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Naya’s first-aid kit was little more than useless now: plasters, a bandage and gauzes, some tiny scissors, a few alcohol wipes. It wasn’t as if she could carry around a canister of oxygen in case of an emergency like this, or a drugstore selection of medication.

He saw her then: the shape of her, the smell of her.

How vibrant she had been – how sharp, the way she commanded the attention of the room at her lectures on marine biology.

Dementia was the cruellest illness he could imagine: the slow disappearing, the fading away, the gradual transformation of a life into a wasted, babbling shell.

He couldn’t bear the way the nurses at the home looked at her.

As if she were just another senile old lady, just some batty patient who needed their nappy changing.

Look at her , he’d wanted to scream, desperate to shove old photos into their faces, pictures of her swimming with dolphins on the Mornington Peninsula and standing on stage to give a talk about the preservation of marine life. This is who she is .

‘All good,’ he said. ‘Just want to get Mira out of here safely.’

Scott looked ahead again as he trudged through the thick foliage, desperately hoping they were moving in the right direction.

God damn that bloody satellite phone – how could they have set off from the house without checking it worked properly, or that it was fully charged?

And why had Hannah left it like that for them, when it was almost drained?

They’d been so stupid, not to check. Or had someone said they’d checked it? Scott couldn’t remember. Either way, somebody should have done it. He should have done it himself.

Then we wouldn’t be in this mess.

He needed to come back to the moment, stop his mind from taking him somewhere else – to what he’d done or not done right, to his mum, to Justine, to a past that was long gone.

He could no longer let his brain ruminate on all that, if he wanted to be happy.

He tried to think of what Hannah would say now, the kind of advice she’d give in one of her ‘Communing with the Present’ video lessons.

Just focus on the moment.

List five things you can see, five things you can hear, five things you can touch, five things you can smell.

It helped. Hannah’s teachings, the way she applied these practices to life – they had reached him in a way nothing else ever had.

She had touched him; she had helped him to change.

Yes, he still had his struggles; he knew his brain seemed to work differently from other people’s, no matter how hard he tried – he was just wired that way, and there wasn’t much he could do about it.

All the work he’d done on himself hadn’t meant he’d been able to save his marriage, after all.

But still, he was in a better place now because of Hannah.

She’d helped him learn how to accept himself, despite his flaws; to forgive himself for the myriad ways in which he’d fucked up.

She’d taught him how to be compassionate towards himself, even when he’d unwittingly pushed other people away.

He only hoped that, when he met her in person, he’d be able to tell her just how much she’d done for him.

‘Mind your step there,’ he told Mira, helping her stay on her feet while dodging a fallen branch that lay at perfect tripping height.

It was a minefield out here now they were hiking off the main track – trip hazards all over the place, not helped by how slippery the ground was.

The last thing they needed was another accident before they made it back.

He watched her step carefully over the branch, sighed with relief that she’d navigated another potential disaster.

But now something else was slithering through his brain.

A creeping sense that they were trespassing somehow. That the rainforest didn’t want them there, not off the main track, pushing through the undergrowth like this; that they weren’t welcome this deep into the jungle.

Scott tutted at himself. You superstitious old weirdo.

Everything was fine; he was safe in Hannah’s stretch of land; they all were.

They’d been terrified by the mudslide, the sheer power of it, and by Mira’s brush with death.

Not helped by the fact, of course, that Hannah wasn’t with them. No wonder everything felt surreal.

He’d reassured himself, for a moment. But as they walked on, the feeling intensified. A thousand tiny needles prickling his backbone. And then a sudden realization:

We’re going the wrong way.

Scott didn’t know how he knew it; he just did.

Everything was screaming at him that they were moving deeper into the rainforest now, rather than out of it; becoming more and more entwined in the guts of the place, rather than making progress towards the pavilion.

They should have joined up to the main track by now, surely, but there was no sign of it.

And yet, the further they went in the same direction, the harder it was getting for him to mention it.

Noticing his own lack of courage appalled him – he should have said it sooner, way sooner – he should have said it before they even left the waterfall.

