Page 63 of The Hideaway

‘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 therightthing 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 liftas 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’dhave 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?’

MIRA

Mira had found a place to hide, and nothing was going to force her out of it.

She might have had almost no strength left, but whatever she had, she would use it to keep her mind alert; to stay alive as long as she possibly could. And her best chance of doing that had to be by staying right here, camouflaged beneath the foliage, listening to the shrieks and cries of the animals, and trying not to move a muscle. It was past the hottest point of the day, it would cool down soon enough, and here amid the undergrowth she was protected from the worst of either rain or heat.

Surely she wouldn’t have to wait too long. Someone would have noticed they were off the grid as early as yesterday afternoon, when they didn’t come back from the rainforest. Paola would have started a search for them; she’d have called for help – that helicopter could have been the first stage of a rescue mission. If she could just stay hidden here a little longer, surely someone would come and find her?

Yes, staying here, hidden under these fallen vines and branches, was the safest option, especially after being chasedlike that through the trees. She could no longer trust anyone out here – not even those she would have blindly followed only hours ago. After what happened with Ben, and now that Scott and Carly too had abandoned her, left her to fend for herself out here, she knew she could no longer rely on anyone. The only person she still held any faith in – her only true friend here – was most likely floating somewhere along the stream, or worse, lying at the bottom of it.

Her eyes had adjusted now to the murky darkness of her hiding place; she could see a bunch of thick, fleshy green leaves just to her right. Their surfaces were glistening. Mira stared at them: was that rainwater? It had to be – the plants here were so deeply buried under the canopy, they were protected from the harshest of the sun’s rays. Rain from yesterday’s downpour could plausibly still be sitting here untouched.

Gently at first, tentatively, and then more greedily, she allowed her tongue to dab the surface of the leaves, absorbing the fresh water droplets. They had to be the best thing she had ever tasted; she ran her tongue up and down the leaves, swallowing only the tiniest amounts but feeling somehow rejuvenated.

She was so taken over by her thirst that she hardly noticed the movement in the foliage in front of her.

By the time she caught sight of the figure looming above her, she only had time to yell out in fear, cover her head with her hands and curl into a ball, squeezing her eyes shut like a child afraid of a monster.

‘Mira?’

She heard her name, recognized the lightly accented voice that was saying it.That’s it. I’m losing my mind from the shock– thedehydration.She’d been thinking about Naya, and then her brain had told her that Naya was here. But she couldn’t be; Naya was gone.

Perhaps Mira was dead then, and had been reunited with her friend in the afterlife? She’d succumbed to her thirst and tiredness; someone had attacked and killed her, maybe.

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