slips off her beanbag and crawls towards Isaac, slinking through the gap between Al and Leanne like a cat. She takes a cigarette from Isaac’s tin and looks up at him expectantly, the cigarette dangling from her lips.
“I think you could all learn a lot.” He lights her cigarette but his eyes are on me.
“Hi, girls,” says a voice behind us, and Isaac glances away.
A tall, willowy woman with pale lips and dreadlocks the colour of dark sand twisted on top of her head is standing in the doorway. She makes her way towards us, drifting through the room barefoot, her sari-like skirt sweeping the wood as she walks, her beaded necklace reaching down to her bare navel. Her smile is beatific, her eyes soft and compassionate. There’s a serenity about her that’s mesmerising.
“Hello,” she says, her benign gaze flitting over each of our faces as she stops next to Isaac. She reaches out a hand and ruffles his hair then glances at Daisy. Her smile widens. “I’m Cera. I look after the house, so if there’s a problem with the solar showers, or you need a snack between mealtimes, or anything else, just let me know.”
“Hi!” I raise a hand in greeting. Al and Leanne do the same.
“I’ll show you where you’ll all be sleeping in a few moments,” Cera continues, “and then I’ll give you the guided tour, but first, if you could all give me your passports, please.”
“They think we’re going to skip off into the night without paying,” Al says. She catches my eye and grins. Six years ago, the four of us hitchhiked up to Edinburgh from Newcastle and stayed in a B&B run by the snootiest woman on earth. The bathroom was grotty, the sheets were stained and the bedroom curtains smelled of rotten eggs, but she refused to give us a different room when we requested one. The woman just sniffed, said something about bloody students and stalked off. We went out drinking until 4 a.m., returned to get our bags and left without paying. It was Daisy’s idea, of course, but the rest of us didn’t need much persuading. It wasn’t as though we’d actually slept there, was it?
“You’ll have to get past me first,” Isaac says, and winks at Al. Then he stretches his arms above his head and stands up. “I’ll leave you to it, then, Cera,” he says, before strolling across the room, his cigarette still dangling from his fingertips. He raises a hand as he reaches the doorway. “See you later, girls!”
“Bye, then, Isaac!” Daisy calls from beside his abandoned beanbag. If she were a dog, she’d be bristling. The next couple of weeks are certainly going to be interesting; Daisy doesn’t take kindly to rejection.
“Wow.” Daisy peers around the door to the shower block then glances back at us. “The website wasn’t lying when it said the living accommodation is basic. There’s a kitchen sink in here. Literally.”
“Let me see.” She steps out of the way so I can take a look, too. She’s right. There are two shower cubicles, each with a rustic-looking door, two toilets with equally basic doors and, right at the end of the room, there’s a kitchen sink with a colourful mosaic-framed circular mirror hanging above it.
“Are they sit-down toilets or holes in the floor?” Al shouts out.
I step into the shower block and push at one of the toilet doors. “Proper toilets.”
“Well, that’s something.” Daisy rolls her eyes and walks back into the girls’ dormitory. She stands beside the mattress she’s been allocated in the corner of the room and nudges it with the toe of her flip-flop. “At least we had proper beds at boarding school. God knows what’s going to crawl over me in the middle of the night.”
“Don’t be like that.” Leanne, sitting cross-legged on the mattress beside her, slaps her guidebook shut.
“Yeah, come on, Dais.” Al looks up from the cigarette she’s rolling. “It’s not like we didn’t expect to rough it. We’re in Nepal, not the Hilton.”
“Roughing it is fine. Sharing a room with you guys is fine. But this?” She gestures at rough, cherry-red wooden walls and the row of mattresses on each side of the room. “It’s like a sheep shed, piling all the women into one room together. God knows who we’re sharing with.”
“Daisy …” I move to put an arm around her then change my mind. The best way to deal with her when she’s in this kind of mood is to ignore it. She’s barely said a word since Isaac left us in the meditation room – not when Cera showed us the rustic dining room, the basic kitchen, the yoga patio, the orchard, the vegetable patch, the goat enclosure, the chicken pen or the massage huts – and she was the only one of us not to squeal with excitement when we were led down to the river and the waterfall. The only time the vaguest flicker of interest registered on her face was when we returned to the house and Cera gestured to the walkway to the right and said it led to the boys’ dormitories. It vanished when we were led to the left. It’s astonishing, really. We travel halfway around the world to one of the most breathtakingly beautiful mountain ranges in Asia, and she’s in a huff because Isaac didn’t flirt back with her. I’d laugh if she wasn’t my best friend.
“I bet the other women snore,” Daisy says. “And smell.”
“Well, you’ll be in good company, then,” Al says. “I couldn’t sleep for all your farting and snoring last night.”
“Sod off, Al,” Daisy says, but the edges of her lips twitch into a smile. She yanks her sleeping bag from its sheath, lies down on top of the mattress and starts rummaging around in her backpack. “Who fancies a shot of lemon voddy? I think we’ve earned it.”
Everyone holds up a hand.
“Have you seen this?” Leanne waves the welcome pack in the air. “There are three yoga sessions a day, right after meditation. I’m thinking I’ll do two a day – one in the morning, one in the evening.”
“Why the hell would you want to do that?” Al licks the Rizla, rolls the cigarette over itself and sticks it behind her ear. “Unless you want to add supremely bendy to your advert.”
“What advert?”
“The one you put in phone boxes in London.”
“Oh, ha ha. Seriously, are any of you up for meditation or yoga?” Leanne persists.
“Nope.” Al shakes her head. “I intend to sit on my arse and do precisely nothing for two weeks.”
“Daisy?”
Daisy pours vodka into the bottle lid and knocks it back. She winces then looks at Leanne. “Did you say something?”
“I asked if you want to try a bit of meditation or yoga.”
“Maybe.” She shrugs her shoulders. “Do many men do yoga? Does Isaac?” She glances at me. It’s only a split-second look but it’s enough to confirm my suspicions about her bad mood.
She squeals as a balled pair of socks hits her square between the eyes.
“You are SO boring!” Al chucks another pair of socks at her, this time clipping Daisy’s left ear. “Men, men, men, men, men. Give me a shot of that vodka then let’s go down to the river. Anyone up for skinny-dipping?”
“Remind me again why we’re doing this?” Al says as she stirs a pot of dahl so vigorously that hot, gloopy lentils threaten to overflow the rim of the saucepan.
“Because someone” – Daisy fake-glares at Leanne – “thought it would be nice to help out with the community. At five o’clock in the bloody morning.”
Everyone laughs, including Leanne, and I swipe at my eyes with my forearm. They’re smarting so much I can barely see for tears. Al and I have been chopping onions for the curry, and the mountain of vegetables in the sack