But Carly, leading the group this way, had seemed so confident, and they were all exhausted, caked in mud and desperate to get out of there – he didn’t have much of a choice but to go along with it.

He was always like this: keeping quiet, not speaking up, not wanting to cause a fuss.

Assuming other people knew better than him, even when they didn’t – they couldn’t.

He was good at navigating, good with directions, had been his whole life – they clicked somehow in his brain, and it was as though he could create a map that he could see in front of his eyes, even if he’d only been somewhere once.

It’s why he was so good at his job: finding his way across even the park’s most remote trails; noticing any areas where the native plants needed some extra attention.

But no one would have believed him if he’d said all that.

Carly was the experienced one, the one who’d spent time in a jungle before.

Scott worked in the desert parks around Melbourne, and the region’s vast stretches of arid, barren bushland were hardly a match for the dense, lush wilderness here.

Who was he, someone who’d never set foot in a rainforest in his life, to push his opinion over hers?

And imagine if he got it wrong, and they got lost, and all blamed it on him? The thought was horrifying.

But then again... it couldn’t do any harm, could it?

Just to raise the idea, so it was on everyone’s radar.

If they didn’t want to listen, then fine – at least he’d have said his piece.

He took a deep breath. ‘Hey, guys?’ he called to the others ahead of him.

‘Just stop a second. Sorry, Mira – why don’t you lean against this tree for a minute, take a breather. ’

‘Yes – what is it?’ asked Naya.

‘Um, have any of you seen anything you remember yet, from our walk here? Any trees or familiar landmarks?’ There was silence.

‘I think so, yeah,’ Carly eventually called from the front of the group. ‘There was a fallen tree earlier, I definitely remember seeing that on the way here.’

She sounded crystal clear; totally sure of herself. Not a waver in her voice. Much more confident than Scott felt.

‘OK, then. As long as you remember,’ he said.

‘It’s just – I’d have thought we’d have joined the main track again by now.

Maybe we have, and I didn’t notice, but it’s just.

.. this path seems different to me? Kind of, thinner?

Sort of, not really a path, more like we’re pushing through rainforest in a vaguely straight line.

’ He was rambling; his words fell deathly flat.

‘No,’ said Naya. ‘I’m sure the track here was the same – we’ve been hiking on these narrow trails most of the day, I’d say.’

See? It’s OK. They’re right, I’m wrong. Scott tried to calm himself; he’d misremembered it. He must have done. ‘Sorry, yeah. Sure you’re right,’ he muttered.

They walked on, Mira still clutching his arm.

Scott’s stomach rumbled; he wondered if anyone else was hungry yet.

He looked at the sun, still bright but starting to dip lower now in the sky.

It must be late afternoon – maybe around four o’clock.

They’d set off from Hannah’s place around eleven that morning, so they would have arrived at the waterfall a little after noon.

Even with the mudslide and giving time for Mira to recover, they’d only been at the waterfall for a couple of hours, at the most.

That meant they’d been walking back for close to two hours now.

Shouldn’t we be out of the rainforest already?

Or at least, shouldn’t we have seen some of the trees I marked when we set off earlier?

With a creeping certainty now, Scott knew it: they’d gone the wrong way.

If they didn’t change track soon, they could end up seriously lost.

‘Listen, everyone, I really think we’ve gone wrong somewhere. Hopefully, it’s no biggie, we just need to look at the map, take stock of where we are—’

Carly came to an abrupt halt. ‘Look, Scott, I know you’re trying to help,’ she interrupted. ‘But I’m telling you, this is the way we came. I remember it.’

Scott turned his eyes towards the ground before he said what came out next: ‘So then, why haven’t we seen any of the marked trees?’ He thought he’d been talking normally, but his voice emerged as a whisper.

‘Sorry?’ said Naya. ‘I didn’t hear you.’

Scott cleared his throat, tried again: ‘I said, why haven’t we seen any of the trees I sprayed with white paint? I was marking them every twenty metres or so, to make sure we’d find our way back.’