“Well, well, well.” Isaac’s laugh is dry. “Now there’s something I didn’t expect to see.”

He yanks Al away from me. “Dirty dyke!” he chastises, waggling a finger in her face, a dangerous smile on his lips. “You need to wait your bloody turn. And you” – he slips his hand underneath my hair and grips the back of my neck – “I’ve got something I want to show you.”

I catch a glimpse of Al, peering out of the shower cubicle as Isaac angles me towards the doorway to the girls’ dormitory.

“I trust you,” she mouths.

Chapter 37

Chapter 37

“That wasn’t what it looked like.” I try to twist away from Isaac as he leads me through the girls’ dormitory and out onto the walkway, but his grip on the back of my neck is vicelike.

“What did it look like?” he asks, steering me through the hallway and out of the back door.

I don’t know what to say so I say nothing as he marches me across the patio, down the garden and through the orchard. I don’t know how to explain what just happened, because I don’t understand it myself – although, from the sharp pain in my right leg, a pain that increases each time I take a step, I’m fairly certain the kiss was a way to mask the fact that Al slipped something into my pocket.

As the waterfall roars in the distance and we approach the river, I’m gripped with a new terror. What are we doing down here? Does Isaac know I saw what happened with Frank? Did he see me run away?

“Are you ready?” he asks as we cross over the bridge.

“Ready?”

“For your detox.”

My leg spasms with pain as he pulls me towards the huts, and I plunge a hand into my pocket, where the pain is worst. Instead of feeling the soft yield of my cotton shorts, my fingers close over something else. Something cold and hard. The knife Al put there.

“Isaac, no.” I lean back, jamming my heels into the ground, the skin around my wrist twisting as I try to wrench it out of his grip. “I don’t want to.”

He turns the key in the lock. “You don’t know what’s going to happen yet.”

I cry out as he throws open the door to the hut and yanks me inside, but the sound only lasts as long as it takes for him to clamp a muffling hand to my mouth. He holds me against him as he turns the key in the lock with his free hand.

“Emma,” he says as I twist and wriggle and pull and push and attempt to unbalance him. “You need to calm down. I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if I have to.