The Lie (26 page)

“Where’s Al?” I ask as we cross the wooden bridge, the huts in our sights. “At least let me say goodbye to her, Johan.”

It’s dark, and with the fires burning brightly on the patio in the distance, his face and body are in silhouette as he looms beside me.

“I know Gabe’s going to kill Al tomorrow,” I say. “He’s going to bring her body back here afterwards and tell everyone they were attacked, then she’ll be cremated on the banks of the river. Just like Ruth was.”

Johan says nothing.

“Convince him that Gabe should take me instead. I know he trusts you; he listens to you. Tell him I tried to hurt you. Tell him I wouldn’t sleep with you. Tell him—”

“I can’t do that, Emma.”

“You can. You can convince him.”

“I can’t convince Isaac to do anything, no one can.”

“But you’re one of the original founders. You’ve got power, you’ve—”

He laughs hollowly. “You’ve got no idea.”

“But—”

“Emma, the passport I just threw into the fire wasn’t Al’s. It was Frank’s.”

“Frank’s?” All the hairs go up on my arms and I hug myself, suddenly icy cold.

“I took his passport from him a few days ago, before one of Isaac’s sessions. You saw me. You also saw what happened to him the other night.”

My heel catches on a rock as I take a step backwards, but I don’t gasp or cry out. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do.” He takes a step towards me. “You saw what happened down here, by the river. You were watching from behind a lavender bush.”

He saw me. He saw me watching when they killed Frank. That’s why he’s brought me down here. To kill me too.

“No.” I turn to run, but Johan’s too fast. He scoops me up off my feet and presses a hand to my mouth. His lips brush my ear.

“Don’t scream.”

I twist and kick but he holds me firm.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Emma. I’m going to help you escape. Al’s leaving tonight and she wants you to come too, but I had to check we could trust you. That’s why I asked you to throw her passport into the fire. It was her idea. She knew I still had Frank’s passport. She said we’d know if you’d bought Isaac’s bullshit if you threw it in the fire. Leanne betrayed her, and she had to check if you would, too.”

“Leanne?”

“The knife, Emma. Al was the only other person in the kitchen apart from Leanne, Sally and Raj when the knife disappeared, so they knew she must have taken it to give to you. Isaac wanted to find out if you were still loyal to Al – that’s why Cera asked you where you got it from – and when it turned out you still were, that was it, the decision was made for Gabe to kill Al. Isaac thought it was too dangerous if she stayed in Ekanta Yatra.”

“So why not kill me, too?”

“Because he wants to break you. That’s what the detox was about. If he can’t seduce or manipulate people into this way of thinking, he tries to break them physically instead. There was no detox when we first started this place. There was no
law
about not being in a couple. There was no reserving the new joiners for sex. I had to pretend I wanted to have sex with you to protect you.”

“From who?”

“Kane. He wanted to sleep with you. He’s only a junior member of Ekanta Yatra so he would have had to wait until after I’d slept with you.”

“But you slept with Daisy after her massage. Cera said Isaac was supposed to sleep with everyone first.”

“He wasn’t interested in her; he was after you. I didn’t want to sleep with Daisy, but I couldn’t arouse suspicion, not after what happened with Ruth.” He glances up towards the patio. The fire is still burning and Paula, and someone else, are running around it, jumping and skipping. “Ruth came here as a visitor, with Sally, a couple of months before you guys. She was different from anyone who’d been here before. She was strong and feisty and opinionated and—”

“Like Daisy.”

“She was nothing like Daisy. She was kind and gentle and loyal. She was loyal to me.” He rubs his hands over his face. “We slept together and got closer, closer than we should have. She figured out what was going on here, and we were going to leave. We were going to convince as many people as we could to leave with us. It was all going to plan until Isaac decided he wanted to sleep with her and she refused. A couple of days later, she disappeared, and Isaac told everyone she’d gone on the Pokhara run with Gabe. When I found out, I went for him, but Kane and Jacob were with him and they pulled me off. He said that if I so much as looked at him the wrong way, he’d kill one of you. He said he’d kill Al. Isaac’s not homophobic but he is a control freak and he doesn’t know how to deal with her. He told Isis what Leanne had told him about Al’s dead brother, but it backfired.”

