Page 17

She’d seen corpses before, of course she had.

It was part of her job. It was a day-to-day occurrence, especially when she’d been working in geriatric care.

Elderly people died all the time. It was sad – but it was natural.

Sometimes people had terrible, grim deaths – diseases that strangled the life from their bodies over decades, or gradually shrank their brains to nothing.

But often, these patients died surrounded by family, loved ones holding their hands, whispering last goodbyes, words of care and love.

Never – not once – had she witnessed anything that came close to this.

The dead woman was lying face upwards to the sky.

Swarming above her head was a vast cloud of flying insects, and higher up, towards the top of some of the lush green trees, circling above their prey, were the vultures – impossibly large, their distinctive hook-shaped beaks hanging open as they surveyed the scene below.

Her hair.

She squinted; something to do with it had caught her eye, had jarred inside of her.

She stared again at the tendrils splaying out from underneath the woman’s body.

Then it landed. I know that hair. She’d seen it so many times before.

Long, blonde braids, tied with tiny, brightly coloured elastic bands.

Oh my God, no. It can’t be... It is, isn’t it?

Please, please, don’t let this be her... It’s impossible...

Naya didn’t want to do it; she was cowering, retching just at the thought.

But she had to know for sure – she had to confirm her suspicion, for all their sakes.

She took a deep, shuddering breath, then moved towards the woman’s face, leaned over, was about to use the sleeve of her jacket to brush some of the debris away from it, when a yell from Scott behind her made her halt in her tracks.

‘Naya, stop! Don’t touch anything,’ he shouted. ‘I know we’re not sure what’s happened to her exactly, but this could be a crime scene – police might need to investigate it, right? I don’t think we should get our fingerprints anywhere, or disturb anything, or move anything around.’

She reeled backwards. He was right, of course.

What on earth was I thinking, trying to touch the body?

She knew better than that. It was the shock of what she’d just realized, the lack of sense it all made; it had thrown her.

But in any case, she didn’t need to brush the matted clumps of hair away from the face.

Now she was closer, she could see enough of the woman’s face to confirm exactly who she was looking at.

A new wave of horror, and of confusion, racked her body and emerged from her throat as a choking sob.

It’s her. It’s Hannah. This was the very woman who was supposed to be stuck on the other side of the peninsula in a beach town called Golfito, waiting for a boat ride home.

Unmistakably her, in fact, now that she knew what she was looking at – even through the leaves, she could make out the glint of her nose ring, the shape of her sharp cheekbones, the curve of her slightly upturned nose.

There was a small gap in the mulchy earth that surrounded her eyes, and she could even make out their colour: sky blue, half-open, staring unfocused at the canopy of trees above them.

She heard a stifled sob behind her, then a gasp.

Scott’s and Ben’s eyes were as transfixed on the area around Hannah’s head as her own.

She wondered if they’d just had their suspicions confirmed too, in the same instant – or if they’d already known it was Hannah – maybe they’d realized it as soon as they saw her.

Maybe Naya had too; she just didn’t want to admit it.

They’d all seen enough of her selfies online, watched her videos.

They all knew exactly what she looked like.

She was about to voice it, to ask them if they’d seen what she had – when a surge of doubt rushed through her.

It can’t be Hannah – how is this even possible?

She felt herself bargaining for a different reality, a different explanation.

That the dead woman she was looking at was someone else – it had to be.

A random stranger, perhaps, a tourist who bore a remarkable resemblance to the influencer – someone who’d come to explore here, lost their way in the rainforest – then had a terrible accident.

But Naya couldn’t lie to herself. It was Hannah; there could be no doubt. Her brain just couldn’t process yet how it could be possible – or what it could mean.

‘It’s her, isn’t it?’ said Scott, his voice cracking. ‘It’s Hannah.’

Before Naya could respond, a loud rustling of leaves and branches from behind startled her; she glanced towards the sound and saw Carly emerge through the foliage, helping Mira along with her.

‘You’ve been ages! What did you find? What was making all that buzzing?’ she said. And then she looked at the ground, and her voice tailed off into a terrible silence, before she leaned forward, bent her head to the floor and vomited.

