“Well, that’s something.” Daisy rolls her eyes and walks back into the girls’ dormitory. She stands beside the mattress she’s been allocated in the corner of the room and nudges it with the toe of her flip-flop. “At least we had proper beds at boarding school. God knows what’s going to crawl over me in the middle of the night.”

“Don’t be like that.” Leanne, sitting cross-legged on the mattress beside her, slaps her guidebook shut.

“Yeah, come on, Dais.” Al looks up from the cigarette she’s rolling. “It’s not like we didn’t expect to rough it. We’re in Nepal, not the Hilton.”

“Roughing it is fine. Sharing a room with you guys is fine. But this?” She gestures at rough, cherry-red wooden walls and the row of mattresses on each side of the room. “It’s like a sheep shed, piling all the women into one room together. God knows who we’re sharing with.”

“Daisy …” I move to put an arm around her then change my mind. The best way to deal with her when she’s in this kind of mood is to ignore it. She’s barely said a word since Isaac left us in the meditation room – not when Cera showed us the rustic dining room, the basic kitchen, the yoga patio, the orchard, the vegetable patch, the goat enclosure, the chicken pen or the massage huts – and she was the only one of us not to squeal with excitement when we were led down to the river and the waterfall. The only time the vaguest flicker of interest registered on her face was when we returned to the house and Cera gestured to the walkway to the right and said it led to the boys’ dormitories. It vanished when we were led to the left. It’s astonishing, really. We travel halfway around the world to one of the most breathtakingly beautiful mountain ranges in Asia, and she’s in a huff because Isaac didn’t flirt back with her. I’d laugh if she wasn’t my best friend.

“I bet the other women snore,” Daisy says. “And smell.”

“Well, you’ll be in good company, then,” Al says. “I couldn’t sleep for all your farting and snoring last night.”

“Sod off, Al,” Daisy says, but the edges of her lips twitch into a smile. She yanks her sleeping bag from its sheath, lies down on top of the mattress and starts rummaging around in her backpack. “Who fancies a shot of lemon voddy? I think we’ve earned it.”

Everyone holds up a hand.

“Have you seen this?” Leanne waves the welcome pack in the air. “There are three yoga sessions a day, right after meditation. I’m thinking I’ll do two a day – one in the morning, one in the evening.”