“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.