“Because she freaked out?”

“Exactly.”

“But surely people would get suspicious if Gabe came back and said there’d been another attack.”

“Not if Gabe said Al decided to leave when they got down to Pokhara. There are a hundred thousand places on the mountain where you could hide a body and no one would ever discover it.”

“We have to take more people with us. There are other people who want to leave. Raj, Sally …”

Johan shakes his head. “Do you trust them? Enough to risk Al’s life? Because Ruth and I were planning on taking half a dozen people with us, but one of them betrayed us. They told Isaac. He could have killed us both, but that wouldn’t have satisfied him. He wanted to see me suffer. He wanted to put me on a leash and get me to jump, roll over, beg. He enjoys it, Emma. He gets a kick out of playing with people. Leanne’s the same. You know she was the one who told Frank that you liked him, don’t you?”

“No!”

“Isaac asked me to check on him one night, and he told me. He said she encouraged him to make a move on you because you were too shy to initiate anything. You have to be very careful who you trust, Emma. Very careful indeed.”

The sound of drumming drifts down from the patio. Other instruments, too – guitars, tin whistles and tambourines. I look for Leanne but there are too many people dancing now, spinning and jumping and twirling each other around, blocking my view. Why would she have done that? She can’t have known he would have attacked me. She probably wanted him to make a move on me in public and embarrass me – raise a cheap laugh for her and Daisy. I look back at Johan.

“I don’t trust anyone.”

“Do you trust me?”

“I don’t know.”

He looks at me for several seconds then nods, as though satisfied with my answer. “Let’s go and find Al.”

We keep to the perimeter, walking single file along the fence.

“If anyone sees us” – Johan pauses to look back at me – “we tell them we’re on patrol. If they insinuate we just slept together in one of the huts, we play along with it. Okay?”

I nod. The palm of my hand is burning and blistering from the fire. I couldn’t speak even if I wanted to.

We move quickly as we head up towards the house. Johan strolls ahead, swinging his arms, his head up. He glances over towards the patio as we pass the party, but I keep my own gaze firmly fixed on his back.

Act natural.

Someone screams and my heart jolts with fear, but the sound is followed by the sound of laughter and Paula swearing loudly. Johan doesn’t so much as twitch. Instead, he continues his even-paced march along the curve of the fence past the main gates and around the log pile then turns sharply and slips into the shadows by the side of the house. He draws to a halt underneath the window of Isaac’s study then glances back to check I’m still with him.

“Okay?” he mouths, and I stand beside him, my back pressed against the wall, my heart pounding in my chest.

He doesn’t wait for a reply. Instead, he gestures upwards with his index finger. The main study window is closed but the smaller window above it is open. It’s eight feet up and the opening is tiny, but it’s a way in. It’s the only way in.

Johan interlinks his fingers, arms straight, and nods at me then the window.

“Is Al in there?” I whisper.

He nods then gestures for me to put my foot in his hands. I slip off my flip-flops, put my hands on his shoulders and place my foot in his interlocked fingers. He nods.

One.

Two.

Three.

I’m launched into the air.

I reach for the window and fasten my fingers over the sill. There’s a grunt below me as Johan rearranges his grip on my right foot and pushes. My body jolts upwards a couple of inches, but it’s not enough for me to hook an arm over the window. I’m still too far away.

“Put your left foot on my head,” Johan hisses. “Use me as a step.”

He heaves me up again and my left leg waves wildly in the air as I search for traction. It connects with something solid then slides away. Johan swears under his breath.

“The next time I push, you need to pull, Emma. Pull yourself into the window. Ready? One, two, three.”

He launches me upwards again and I reach up with my right hand. My arm goes through the window but I slide down again before I can hook my armpit over. The sill scrapes my forearm as I slip back down.

