Page 42

Carly startled; she’d almost forgotten he was there.

‘I came here to confront her about it,’ she said.

‘My plan – my intention – was never to hurt her. But when I got here – early on the first day of the retreat, a couple of hours before we were meant to arrive – and she was waiting at the pavilion, I told her it was time for her to change what she tells people – to confess that what she preaches is dangerous.’

In fact, Carly had told Hannah that unless she admitted to it – then, when everyone else had arrived, right in front of her precious followers – Carly would tell them herself.

She would expose her. She would hold up the photo of Robyn’s beautiful face in front of them, and tell everyone who Hannah truly was: the kind of person that spreads dangerous, life-threatening lies while being worshipped by millions.

And she knew she needed to do it face to face – Hannah’s social media presence was highly controlled.

She could easily have deleted any comments Carly had left on her posts, or dismissed her as mentally ill if she’d interrupted one of her online talks.

No, this was the only way – in person, where she couldn’t get away, where Carly would hold the cards.

‘I even showed her Robyn’s picture, her beautiful, happy face, to try and make her realize the impact of what she’d done – show her the real human beings behind her follower count, you know?

’ Carly’s fingers grasped the edges of the photo in her pocket now; she’d felt such deep relief when she’d swiped it from Ben’s backpack after he’d fallen to the ground.

To her disgust, Hannah had simply plucked the photo from Carly’s hands, looked at Robyn’s face, and then turned her back and walked away from her.

Her words rung again in Carly’s ears: ‘I’m very sorry for your loss, hun, but this was not my fault.

’ She’d almost laughed as she said it; as if Carly’s anger with her was so ludicrous it could barely be believed.

‘I can’t take responsibility for other people’s actions – if someone I’ve never even met decides they want to die, you can’t blame that on me. ’

Decides they want to die. How fucked up was that? Carly felt the heat on her cheeks at the memory, the adrenaline pounding through her again now, making her muscles tense and flex – just like it had yesterday, in front of Hannah.

‘I was fucking raging, Scott, and I yelled at her, and she told me to shut up and follow her. First, out of the pavilion, and then...’ Carly thought back to when Hannah had led her away from her house and deep into the rainforest, far away from the ears of any staff.

As she’d walked behind her further into the jungle, Hannah had been telling Carly that she was wrong, that she just needed to breathe more deeply and absorb the magic of the rainforest and allow the healing of nature’s spirit into her heart – she was trying to convert her, for fuck’s sake, and then – and then. ..

Carly didn’t know how it had happened, exactly.

She was behind Hannah, and listening to her spewing all her bullshit, and at the same time witnessing the scenes around her, this beautiful rainforest and Hannah’s perfect resort, and all she could see – all she could think – was that Hannah had this amazing, wonderful life and was adored by this huge community of people, and Robyn was dead, alone, in the ground.

She couldn’t bear it, all the pain and grief.

‘And then I shoved her, and she fell over onto the ground,’ she said.

She felt a hot slice of guilt at the memory.

But then she reminded herself: I did the right thing – the only thing I could do.

Because how dare she? How dare Hannah have believed, so pompously, that she had the cure for illnesses that doctors had spent centuries trying to heal? The arrogance of her.

No, she didn’t regret it. The world would be a safer place without Hannah, and other ‘healers’ like her, in it. Honestly, if she could, Carly would wipe out the lot of them.

‘She fell over – but then how did she die?’ said Scott.

Carly stared at the jungle floor. Even if the outcome was for the best, she didn’t take pleasure in thinking about how it had happened.

‘She banged her head when she landed. It was slippery on the ground. She must have hit a rock right on her temple, just on the soft part – anyway, it looked like she was gone.’ She paused for breath.

‘I panicked after that. I went on autopilot, thought the best thing to do was to drag her further into the forest.’ It had been hard work – Carly was fit and strong, but pulling Hannah by the arms through dense vegetation, into the heart of the jungle – it had taken everything she had.

‘I decided just to... let the rainforest do its thing,’ she admitted.

‘Do its thing ?’ said Scott.

‘Yeah. I know it sounds bad,’ said Carly. ‘But I didn’t know what else to do. She looked dead – I thought she was – I really did...’

‘Hang on a minute, are you saying... she wasn’t dead then?’

‘When she was lying there in the forest, she didn’t stir.

But then, as I was about to leave her..

. her eyelids flickered a bit.’ Carly had been torn between an instinct towards compassion and her all-consuming rage in that moment.

Perhaps Hannah could have survived, and Carly knew the right thing to do would be to call for help.

But the fury in her had won out – this human being no longer deserved to exist; she should no longer have the right to cause devastation to gullible people’s lives – and so Carly had scooped up as many leaves, vines and branches as she could carry, piled them on top of Hannah – and left.

And I think I’d do the same thing again.

She sighed. ‘Anyway, when we all found her, she was long gone.’

‘But someone might have been able to save her,’ said Scott. ‘Maybe she didn’t have to die like that.’

Carly faltered. ‘I doubt that – but in any case, I needed to move fast. I knew all of you were on your way here and that I’d hardly have any time before you’d all arrive, looking for Hannah.’

Her first plan, of course, had been to get the hell out of there: run like the clappers back to the main road, hitch a lift as far away as she could.

She had her phone’s GPS and the track she’d made dragging Hannah through the jungle to help her navigate, so she made her way out of the rainforest’s interior easily enough – but she was too late.

As she approached the pavilion, Carly saw Luisa waiting there to greet them, and then the first taxi arriving, with Mira inside it.

She’d had to buy herself time, and the only thing she could come up with on the spot was pretending Hannah was safe and well.

‘So, the messages – the photo – was that you?’

Carly nodded. She’d bought a Costa Rican SIM and cheap phone when she’d arrived in the country, just in case she needed a quick getaway.

With her phone in her hand, all she had to do was send a few texts – timed to arrive later, when she wouldn’t be using her phone, of course.

She’d got hold of their numbers and details from the emails on Hannah’s phone, which she’d then switched off before she arrived back at the pavilion, and thrown as hard as she could into a thick patch of trees.

Then, when the storm had struck that night, blocking her escape, she’d come up with the idea of creating a fake background to one of Hannah’s plentiful supply of photos on her socials.

She’d surprised herself by managing to do a decent enough job that no one doubted Hannah was really sending the messages.

She’d used the opportunity to search the lodge that night too, finding the map and satellite phone – the thing wasn’t charged, but she wasn’t to know that – so she could make it look as though Hannah had planned every detail.

‘I was supposed to keep it up until I could get out of here yesterday evening, or as soon as the flooding cleared up – I’d have claimed there was an emergency back home or something.

By the time anyone found Hannah – if they ever had done – I’d have been miles away.

And who knows? Maybe you’d even have got something worthwhile out of it if I’d taken things over here, because it was me leading it, an actual, qualified therapist, not some pseudo-psychobabbling bullshitter spouting life-threatening nonsense.

So, yeah, that was the plan. Except, then. ..’

‘Except then what?’ said Scott.

Carly shook her head, the memory of it nearly felling her. The thought of how differently things could have gone... how much easier it all would have been.

She sighed.

It would all have been all right, except...

‘Except we had to get bloody lost after that mudslide and find Hannah’s body. Didn’t we?’