“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.”