The Lie

Daisy puts her mug down on the chest of drawers. “Go on.”

“There are three main issues here.” Leanne pauses, relishing the fact that she’s got a rapt audience, then holds up her index finger. “One: Al is physically stalking Simone and Gem. She sat outside Gem’s house all night last night – literally on the front doorstep – waiting for Gem to come out. Simone called the police.”

“Shit.”

Leanne raises her eyebrows. “I know. Apparently they just had a ‘friendly word’ and told her to move on, but if she does it again … Anyway.” She raises a second finger. “Two: Al is stalking Simone on the internet. Now she’s lost her job, she’s spending every bloody second on her laptop. I was round there yesterday and when she went to the loo, I took a quick look at the screen. She was on some kind of forum about hacking Hotmail accounts. And three,” she adds before I can interrupt again, “well, it kind of ties in with one and two. She’s spending too much time on her own. We need to keep an eye on her, but none of us can do that twenty-four seven, unless …” She pauses dramatically. “… we take her on holiday.”

“Yes!” Daisy’s silver bracelets rattle as she punches the air. “Let’s go to Ibiza. I love it there. I know a guy who used to work for Manumission who could get us free tickets.”

“Did you shag him?”

She gives me the middle finger.

“That’s a yes, then,” I say, and she laughs.

“So? Ibiza, then? Ian will give me the time off, and I’ve got a month until my next runner job. Whoop, whoop! Ibiza, here we come.” The bed squeaks in protest as Daisy bounces up and down.

“How long for?” I ask. “I’ve got three weeks’ holiday left but I was hoping to save one of those weeks for Christmas.”

“Quit. Honestly, Emma. It’ll be the best decision you ever make. Go to Ibiza and get another job when you come back. You can afford it. You’ve got three months’ emergency money saved up, you said as much last week.”

“Actually …” Leanne tentatively raises a hand but Daisy ignores her.

“Go on, Emma, it’s for Al. She’d love a couple of weeks in Ibiza. She went last year, didn’t she?”

“Didn’t she go with Simone?”

“How’s that a problem? She won’t be there this time. Will she?”

“I don’t know, but she’ll have lots of memories of going there with Simone, and—”

“Emma!” Leanne snaps. “Can I get a word in, please?”

“Why are you having a go at me? I wasn’t the only one talking.”

“As I was saying” – she peers over her specs at Daisy – “I think we should go on holiday, but we should go to a place where, a) she’s a long way from Simone, and b) she hasn’t got access to the internet, and c) she get can her head together.”

“Like where?”

“Nepal,” Leanne says.

“Where?”

“Nepal! It’s in Asia, near Tibet.”

Daisy wrinkles her nose. “Why would we want to go there?”

“There’s an amazing retreat in the mountains called Ekanta Yatra. My yoga teacher told me about it. Look!” She flashes her mobile at Daisy then taps the screen. “Amazing fresh, home-cooked food, yoga, a river you can swim in, a waterfall, massages, facials. We could spend a day in Kathmandu then do two weeks at the retreat, then we could fly to a place called Chitwan and go on a jungle safari. It would be the adventure of a lifetime.”

Leanne’s face is aglow. I’ve never seen her look so energised; she normally looks so wan and tired. She’s desperately thin, and Daisy and I have speculated several times about whether or not she might have an eating disorder.

“Could I see that?” I reach out a hand for her mobile. She presses it into my palm without saying a word.

I scroll through the website. It would seem Ekanta Yatra’s run by a group of Westerners who met when they were travelling through Asia and decided to start a “retreat from the world” nestled in the Annapurna mountain range, an area popular with hikers. It’s beautiful, and the idea of spending a couple of weeks being pampered, reading novels and swimming in a crystal-clear river appeals, but …

“There’s no Wi-Fi,” I say.

“Is that a problem?”

“Well, yeah. I’ve started applying for new jobs and I won’t be able to check my email.”

Leanne slips off the bed and takes five steps across the room to the kettle. She picks it up and refills it from the tap. “You don’t have to come, Emma. No one’s forcing you.”

