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What the hell are we going to do now?

Her time in Peru had at least taught her a few of the basics: she knew how risky it could be to trek near a hill or a slope after a decent dose of rain, to risk disturbing a mound of earth that had been pelted with water for hours on end.

And despite what Paola had said about the storm being not so bad , she’d been up half the night; she’d heard the storm battering her window.

Why had she thought they’d all be fine walking out here today?

They needed to get out of here; she needed to get out of here.

Come on. I said I’d be able to guide them. I need to stay in control.

‘OK, everyone, let’s try and stay calm,’ she said. ‘We’ll just need to find a different way back – it might take us a bit longer, but we’ll manage it.’

Naya shook her head. ‘There’s no way Mira can walk right now – especially if it’s going to take longer to get back. I really think we just need to use that satellite phone and call for help. Carly, you were looking for it before – did you find it? That’s our best option.’

Carly sifted her hand through her bag, her fingers curled around the hefty phone with its solid antenna. She pulled it out and waved it to the others.

‘Thank goodness,’ said Naya. ‘Does anyone know how to use one of these?’

Scott nodded. ‘I’ve used one before – on a work trip back home, monitoring conditions in a pretty remote area of one of the national parks. We just need to switch it on, and it should pick up a signal. Then we call 911 – that will get us through to the emergency services here.’

Carly nodded, held her finger down on the phone’s red ‘on’ switch. After a moment, the screen lit up, flashed the word ‘MENU’. Scott peered at the screen over her shoulder. He frowned.

‘It’s not showing any signal,’ he said. ‘Let me see...’ He took the device from Carly’s hand, started to walk away from the shelter of the tree where they’d laid Mira down and towards the open expanse of the clearing.

He lifted the phone up towards the sky, squinting.

‘I can’t seem to find a bar. I don’t get it – the thing should be picking up a signal outside the line of trees here – it must be the cloud cover.

’ Sure enough, despite the end to the rainfall, there were still thick, dark clouds swirling above the tops of the trees.

A loud, urgent beep emitted from the phone.

‘Shit,’ said Scott. ‘It’s saying it needs charging – that can’t be right. Why wasn’t it charged already?’

Fuck – we should really have checked it was fully charged before we left. Carly watched as Scott shook the phone, his fist wrapped around it. There were touches of pink on his cheeks; his brows were furrowed together.

‘What a piece of crap!’ he yelled.

‘OK, deep breaths now,’ she said, walking over to him, taking the phone out of his hands.

She noticed the screen was off now; how has it already lost its charge ?

She groaned. ‘Right, this is hopeless. If the satellite phone isn’t an option, we need to try and find another way back to the house.

It’s not far – we’ll be fine. Let’s take a look at the map.

’ Carly reached down into her backpack, pulled the map out and unfolded it, started to study it.

‘I’m sorry, Carly, but I don’t think Mira can walk anytime soon,’ Naya said, interrupting Carly’s focus.

‘Well, let’s separate then – two of us can set off, find a way back to the house and get Paola to call for an ambulance? The others stay here with Mira and wait for help,’ said Ben.

‘I really think we should stick together,’ said Scott. ‘We’re much safer as a group. I’d feel better if we were all in the same place, not stumbling around out here in pairs and threes. And we’ve got that knife that Ben brought – it’ll help us, cutting back the branches on a different path.’

‘No, Scott. Ben’s... right,’ breathed Mira. ‘There’s... no way I can walk. Scott, Ben – you two go, and the other two stay with me?’

Carly frowned. Mira was still recovering; it would be tough for her to walk the whole way back this evening. But it was a basic rule of outdoor survival: safety in numbers.

‘Well, how about this. I could carry you, or at the very least, prop you up,’ said Scott. ‘I’d need to rest now and then, but I’m strong enough...’

‘No, that’ll only slow us down!’ said Ben. ‘Surely the most important thing is to get back as fast as we can, so we can call for help for Mira?’

Carly felt herself edging backwards, map in hand, away from the group, closer to the water’s edge.

The last thing she felt like doing was diffusing an argument.

There was a reason she’d never wanted to go into couples’ therapy or group treatment – the dynamics between people were so messy .

All that projection from past hurt, past trauma, past relationships – usually people’s very earliest ones – muddying the water. It was way too much hard work.

People often assumed that, because Carly was a therapist, she lived and breathed other people’s problems. That she’d automatically start analysing them from the moment they met, pulling apart their childhoods, their deeply buried neuroses.

The assumption pissed her off for a whole bunch of reasons, but two in particular: firstly, the fact that it was wholly unethical, a breach of professional boundaries.

To start digging around inside someone’s head, working out how they ticked, when they hadn’t agreed to it?

