“I can’t wait. I need a massage like you wouldn’t believe. How long’s the bus journey again?”

“About six hours.”

“Wow.”

“I noticed a little corner shop just down from our guest house. We should grab some water and snacks and things after breakfast.”

“Good idea.”

We lapse into silence as I gaze around the bar. We’re on the first floor of a building on the main stretch of Thamel, the tourist district of Kathmandu, and the sound of car horns drifts through the open windows. The walls are painted a deep red and decorated with fairy lights and paintings of temples and mountain ranges.

“Guys!” Daisy bounces back into view with a tray bearing eight shot glasses in her hands, just as Al rejoins us at the table. “There’s a wall over by the bar that loads of people have signed. We need to write something. Come on!”

“I don’t know what to write.” Daisy bites down on the piece of chalk in her hand then cringes as a squeaking sound fills the air.

“I do.” The tip of Al’s tongue pokes out of the corner of her mouth as she drags the chalk over the wall. The whole expanse has been painted with blackboard paint, and it’s filled with sketches, messages, dates and obscenities.

“Fuck you, Simone!” Leanne rolls her eyes as she reads aloud what Al has written. “Seriously, Al, you can’t leave that up there.”

“Why not?” Al folds her arms over her chest and stares admiringly at her handiwork.

“Because it’s really negative. This holiday is supposed to be about new starts.”

“Okay, then.” Al pulls her sleeve over her hand and rubs at the wall. “There you go.”

“Fuck?” Leanne says, and everyone laughs. “That’s it?”

“That’s the best you’re getting out of me. Your turn, Emma.” She hands me the chalk.

“Oh, God.” I look at Daisy, who’s still deliberating what to write, a pale chalky patch now smeared on her bottom lip. “I don’t know what to write, either.”

“Give it to me, then.” Leanne snatches the chalk from my hand and, before I can object, she steps towards the wall and starts scribbling. When she steps back, there’s a self-satisfied grin on her face.

“What the hell?” Al squints at what she’s written. It’s longer than the things other people have written and, to fit it all in, she’s had to twist the sentence over and around other scribbles like a snake.

“It’s a Maya Angelou quote,” Leanne says. “‘The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.’”

I have to fight not to roll my eyes. Trust Leanne to be pseudo-deep when everyone else has drawn dicks and bollocks and written things like “I love beer” on the wall.