that they meditate three times a day. The first session is at five a.m.”

Al laughs. “Well, I won’t be spending much time here, then.”

I gaze around, taking it all in. The floor is a dark polished wood, the walls roughly plastered and painted a vibrant turquoise and adorned with prayer flags and fairy lights. There’s a bookshelf at one end of the room and a wooden altar at the other, with a large gold skull taking pride of place in the centre, a metal gong to its right and several church candles arranged on golden plates to the left. Plumes of grey smoke swirl in the air from the dozens of incense holders arranged in front of the gold skull, and in plant pots and wooden holders around the room, and the air is thick with the rich, heady scent of jasmine.

“Here we go, then,” Isaac says a few minutes later, ducking his head as he passes through the doorway and wanders back into the room carrying a tray of steaming metal cups.

He takes the tray to Leanne first, crouching down to offer her a mug. She sits up straight and beams at him, then bites down on her bottom lip as though trying to suppress her smile. Al twists round and gives me an incredulous look. In the seven years we’ve known Leanne, she’s never reacted to a man like this. Her normal modus operandi when a man approaches her is wariness, swiftly followed by sarcasm and put-downs disguised as jokes. She’s only been out with two guys in the whole time I’ve known her – she went out with the leader of the Socialist Society at uni for six months before they split up, for unknown reasons, and then she dated some Dutch guy she met at yoga after we all moved to London, but they finished after three months when he moved back to the Netherlands. Al thinks he broke her heart, but Leanne never talked to any of us about how she felt, not even Al. Unlike the rest of us, who always analyse our failed relationships to death, Leanne refuses to talk about her private life. Scratch the surface and you get more surface.

Isaac straightens up and takes the tray to Daisy, who flicks back her hair and pushes back her shoulders so Isaac is greeted with a faceful of cleavage as he squats down. She makes no attempt to hide her attraction to him – why should she? If Daisy’s interested in a man, she makes it blatantly clear, and, with her long blonde hair, narrow waist and perky boobs, nine times out of ten she gets him. Unlike the rest of us, she’s never been dumped and never had her heart broken. She’ll pursue a man until she gets him, but she never lets her defences down, never lets herself fall for anyone. She’ll dump a guy or move on if there’s any danger of that happening. You don’t have to be a psychologist to work out that it’s got something to do with her mum abandoning her when she was five.

Al gives Isaac a cursory nod as he presents her with a cup of tea. He says something I can’t hear and she laughs and gives him a high five. My stomach twists as he straightens up once more and makes his way towards me. I don’t know why, but attractive men make me feel insecure and self-conscious. My mouth dries up and I struggle to make conversation.

“Hi, Emma.” Isaac squats down in front of me. His eyes are the warmest brown, framed with dark eyelashes and eyebrows. They smile at me as he hands me the last cup of chai. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” I press my lips together. “I’m fine.”

“Cool.” His gaze slips from my face to my legs. “Did you fall over on your way up the mountain?”

“Yeah, how did—”

“Your trousers are ripped.” He gently runs a finger over the tear in my dusty cotton trousers. I flinch, even though the skin on my knee is no longer tender. “Sorry, didn’t mean to hurt you.” He pulls his hand away sharply. “If it still hurts, Sally in the kitchen has got a first aid kit.”

“It’s fine, honestly.”

“Okay.” He smiles warmly and stands up. Then he crosses the room, picks up a beanbag and plonks it in front of us. “So.” He opens his hands wide. “Welcome to Ekanta Yatra. I know you’ve all had a look at the website so I’ll keep this brief, because I know you’ll all be gagging to have a shower or a sleep, or whatever.

“I founded Ekanta Yatra three years ago, along with Isis, Cera and Johan – you’ll meet them soon. We were all travelling separately and became friends when we found ourselves staying in the same guest house in Pokhara. We were all looking for somewhere that would be a retreat from the world, and we pooled what little money we had and bought this place. It was basically a shack when we bought it.”

