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CARLY

Carly checks the view behind her in the computer’s camera. This is the biggest risk she’s taken since she’s been here; she needs to make sure there’s nothing in the cafe that might give away where she is.

To be fair, the likelihood of her being recognized – with the silver-grey pixie cut she’s now sporting, coloured contact lenses and her skin several shades darker after so many months this close to the equator – is fairly slim. But she can’t take any chances.

As she takes in the line of white sandy beach and the steep cliffs that line the Pacific coast outside the cafe’s window, she feels her familiar pang of yearning for Wales.

She misses home every day. Even the grey skies, the drizzly cold of winter.

In Ecuador, there only seem to be two types of weather: rainy and hot, and dry and hot.

Today, especially, she is longing for the dreariness of February back home.

You’re lucky to even be here.

And it is true; it was a decent amount of luck – plus some reasonable wilderness survival skills – that led to her ending up here.

Hiding inside a giant kapok tree in Hannah’s rainforest for three days, living off insects and rainwater collected in those giant leaves.

Waiting until the biggest flurry of police and rescue workers had given up on finding her, presumably deciding she was dead and swallowed up by the jungle.

Then following the stream in the opposite direction to Hannah’s house, making her way out of the rainforest to one of the local villages in the dead of night; bribing a local farmer to drive her to the bus station near Rincon where she gave herself a haircut and bought a change of clothes.

And then the treacherous journeys facilitated by drug dealers and smugglers, using up the last of her American dollars, in the backs of trucks and lorries, sneaking across the border to Panama, then into Colombia – and finally, months later, she arrived here, a tiny fishing village in the Manabi province of Ecuador.

For months she’s lain low, barely leaving her beach hut, making some quick dollars helping harvest coffee beans at a nearby farm. None of it is ideal; her hands are torn to shreds, and some days she barely makes enough to eat.

But what choice does she have?

She is a murderer. Perhaps if she’d just confessed when she’d knocked Hannah down – if she’d called for help, instead of dragging her further into the rainforest – she’d have been forgiven; she could be back home right now, in her dead-end job, but at least she’d be free.

She hadn’t done that, though; she’d wanted Hannah to die, be left to rot in her own sodding jungle.

And then the others. Ben – she’d killed him in cold blood, for God’s sake.

If she had somehow got rid of the other three, she might have had a chance to come up with some kind of story about them all turning on each other, with no one left alive to contradict it.

But there was no way she could have taken them all on by herself.

No, she is a criminal, and people know it. She could be on the run for the rest of her life.

But over the past few weeks, she has started to feel a touch braver. No one is coming for her. No one even has any idea she is alive. She’d made it to this internet cafe a fortnight back, did a quick check for herself online: TWO DEAD IN SANCTUARY TRAGEDY. INFLUENCER’S MURDERER PRESUMED DEAD.

She might just have got away with this. And it is a good thing , what she’s done. Getting rid of Hannah, wiping out her dangerous brand of influence from the world.

But the thing is, she’s only wiped one of them out. And that bothers her. In just a few hours of surfing Instagram and TikTok, she can see that these influencers seem to multiply, to breed like rabbits. Every time one of them disappears, another springs up in their place.

Another, like Olivia.

Olivia with her three million Instagram followers, and her reels on the healing power of affirmation. Olivia, who preaches about how modern medicine and traditional therapy just can’t get to the root of trauma in the way that chanting and raising your vibration can.

Olivia, who is, at this very moment, offering her followers the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to come and meet her at her retreat near Santo Domingo, less than two hundred miles away from where Carly is right now.

It is fate – it is destiny. Surely it has to be.

This is Carly’s life’s work now; her mission.

She has it all planned out. In her vlog, she will be Laura from Hertfordshire, a yoga teacher who’s been travelling for some time but is now living simply on the Venezuelan coast after going through a tragic event last year.

She’ll make sure to bring tears to her eyes, to talk about her insomnia and her terrible anxiety.

She’ll say how, if she gets the opportunity to work with Olivia, she’ll be able to pass her techniques on to other people, help spread her amazing work.

She’ll even offer to come a day early and help Olivia get everything set up for the retreat. Make it all perfect for the other guests. Just say the word, and she’ll be there.

Carly checks her reflection one more time, clears her throat, practises hello under her breath in her most clipped English accent.

She takes a deep breath, and hits record.