“Fuck.”

Johan wraps his arms around my legs and lowers me to the ground. He gestures for me to stay where I am, then edges along the wall and peers round the corner of the house. A couple of seconds later he inches back to me.

“People are starting to drift away from the party. We need to hurry.”

“We’ll have to break the window.” I glance over towards the log pile. “If we hold something soft against the window, it will help deaden the sound.”

Johan follows my gaze, indecision written all over his face as the drumming increases and Kane starts singing again. I don’t wait for him to reply; instead, I sprint towards the log pile, grab the biggest one I can carry and run back to the window.

“Take off your T-shirt then hold this. Careful, there are a couple of rusty nails sticking out of the side.” I wait for him to pull off his T-shirt then exchange it for the log and hold the thin material up to the window, just below the catch. The drumming grows louder, Kieran sings and a woman screams with excitement. “Now!”

There’s a dull thud, a cracking sound and the tinkle of falling glass. Johan taps at the T-shirt and more glass shatters and falls away, littering the floor of Isaac’s study. I pull the T-shirt away. There’s a fist-sized hole in the window. Wordlessly, Johan takes the T-shirt from me, wraps it around his hand and wrist and slips his arm through the hole. He twists his hand around so he can reach the catch. A second later, the window flies open and he swings himself up and through it.

I keep one eye on what’s happening through the study window, one eye on the corner of the house. Every sound from inside Isaac’s study is amplified as Johan drags the desk away from the rug, the legs screeching on the wooden floor.
Come on, come on, come on.

He rolls up the rug and opens the hatch then disappears into the hole.

Come on, Johan. Come on.

I hear the footsteps just as Johan’s blonde head pops up through the hatch, and then a cloud of cigarette smoke drifts towards me, followed by Gabe.

“Gabe!” I throw myself at him as he rounds the corner, and wrap my arms around his neck. The weight of my body knocks him off balance and he stumbles backwards, away from the window.

“Emma?” He pushes me away and looks me up and down. A wry smile lifts the side of his mouth. “Are you pissed?”

I put a hand on his chest, stroke my thumb over the worn material of his T-shirt and smile. “I might be.”

“I heard about you putting your hand in the fire.”

“It was a dare. Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Right.” He moves to walk around me.

“I’ve got a better idea.” I take a step in sync with him, blocking his path. I keep my hand on his chest and lean towards him so our faces are inches apart. “Why don’t we go and talk about it somewhere more private? Somewhere like … I don’t know … the huts?”

“Why go all the way down to the huts? Why not have a conversation right here?” His hands snake around my waist and he pulls me close, pressing his groin into me as his thick, wet tongue searches out mine.

He walks as we kiss, moving me away from the bright lights of the house and into darkness. We stop abruptly as the backs of my thighs make contact with the log pile, and he presses himself into me, forcing me to lie back against the wood. He hitches up my dress and his hand snakes its way up my thigh. I stiffen as his fingers pluck at my knickers, and a wave of panic crashes through me.

I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I can’t. I—

I twist from side to side, but the more I struggle, the more frantic he becomes, grabbing at my breasts with one hand, yanking down my knickers with the other.

Where are Johan and Al?

There is the sound of a zipper being pulled, a low grunt, and then a sound I’ve heard before. The sound of a football being kicked. Only this time it’s followed by a violent crack, like a butcher’s knife cleaving through bone, and Gabe’s lips slip from my mine. They trail down my cheek, striping my skin with saliva as the full weight of his body collapses onto mine. Before I can move, scream or cry, Johan appears behind him. He grips Gabe’s shoulders and hauls him off me, then tosses him roughly to one side. Gabe’s body slips down the log pile and falls to the ground with a soft thump. Johan throws something at the body. It’s the log we used to smash open the window. The three nails on the end are dripping with blood.

Someone leans over me. Someone with pale skin, terrified eyes and bleach-tipped hair clinging to her forehead.

“He’s dead,” Al says. “Gabe’s dead.”