“No.” She extends the knife towards me, but her hand’s shaking. “You’re not helping him.”

“Daisy. Don’t do this.”

“He killed Isaac!” Her face is pale in the moonlight, her eyes bloodshot and puffy in a pool of dark, smudged eye make-up. “You saw. You saw what just happened. He’s down there! Isaac!” She takes a step nearer the edge and peers down into the darkness. “Isaac?”

“Come with us,” Al says softly. “Come back to Pokhara. This … all this … it’s fucked with our heads. You’re not thinking straight. None of us are.”

“I am.”

“That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it?” She takes a step back from the edge, the knife a raised barrier between her and us. “I’m being myself for the first time in my life. You don’t know me, Al, not really. Do you think I like being Party Girl Daisy? Do you have any idea how tiring it is? How boring to have to entertain people all the time? Seven years we’ve been friends, and you still insist on keeping me in the same little ‘wild, crazy Daisy’ box that you put me in at uni.”

“And I’m the one that keeps getting dumped, and Leanne’s the private one, and Emma’s the neurotic one. We’re all in boxes, Daisy. That’s what happens in friendship. It shouldn’t, but it does,” Al chips in.

“You do know that Leanne is Isaac’s half-sister?” I say.

Al gawps at me but a strange half-smile twists Daisy’s mouth. “Actually, I do. No need to look so surprised, Emma. What’s the matter – disappointed that I’m not horrified? Who cares if they’re related? I think it’s great that they’ve found each other. You think you’ve been so bloody clever, manipulating people into feeling sorry for you, but Isaac’s told me everything. He told me how you’d tried to turn him against me, how he liked me right from the start but you’d tricked him into defending you from Frank, how he’s never met anyone like me before, how much he loves me—”

“It’s bullshit. All of it.”

“He loves me.”

“He doesn’t love anyone.”

“Urrgh.” Johan groans in pain and I take another step up the slope towards him. His skin is grey in the half-light, his eyes are closed, and the pool of blood around him has grown bigger. If we don’t do something, he’ll die.

“Oh, no you don’t!” Daisy steps between us and raises her hand so the knife is pointed at my chest. “No one’s helping him until we’ve found Isaac. Isaac? Can you hear me? Isaac!”

“Daisy, he’s dead. You said as much yourself. That’s a two-hundred-metre drop. Please” – I reach for her – “you need to come with us. You need to trust me.”