Sometimes, yes, it happened instinctively – before she could stop herself, she’d start filling in the blanks about someone, like she had when she’d first met the others yesterday. But she never meant to.

And the other point was a more mundane one: people, for the most part, just really weren’t that interesting .

When you’d been in the healing field for more than ten years, like Carly had, the truth was that people tended to fit into certain patterns – the same patterns, over and over – based on how they’d been treated in the first two years of their life. Anxious, avoidant or secure.

You figured out which one of those styles they fit into, and you could predict how people would behave in almost any situation.

From those earliest years of life, you could work out – with terrifying degrees of accuracy – whether or not someone would be likely to become a depressed alcoholic or a healthy, happy success.

Marry young and live together blissfully to old age, or go through a bitter divorce.

Have secure, well-adjusted children or unconsciously pass a heap of trauma onto the next generation.

That sort of knowledge took the mystery out of life a bit.

It was worth it when sometimes, if you were good at your job – and Carly very much hoped that she was good at it – you helped someone change and find ways to be happier.

But really, no wonder she’d got fed up with her job; with people in general, sometimes. It’s all so bloody predictable.

Robyn was the exception to that, of course. Fuck, she missed her so bloody much. They always had such a laugh together. They could crack each other up with a single look half the time – it was one of the reasons Carly fell for her, their sense of humour being so perfectly in sync.

It wasn’t just that, though: Robyn had intrigued her, surprised her, even.

From the first day they met, as well as fancying the pants off her, Carly had wanted to get inside her head, to understand how she worked.

And it was different, so different to how she’d felt about all her ex-girlfriends: usually, as soon as she got to know someone better, she lost interest. With Robyn, it was as if the more she knew, the more she wanted to know.

She could never have known enough, really. That was how it felt.

Hannah was intriguing too, in a different kind of way.

Her ideas about alternative medicine as the path to healing; about spiritual cures for physical and psychological ailments; everything she’d been able to create here and online to offer people that.

Her charisma; the power she had over people.

Carly wished deeply for a moment that Hannah were here now, so she could talk to her more about it, about everything she believed.

Just like she’d said she wanted to do in the video she made.

‘Carly?’ Naya’s voice came floating towards her.

She snapped back to the present. Damn it.

They were still arguing about what to do – they needed her.

Someone had to make a decision, and it seemed like no one else was capable of doing it.

She rubbed at the spot between her eyes.

She couldn’t hang around over here, by the water, much longer; it was starting to look weird.

She needed to stop worrying about whether they’d see her as therapist, friend or leader.

She just had to do what needed to be done.

Carly headed back to the group. ‘Guys, we’ve got no choice,’ she said.

‘We’ve got to try and find our way back – using a different path, if needs be.

’ Her voice sounded more confident than she felt, but she knew this was her role: she needed to be the one to hold it together.

She looked down at the map, then back up at the clearing.

The map only showed one main track, but there had to be another way back – a track that would join back onto the central pathway soon enough.

Her eyes scanned the edges of the clearing, landing upon a small break in the trees with what looked like a pathway – a small one, narrow, but a pathway nonetheless – that seemed to veer outwards from the waterfall and turn back on itself in the direction of their original track to the pavilion and the house behind it.

‘Look, there’s another track over there, a little further down the stream – can you see? It looks like it might lead in the same direction as the one we took here.’

‘You think we should take it?’ asked Naya, walking towards her. ‘And all stick together – helping to carry Mira?’

Carly turned, felt her brows knit together.

‘I think so, yes – no, actually, I’m sure.

Sticking together is way safer. And from looking at the map.

.. I really think that’s our best shot.

’ Her voice betrayed none of her internal struggle, her terrified thoughts: I don’t have a bloody clue.

Don’t let them figure out this is all guesswork.

‘We just can’t risk getting stuck out here at night,’ said Scott. ‘It’s a dangerous place, the jungle, after dark.’

Oh, come on – don’t make this any harder than it already is.

‘There’s no need to panic everyone, Scott – we should be back at The Hideaway in two hours tops, even if this track isn’t the most direct.

And besides, humans and the wilderness have lived side by side for thousands of years,’ said Carly.

‘Please, no one listen to him – we’re far safer here than we would be in the middle of bloody Cardiff, especially with that knife in our hands! ’

Scott looked shocked, and for a second she wondered if she’d gone too far. But really, she thought he must know what she was doing: trying to reassure everyone. Make them feel better. It was what she was good at.

‘That way is our best hope of getting back,’ she said, pointing to the path. She looked at the four wary faces in front of her. ‘We either all stick together, and walk this way back now, or we split up and leave some of us here. But if we do that...’

Carly’s words tailed off. She allowed a beat of silence to fill the humid air, then continued: ‘If we do that, I’m not sure I fancy anyone’s chances.’