It’s not that Leanne and I actively dislike each other; we are friends but only when we’re with Daisy or Al. We don’t go for drinks together or have text message marathons. We’ll laugh at each other’s jokes and buy each other birthday presents, but we’ve never developed any kind of closeness or warmth. I don’t know why that is. Maybe it’s because I didn’t like the way she looked me up and down the first time we met. Maybe it’s because I forgot to get her a drink when I went to the bar to get a round. Or maybe it’s because, sometimes, when you meet someone, you get a vibe that they just don’t like you, and that vibe never quite disappears.

“I’ll bloody force her,” Daisy says, jumping off the bed and onto my lap. “You’ll come, won’t you, Emma?” She cups her hands around my face and nods it up and down. “See, look, she’s saying yes, she says she’ll come.”

“It sounds expensive.”

“No more expensive than a couple of weeks in Ibiza,” Leanne says as she pours boiling hot water into three mugs.

“Al’s lost her job,” I say. “How’s she going to afford to go?”

“I’ll pay for her,” Daisy says. “Or, rather, Dad will.” She jumps off me and back onto the bed, but I catch her smile slip. I don’t think she’s ever forgiven her dad for sending her away to prep school when she needed him most. She was only six years old, and her little sister had died tragically a year earlier. Shortly after her baby sister’s death, unable to cope with the grief, her mum killed herself. Daisy’s dad, a City trader, justified the decision to send her to boarding school by saying it would give her life some stability, plus a mother figure in the shape of a house mistress, but, to Daisy, it was like being abandoned all over again. It’s why she’s so ruthless when it comes to ending friendships and relationships. It’s better to leave than be left, no matter how painful the separation might be.

“Well? Are you up for it or not?” Leanne turns to face us, a steaming mug in each hand. She’s smiling again but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. She squeezes past me to reach the chest of drawers. Tea slops onto the pine top as she sets the mugs down. “I thought we could go next month.”

“Next month?” I catch Daisy’s eye but she shrugs. She’s got Ian, her boss, wrapped around her little finger. He lets her work in The King’s Arms whenever she’s in between runner jobs, so he won’t bat an eyelid if she suddenly announces she’s off on holiday for three weeks. And Leanne’s an aromatherapy massage therapist who rents a room in a beauty salon, so she can take off whatever time she likes. Geoff won’t make escaping to Nepal for three weeks so easy for me.

“You are entitled to time off,” Daisy says, as though she’s just read my mind. “Or you could just quit.”

“Daisy …”

“Fine, fine.” She holds out her hands as though in surrender. “But if you don’t come, I’ll never talk to you again.”

“Is that a promise?”

“Ha, ha.”

“Is that a yes, then?” Leanne twists her hands in front of her. “Are we going to Nepal?”

“Only if we can convince Al.”

Daisy grins. “Leave that to me.”

Chapter 6

I have no idea why Al and Leanne are laughing. It’s our first night in Nepal, the bar’s rammed and, as Leanne beat me to the last seat at our table, I’m half squatting, half leaning against the low wall that separates the seating area from the rock band. I say rock band but the music the four Nepalese musicians are playing is like no rock I’ve ever heard. The drummer and the bassist are out of time, and the guitarist sounds like he’s playing a completely different song. Daisy nods at me from across the table, then sticks out her tongue and holds her hands in the air, folding her fingers into devil’s horns like a blonde, perfectly made-up Gene Simmons.

“Yeah!” she shouts, then whips her hair back and forth as she head-bangs to a guitar solo that would make Jimmy Page weep. I reach for my beer as the table wobbles precariously.

“Woah!” Daisy says, rubbing the back of her neck and looking towards the band for a reaction. The guitarist gives her the thumbs up and shouts something unintelligible.

Leanne squeals with laughter as though it’s the funniest thing she’s ever seen, while Al, to my left, drains her bottle and reaches for her mobile. There’s no Wi-Fi in the bar, but that hasn’t stopped her checking for texts every couple of minutes.

“Shots!” Daisy shouts, jumping to her feet. “Then drinking games. Fuzzy Duck, or I Have Never?”

“Fuzzy Duck!” Leanne says, pushing back her chair to stand up.

Daisy dismisses her with a wave of the hand. “I’ll get these; you can get the next lot.”

Silence descends on our table as the band stops for a break, and Daisy weaves her way through the bar, her denim shorts riding low on her hips, the strap of her red bra escaping from beneath her black vest top and resting on her shoulder. Every man she passes glances up at her. She’s the only woman I know who sashays as she walks.