“It looks lovely now,” Leanne says, and Isaac smiles at her.

“Cheers, we’ve worked hard. Johan’s the big hulking Swede you’ll see shuffling about. He’s in charge of the vegetable patch and the animals – anything outside, basically. Isis is a short, grey-haired woman. She’s got a background in massage and holistic therapies, so she’s your go-to woman for your facials and aromatherapy sessions. Cera’s the tall, elegant woman you’ll see drifting about. She keeps the place running efficiently and makes sure everything is clean and tidy and that the kitchen’s got all the supplies it needs. And I’m Isaac. I run the meditation sessions and the seminars and, um … I make a mean cup of chai, too.”

Everyone laughs.

“That’s about it, basically. Everything else you need to know is in your welcome packs on your beds.” He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a small green tin. He prises off the lid and offers us the contents – half a dozen hand-rolled cigarettes. “Anyone want one?”

Leanne’s smile slips. “But we’re in a pagoda. I thought smoking … well, I thought you couldn’t.”

“We meditate in here,” Isaac says, a rollie dangling from his lower lip, “and we do yoga outside on the patio, and all these sort of things, but this isn’t a religious retreat. We’re a community of people making a life for ourselves outside of mainstream society.”

He pauses to blow a stream of smoke up towards the ceiling. “When you look in your welcome pack, you’ll see that we’ve got set times for meals and meditations and seminars, but what you guys choose to do is up to you. You can get as involved as you like, or not get involved at all. Ekanta Yatra is a place where you can escape from all the stresses and strains of everyday life and just
be
. There’s a lot the outside world could learn from the way we live here.”

“I’m always up for learning new things.” Daisy slips off her beanbag and crawls towards Isaac, slinking through the gap between Al and Leanne like a cat. She takes a cigarette from Isaac’s tin and looks up at him expectantly, the cigarette dangling from her lips.

“I think you could all learn a lot.” He lights her cigarette but his eyes are on me.

“Hi, girls,” says a voice behind us, and Isaac glances away.

A tall, willowy woman with pale lips and dreadlocks the colour of dark sand twisted on top of her head is standing in the doorway. She makes her way towards us, drifting through the room barefoot, her sari-like skirt sweeping the wood as she walks, her beaded necklace reaching down to her bare navel. Her smile is beatific, her eyes soft and compassionate. There’s a serenity about her that’s mesmerising.

“Hello,” she says, her benign gaze flitting over each of our faces as she stops next to Isaac. She reaches out a hand and ruffles his hair then glances at Daisy. Her smile widens. “I’m Cera. I look after the house, so if there’s a problem with the solar showers, or you need a snack between mealtimes, or anything else, just let me know.”

“Hi!” I raise a hand in greeting. Al and Leanne do the same.

“I’ll show you where you’ll all be sleeping in a few moments,” Cera continues, “and then I’ll give you the guided tour, but first, if you could all give me your passports, please.”

“They think we’re going to skip off into the night without paying,” Al says. She catches my eye and grins. Six years ago, the four of us hitchhiked up to Edinburgh from Newcastle and stayed in a B&B run by the snootiest woman on earth. The bathroom was grotty, the sheets were stained and the bedroom curtains smelled of rotten eggs, but she refused to give us a different room when we requested one. The woman just sniffed, said something about
bloody students
and stalked off. We went out drinking until 4 a.m., returned to get our bags and left without paying. It was Daisy’s idea, of course, but the rest of us didn’t need much persuading. It wasn’t as though we’d actually slept there, was it?

“You’ll have to get past me first,” Isaac says, and winks at Al. Then he stretches his arms above his head and stands up. “I’ll leave you to it, then, Cera,” he says, before strolling across the room, his cigarette still dangling from his fingertips. He raises a hand as he reaches the doorway. “See you later, girls!”

“Bye, then, Isaac!” Daisy calls from beside his abandoned beanbag. If she were a dog, she’d be bristling. The next couple of weeks are certainly going to be interesting; Daisy doesn’t take kindly to rejection.