‘Oh, no, no, no,’ said Mira, her voice weak. ‘Is that – oh my God, are they dead?’

Naya searched the others’ faces, each one etched with grief, fear, shock and confusion.

‘Guys – it’s – I don’t know how, it doesn’t make any sense, but yes, this woman is dead and – and...’ Her words caught in her throat; she forced them out. ‘I think it’s Hannah.’ More than that , she thought. She was sure it was Hannah.

‘What? Hannah? No. That’s impossible – it can’t be her.

..’ Mira’s eyes moved over Hannah’s body; her gaze landed on her face, and then her hands flew to her mouth and tears began to stream down her cheeks.

Naya looked at Carly, still bent close to the ground, but looking upwards now.

Her face had drained of all colour, and she was breathing so fast, Naya suspected she was in the throes of a full-blown panic attack.

‘Try to breathe, Carly,’ said Naya, moving towards her, placing one hand on her shoulder. ‘In and out to the count of three.’

‘But... this makes no sense,’ cried Ben, making his way up to standing now, shaking his head.

‘Hannah’s in that beach town – what was it called?

Golfito? She sent us that selfie of her there this morning!

How could she have got back here, out into the middle of the rainforest and ended up.

.. ended up...’ He broke off, left the sentence hanging in the cloying, rotten air.

The humidity and the last whispers of the day’s rain seemed to have thickened the atmosphere, making it feel oppressive in the small clearing; suffocating.

The smell of death and decay in the overgrown space mingled with the damp leaves; the mixture cloyed in her nostrils.

Naya had the creeping, uneasy sense of being watched by the jungle: a thousand beady eyes fixed on her from through the leaves in the trees above them.

‘Ben’s right,’ said Carly, through her rapid breaths.

‘It can’t be Hannah. It’s not even an option.

There’s no way she could have got back here and into the rainforest this fast, let alone have ended up dead – it was only a few hours ago that she sent those messages.

It must be... it must be someone else – a woman who looks like her, maybe? ’

The desperation in Carly’s voice moved Naya to a fresh round of tears.

No one wants to admit it. Come on, Naya.

‘I’m sorry, but there’s no doubt. It’s Hannah,’ she sobbed, her voice thick with tears and bile, nausea fighting its way up her throat again, threatening to erupt.

She forced it back down. ‘It’s her, and it looks as if.

..’ She teetered on the edge but stopped herself from saying the next part, the part that made this discovery all the more terrifying.

Before Naya could finish her sentence, Scott snapped upright, started to swat at the swarm of insects attacking Hannah’s flesh.

‘Get away from her!’ He was waving his arms frantically in the air now, attempting to shoo away the flock of vultures that was still hovering high above them.

The creatures were bold; they hadn’t been turned away by the group’s presence, their voices, their loud outpourings of grief.

But at least they’d managed to stave them off – for now.

Naya had no doubt they’d swoop down and enjoy their spoils the minute the five of them walked away.

‘We need to call the police,’ he said, turning back to the group when the bulk of the creatures had moved elsewhere, his voice shaking but resolute.

He looked at Mira and Carly. ‘There’s a wound to the back of her head – and her body is all covered up.

I think – I think that maybe someone did this to her. ’

‘Hang on a second. Are you...’ said Mira. ‘Are you suggesting someone might have killed her? That Hannah was murdered ?’

‘No... no, we can’t be sure that something.

.. something like that happened to her,’ said Ben, stumbling over his words.

‘Obviously, the injury to her head, that must be how she died, but... did she have an accident out here, fall somehow? Hit her head on a rock as she landed?’ He choked out the last few words, then dissolved into quiet sobs.

Mira nodded. ‘Rainforests are dangerous places – just look at what happened to me earlier. Or you can trip over a vine that you never saw, or the base of a tree... especially off the main track like this.’ But even as she said it, she was frowning, as if trying to make sense of something that logically wouldn’t fit together.