Leanne nudges Al. “Have you seen that couple snogging over by the window? She’s got her hands down his shorts. It’s gross.”

“Yeah,” Al says, without looking up from her mobile.

It’s like she can sense that everything we’ve done tonight – the head-banging, the jokes, the observations, the drinks – has been for show, to try and cheer her up and distract her from thinking about Simone. It hasn’t worked. Al’s normally right up there with Daisy, telling stories and bantering, but she’s crawled into her shell since we first discussed coming to Nepal a month ago, and no amount of cajoling or piss-taking will tempt her back out.

“I’m going to the loo.” She stands up, shoves her phone into the pocket of her cargo trousers and shuffles away.

Leanne and I watch her go.

“Looking forward to Pokhara tomorrow?” Leanne asks.

“I can’t wait. I need a massage like you wouldn’t believe. How long’s the bus journey again?”

“About six hours.”

“Wow.”

“I noticed a little corner shop just down from our guest house. We should grab some water and snacks and things after breakfast.”

“Good idea.”

We lapse into silence as I gaze around the bar. We’re on the first floor of a building on the main stretch of Thamel, the tourist district of Kathmandu, and the sound of car horns drifts through the open windows. The walls are painted a deep red and decorated with fairy lights and paintings of temples and mountain ranges.

“Guys!” Daisy bounces back into view with a tray bearing eight shot glasses in her hands, just as Al rejoins us at the table. “There’s a wall over by the bar that loads of people have signed. We need to write something. Come on!”

“I don’t know what to write.” Daisy bites down on the piece of chalk in her hand then cringes as a squeaking sound fills the air.

“I do.” The tip of Al’s tongue pokes out of the corner of her mouth as she drags the chalk over the wall. The whole expanse has been painted with blackboard paint, and it’s filled with sketches, messages, dates and obscenities.

“Fuck you, Simone!” Leanne rolls her eyes as she reads aloud what Al has written. “Seriously, Al, you can’t leave that up there.”

“Why not?” Al folds her arms over her chest and stares admiringly at her handiwork.

“Because it’s really negative. This holiday is supposed to be about new starts.”

“Okay, then.” Al pulls her sleeve over her hand and rubs at the wall. “There you go.”

“Fuck?” Leanne says, and everyone laughs. “That’s it?”

“That’s the best you’re getting out of me. Your turn, Emma.” She hands me the chalk.

“Oh, God.” I look at Daisy, who’s still deliberating what to write, a pale chalky patch now smeared on her bottom lip. “I don’t know what to write, either.”

“Give it to me, then.” Leanne snatches the chalk from my hand and, before I can object, she steps towards the wall and starts scribbling. When she steps back, there’s a self-satisfied grin on her face.

“What the hell?” Al squints at what she’s written. It’s longer than the things other people have written and, to fit it all in, she’s had to twist the sentence over and around other scribbles like a snake.

“It’s a Maya Angelou quote,” Leanne says. “‘The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.’”

I have to fight not to roll my eyes. Trust Leanne to be pseudo-deep when everyone else has drawn dicks and bollocks and written things like “I love beer” on the wall.

“Okay, I’ve got it.” I twist the chalk from her fingers and read aloud as I write. “Emma, Daisy, Al, Leanne: the adventure of a lifetime.”

Daisy steps forward and nudges me out of the way. She rubs out “the adventure of a lifetime” and replaces it with “best friends forever”.

“There.” She stands back and pulls the three of us into an awkward hug. “Perfect.”

Al rummages around in her backpack, pulls out two cans of lager and chucks one at me. We left the bar half an hour ago and we’re back at the guest house, ostensibly to sleep, but Al seems to have other ideas.

I catch the can of beer. “What’s this for?”

She settles back on her bed and kicks off her trainers. “Not being a dick.”

“What do you mean?”

“Tonight. It was like the Daisy and Leanne Show. Well, the Daisy Show, with a one-woman audience.”

“They were trying to cheer you up.” I pull the tab on my beer and take a swig. We drew lots to decide who’d share with whom in the guest house. Leanne wanted to share with Al, and for me and Daisy to share, but Daisy thought it would be fun to “mix things up a bit”, especially as we’ll have to share rooms at the retreat and in the jungle, too.

“I know, and I would have laughed if it wasn’t so sad.”

“Al!”

She smirks at me over the lip of her can. “Come on, Emma, admit it. I could see you cringing.”