“Wow.” Daisy peers around the door to the shower block then glances back at us. “The website wasn’t lying when it said the living accommodation is basic. There’s a kitchen sink in here. Literally.”

“Let me see.” She steps out of the way so I can take a look, too. She’s right. There are two shower cubicles, each with a rustic-looking door, two toilets with equally basic doors and, right at the end of the room, there’s a kitchen sink with a colourful mosaic-framed circular mirror hanging above it.

“Are they sit-down toilets or holes in the floor?” Al shouts out.

I step into the shower block and push at one of the toilet doors. “Proper toilets.”

“Well, that’s something.” Daisy rolls her eyes and walks back into the girls’ dormitory. She stands beside the mattress she’s been allocated in the corner of the room and nudges it with the toe of her flip-flop. “At least we had proper beds at boarding school. God knows what’s going to crawl over me in the middle of the night.”

“Don’t be like that.” Leanne, sitting cross-legged on the mattress beside her, slaps her guidebook shut.

“Yeah, come on, Dais.” Al looks up from the cigarette she’s rolling. “It’s not like we didn’t expect to rough it. We’re in Nepal, not the Hilton.”

“Roughing it is fine. Sharing a room with you guys is fine. But this?” She gestures at rough, cherry-red wooden walls and the row of mattresses on each side of the room. “It’s like a sheep shed, piling all the women into one room together. God knows who we’re sharing with.”

“Daisy …” I move to put an arm around her then change my mind. The best way to deal with her when she’s in this kind of mood is to ignore it. She’s barely said a word since Isaac left us in the meditation room – not when Cera showed us the rustic dining room, the basic kitchen, the yoga patio, the orchard, the vegetable patch, the goat enclosure, the chicken pen or the massage huts – and she was the only one of us not to squeal with excitement when we were led down to the river and the waterfall. The only time the vaguest flicker of interest registered on her face was when we returned to the house and Cera gestured to the walkway to the right and said it led to the boys’ dormitories. It vanished when we were led to the left. It’s astonishing, really. We travel halfway around the world to one of the most breathtakingly beautiful mountain ranges in Asia, and she’s in a huff because Isaac didn’t flirt back with her. I’d laugh if she wasn’t my best friend.

“I bet the other women snore,” Daisy says. “And smell.”

“Well, you’ll be in good company, then,” Al says. “I couldn’t sleep for all your farting and snoring last night.”

“Sod off, Al,” Daisy says, but the edges of her lips twitch into a smile. She yanks her sleeping bag from its sheath, lies down on top of the mattress and starts rummaging around in her backpack. “Who fancies a shot of lemon voddy? I think we’ve earned it.”

Everyone holds up a hand.

“Have you seen this?” Leanne waves the welcome pack in the air. “There are three yoga sessions a day, right after meditation. I’m thinking I’ll do two a day – one in the morning, one in the evening.”

“Why the hell would you want to do that?” Al licks the Rizla, rolls the cigarette over itself and sticks it behind her ear. “Unless you want to add
supremely bendy
to your advert.”

“What advert?”

“The one you put in phone boxes in London.”

“Oh, ha ha. Seriously, are any of you up for meditation or yoga?” Leanne persists.

“Nope.” Al shakes her head. “I intend to sit on my arse and do precisely nothing for two weeks.”

“Daisy?”

Daisy pours vodka into the bottle lid and knocks it back. She winces then looks at Leanne. “Did you say something?”

“I asked if you want to try a bit of meditation or yoga.”

“Maybe.” She shrugs her shoulders. “Do many men do yoga? Does Isaac?” She glances at me. It’s only a split-second look but it’s enough to confirm my suspicions about her bad mood.

She squeals as a balled pair of socks hits her square between the eyes.

“You are SO boring!” Al chucks another pair of socks at her, this time clipping Daisy’s left ear. “Men, men, men, men, men. Give me a shot of that vodka then let’s go down to the river. Anyone up for skinny-dipping?”