A gasp catches in my throat. “That’s not true. Frank attacked me.”

“They said you led him on, Emma.”

“They’re lying. Daisy was there, Leanne too.”

She shakes her head. “All they saw was you sitting on the ground, Frank unconscious and bleeding and Isaac sitting beside him.”

“Al, you know I’d never lie about something like that. You know!”

She looks at me steadily, and at last her brown eyes soften in concern. “Of course I do.”

“Oh, my God.” I stumble backwards and she has to grip my hand to stop me from falling. “Why would you do that? Why would you put me through that?”

“Because” – she gestures for me to sit on the grass, then lowers herself down, too, her hand still on mine – “Leanne is convinced. I don’t know who told her, and she refuses to say, but they did a bloody good job of convincing her it’s true. She said she can never forgive you, not after she shared what happened to her as a teenager. She said it took a lot of courage to admit to being raped, and she can’t believe you’d lie about something like that.”

“But I didn’t! I can’t believe she’d start a rumour about that without talking to me first.”

“Actually” – Al lets go of my hand and runs her fingers back and forth in the grass – “Daisy started the rumour.”

“What?”

“She’s acting like the two of you are competing to ‘get Isaac’.” She makes quotation marks in the air with her free hand. “She believes you were getting it on with Frank, and then, when you saw Isaac coming, you pushed him away. She didn’t actually say you cried rape, but …”

I can’t take it in. It doesn’t feel real. Daisy’s my best friend, was my best friend. She knows me. She knows everything about me. She can’t believe I’d do something that awful, that immoral. I can’t believe it. I won’t.

“Did you actually hear her say that, Al?”

“Yeah …” Al touches me on the shoulder. “Emma, Daisy’s not herself. She’s bought into Isaac’s philosophical crap about attachment and detachment, and she’s taking it out on you. I don’t know why but she’s got it into her head that you’re the reason she’s unhappy, and that she needs to distance herself from you. The sooner we all get out of here, the better. My ankle’s nearly better and Johan reckons the worst of the monsoon is almost over. We can try to leave again in a couple of days – we’re due to leave soon, anyway – things will have died down a bit by then.”

“No.” I stand up. “I’m not waiting that long.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m going to get Isaac to tell everyone exactly what happened.”