“Well.” I shrug. “Maybe a bit. I felt like I should have held up a neon sign pointing to our table that said, ‘We Are Having FUN!’”

“Best friends forever!” Al bursts out laughing and the tension I’ve felt all evening finally dissipates.

There’s a knock at the door and we both freeze.

“Come in,” Al shouts.

The door swings open and Daisy’s blonde head peers around the doorway.

“Are you two bitches having fun without me?” She points at our beers with mock horror. “And you’re drinking the duty free!”

Al reaches into her backpack and chucks a beer at Daisy. “Join in, let’s be friends forever!”

She cackles with laughter and the sound fills the room.

Chapter 7

Present Day

“Jane? Have you got a minute?” I’m elbow deep in dried dog food when Sheila calls my name. She’s standing in the doorway of the supplies room with a woman I’ve never seen before. Unlike Sheila, who’s nearly six feet tall and all bosom and bum, the woman standing next to her is tiny. She’s barely five feet tall and her Green Fields’ standard issue navy polo shirt hangs flat from her shoulders, skimming her non-existent chest. Her grey trousers nearly cover the toes of her black trainers.

“Of course.” I stand up, tip the scoop into one of the twenty metal bowls on the table to my right, then wipe my hands on my trousers and cross the room.

“Jane, this is Angharad, one of the new volunteers. Angharad, this is Jane; she runs the dog section.”

“Hi!” I smile at the newcomer. From a distance, she looked about nineteen, but, up close, I can see she’s nearer my age. She tucks a strand of her neat bob behind an ear as she smiles up at me.

“Hi.” She holds out a hand and I shake it.

“Angharad’s between jobs at the moment,” Sheila says, “so she thought she’d do a bit of volunteering while she’s looking for something permanent. She particularly requested the dog section – a big dog lover, apparently.”

“Great.” I smile at Angharad.

“Okay, so, I’ll leave you to it, then.” Sheila nods then turns to leave.

“You said you came to work by bike; do you live nearby?” Angharad asks as we speed past Freddy and head towards the wild boar pen up near the top field.

“In a cottage down the road. I can see Green Fields from my back garden.”

“Wow, that is close. Have you worked here long?”

“Three years, give or take.”

I’m giving her the official guided tour of the sanctuary. She’ll already have been shown around when she attended the volunteer evening, but I’d rather chat as we walk than stand opposite each other in the silence of the supplies room.

“Where did you train?”

“Bicton, near Exeter. I did a Foundation Degree in Animal Science Management and Welfare when I was twenty-five.”

“You were a mature student, then?”

I can tell by the expression on her face that she’s waiting for me to go into more detail, to explain what I did before my degree and why I waited until I was twenty-five to study animal welfare, but I ignore her unspoken questions. Instead I point at the pigs. They greet us with a series of increasingly noisy grunts and squeals as we approach them.

“Bill and Ben. I shouldn’t imagine you’ll have anything to do with them if you’re going to spend most of your time in the dog compound, but watch out for them if anyone asks you to help out. They’re half wild boar,” I explain. “We’re not sure what they’re crossed with, and they’re a damned sight more dangerous than they look. Clever, too.”

Angharad gestures towards the multiple locks, clips and chains on their pen. “That’s a lot of locks.”

“They’ve escaped several times since they arrived, but I think we’ve outfoxed them. They’re vicious buggers, too. Turn your back on them for a second and they’ll bite you. That’s why we always lock them in their shed if we’re cleaning their run, and vice versa. They locked me in, once.”

She laughs and I’m astonished by the way it transforms her. Gone is the studious look of concentration that’s been etched on her face since we were introduced. Her laugh’s a snorty chuckle, so infectious I find myself laughing, too.

“You’re kidding?” she says as the laughter dies away.

“I’m not. I was cleaning their shed on my own, the door was closed, and one of them flipped the stable catch over with his nose, locking me in. I had to reach over with a broom and flip it back to get out.”

“You don’t think they did it on purpose?”

“Who knows? I don’t know much about boars and pigs. At least with dogs you can predict how they’re likely to react, most of the time, anyway.”

“If only it was that easy with people.” She gives me a sideways glance. I don’t meet her gaze.

“Quite.” I gesture for her to follow me back down the track. “They’re harder to figure out than the pigs.”

