The air is thumped from my lungs and my body jackknifes as I hit something hard: a tree stump, I realise, turning my head slightly. I lie still for several seconds as the world continues to spin then whimper in pain. Everything hurts.

“Emma?” Johan comes crashing towards me through the undergrowth. “Are you okay?”

He skids to a halt a foot away from me and the colour drains from his face.

“Don’t move. Whatever you do, don’t move.”

I look in the direction he’s looking, but all I can see is a great, black stretch of sky.

“There’s a sheer drop off the edge of the mountain. If you’d fallen ten feet further, you’d have rolled right over the edge. Now we just—” He stiffens and glances behind him as the bushes twitch and crackle. Someone’s coming.

“Oh, thank God.” Al steps out from the undergrowth and doubles over to catch her breath. The air fills with wheezes and whistles.

“We need to get back to the path.” Johan crouches down then inches towards me on his bum, digging his heels into the dry soil to ground himself. “Take my hand.”

I hook my left arm around the tree stump to steady myself, and twist towards him, reaching out with my right hand.

“Ready?” He wraps one hand around my wrist and steadies himself with his other. “On three, I’m going to yank you towards me. I need you to dig your heels into the ground to give you leverage.”

“Okay.”

“On three. One, two, three!”

Johan pulls, I push, and my body jolts with pain as I’m hauled back up the slope. We collapse in a heap at the entrance to the undergrowth, both of us on our backs, sucking in air, wincing with pain. When I get my breath back I crawl over to Al, who’s sitting on the other side of the clearing, her head in her hands. I touch her gently on the knee but she doesn’t look up.

“We can’t hang around here,” Johan says as he forces himself up into a sitting position. “And we can’t risk carrying on down the steps, because we’re sitting ducks. We’ll have to pick our way through the undergrowth instead. It’s more dangerous because there’s no path but—”

“Dangerous?” says a voice above our heads. “Who’s dangerous?”

Isaac steps through the undergrowth towards us, a dangerous smile on his face and a nine-inch kitchen knife in his hand, the blade glinting in the moonlight. A second later, Daisy appears beside him, cheeks pink, the indigo scarf wrapped around her head now askew, her eyes bright with excitement.