‘That’s true,’ said Scott. ‘It could have been an accident, I guess. It’s just... see, how she’s got those leaves and twigs all over her? I don’t understand how she could have done that to herself.’

At that, Mira stumbled slightly; Naya moved to catch her before she could fall. Hold on, Mira . We don’t want to lose you too.

‘We need to get help – Mira can barely walk, and the police need to come out here and take Hannah away,’ said Scott.

His face had crumpled around the edges, a pallor replacing his usual tan.

‘The staff – Paola and Luisa – do you think they might have called for help yet? We should have been back by now, maybe they’ve raised the alarm.

’ He looked desperate as he said it, clinging to hope.

‘Yes, maybe they have,’ said Naya. She wanted to reassure him, even if she didn’t entirely believe it. ‘And if they haven’t yet, then they will do soon. They’ll come and find us themselves, or send a search party for us. Of course they will.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Ben dully. He’d stopped crying now, and his eyes were blank, vacant. ‘They might just think we spent longer at the waterfall or something. I can’t imagine they’re panicking yet.’

Scott buried his face in his hands. ‘Oh God, I feel sick.’ He took a long, shuddering breath. ‘We need to get going, then – back to our phones – to Paola... to Hannah’s house... fucking hell, Hannah .’ He broke off, made a gasping sound.

Naya forced herself to turn and look him square in the face; tears were pooling under his chin now, the grief etched into the lines of his cheeks; he looked heartbroken and he wasn’t trying to hide his pain.

She wanted to reach out to him, pull him towards her, for him to let her rock him and sway him in her arms like a child, like she did with her own children.

She wanted to make the pain of the world go away.

For him, for her. For both of them. But she couldn’t; she couldn’t do it for her children, as much as she wanted to, as much as she’d tried.

She couldn’t change the world – she couldn’t make it better.

And she couldn’t do it for Scott either.

She could hold him for hours, for days, and Hannah would still be dead, lying here, most likely murdered, left to rot in the wet heat of the jungle. Nothing would be different; the world would still be tilted on its axis for him. Just like it was for the rest of them.

Mira, still leaning on Naya, was shaking her head now, taking short, sharp breaths, but trying to speak.

Her next words emerged in a stilted burst. ‘I still can’t understand how she could have got here so quickly.

How this could have happened since this morning.

It doesn’t make sense. The timing, I mean.

Something is very wrong here, with all of this. ’

Ben shook his head slowly. ‘I guess it’s not impossible,’ he said quietly.

‘She could have got a boat back right after she sent us the video, then if she came straight out into the jungle to look for us and then this happened to her...’ He turned to look at Hannah again, then covered his eyes with his hands.

Naya swallowed. She had to say something now, but how could she?

A part of her wished she didn’t know what she knew, because of how much more impossible it made everything.

Post-mortem care was something she had to do from time to time, in her role as a nurse.

It was rare for her to have to deal with a body other than straight after death.

But she knew that rigor mortis set in within a few hours of someone dying and lasted for several more, maybe even a full twenty-four hours.

Hannah’s body had already passed that point: based on Naya’s quick assessment of her body, her face – what she could see of it – her muscles were no longer stiff; they were becoming flaccid. Her facial muscles had begun to relax; her arms were loose; her fingers were unclenched.

And yes, while the searing temperature and the rainfall and the humidity of the jungle could speed up the process, there was physically no way that Hannah could have died, her body gone into rigor mortis and then come out the other side in the few hours since they’d got those messages from her – it just wasn’t possible.

Naya’s mind had been putting it together since the second they saw her body.

She looked at Ben, at all of them, and shook her head. ‘That’s the thing,’ she said. ‘To me, it looks—’

She couldn’t say it. Even if they’d worked it out themselves, saying it out loud would make it too real. And the truth was unbearable:

To me, it looks as if she’s been dead, and left here, for as long as twenty-four hours.

Because if that was true, it could mean only one thing: one inescapable, horrifying truth that Naya needed to face, that they would all need to.

It would mean that their time here so far had been built around a lie. A clever but terrible lie.

And it would mean that perhaps none of them were safe out here at all.