“So?” Sheila asks as I reach into the fridge for my lunch box. “How’s she getting on?”

“Angharad?” I sit down on one of the hard plastic chairs that line the staffroom wall, and pop open a Tupperware lid. The scent of warm cheese and tomato sandwiches drifts, unappealingly, upwards. I should have taken Will up on his offer of a slice of cheesecake for my packed lunch. “She’s okay. She was pretty quiet when she started, but now she’s warmed up there’s no shutting her up. She’s full of questions. Gets on with her work, though. She didn’t complain when she had to clean up Jasper’s sick or spend an hour in the laundry washing blankets and bedding.”

“You think she’ll be back tomorrow?”

“I think so. She did seem keen to get stuck in.”

I take a bite of my sandwich as Sheila taps away at the computer in a corner of the room, but then subtly spit it into a tissue. The bread is soggy from the damp tomato. Not that I’ve got much of an appetite, anyway. Other than a couple of bites of cheesecake, I’ve barely eaten since yesterday morning.

“She was very keen to work with you, you know.”

“Sorry?”

“Angharad,” Sheila says. “When she came to the volunteer night, she specifically requested that she work with you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. She asked who worked in the dog compound, and when I listed everyone’s names, she said, ‘I’d like to work with Jane, if I could.’”

I look up sharply. “Why would she say that?”

Sheila stops typing and glances at me over her shoulder. “Who knows? Maybe she saw your name in the local paper when we had the fundraising? Maybe you helped one of her friends adopt a dog? Your guess is as good as mine.”

The computer bleeps and Sheila twists back to look at it then swears under her breath.

“Why do people do that?”

“Do what?” I wrap the cellophane back around my sandwich and put it back in the box.

“Enter spam into the contact form on our website. What’s the point? It’s not like I’m going to click on their stupid impotence pill links, or whatever. I mean, look, this one’s just ridiculous; it doesn’t even make sense. ‘Daisy’s not dead.’ What does that even mean? Is that an animal? Wasn’t there a ferret called Daisy?”

The Tupperware box clatters to the floor as I stand up. I cross the room as though in a dream and peer over Sheila’s shoulder at the computer. The email software is open.

“See?” She points at the screen. “There it is. ‘Daisy’s not dead.’ That’s all it says. Weird, isn’t it?

“Jane? Where are you going? What’s wrong?” Her voice follows me as I run from the room and head for the toilet, one hand clutched to my throat, the other pressed to my spasming stomach. “Jane?”

Chapter 8

Five Years Earlier

“You should have seen him!” Daisy gets up from her chair and mimes running alongside a car, her coat caught in a closed door. “His stubby little legs pounding the pavement, his fat face bright red, and Emma hanging out of the window screaming, ‘Stop the car! Stop!’”

She finishes her story with a flourish and there’s a beat – a split-second pause as Al and Leanne glance over at me – and then the silence is destroyed by an explosion of laughter.

Daisy continues to scream “Stop, stop!” at the top of her voice while she jumps up and down, her wedge sandals thumping the patio, a near-empty bottle of red wine in one hand, a full glass slopping around in the other.

I take a sip of my own wine and stare into the firepit as it pops and crackles, watching sparks leap into the air. It’s our second night in Pokhara, and we’re sitting on the patio in our swimsuits. Damp towels lie at our feet like sleeping dogs, the sky is a black blanket speckled with holes, and the night is alive with the sound of motorbikes, car horns and cicadas. This was supposed to be a treat – a couple of nights’ luxury in a hilltop Pokhara hotel – before we hike up the Annapurna range to Ekanta Yatra tomorrow. I don’t know if it’s the humidity, the really shitty email Geoff sent me the day before the holiday, questioning my ability to do my job, or the fact that Daisy’s spent three days getting laughs at my expense, but I’m finding it hard to join in with the frivolity. Back home, I could retreat to my flat in North London when things got a bit overwhelming, but the four of us haven’t spent a second apart since we got here.

“Oh, come on, Emma!” Daisy shouts. “Cheer up!”

“I’m not miserable.”

“Have you told your face that?”

She laughs and glances at Al as if to say, “Right?” but Al doesn’t respond. If anything, her smile slips, just the tiniest bit. This is the drunkest any of us have seen Daisy in a while.

“I’m fine, Daisy,” I say. “I’ve just heard that story before, that’s all.”