The Lie by C. L. Taylor

inching forward on the toes of her cork wedges as though she’s taking care not to startle the creature. I keep expecting the gecko to zoom off as she approaches, but it doesn’t move. It grips the ground by the wine bottle with its suction-like feet, the only movement the back and forth motion of its eyes.
    Daisy stops walking. She bends at the waist and reaches her right hand towards the wine bottle. Her left leg twitches, she steps forward, and she stamps the gecko into the ground with the sole of her wedged sandal. At the same time, she grasps the neck of the wine bottle and whips it into the air. She glances round at me, her expression victorious. “Got it!”
    I stare at her in disbelief. She just stamped on the gecko. Deliberately. The pause, the leg twitch, the step. She didn’t need to do any of that to get the wine bottle. She was close enough just to grab it.
    “What are you staring at me like that for?” She raises the bottle to her lips and takes a swig.
    “You just stamped on the gecko.”
    “Did I?” She hops on one leg and grabs her left ankle with her right hand. She hoiks it up for a closer look, squinting into the gloom, then promptly unbalances and has to grab the bench to stay upright. “Fuck.”
    “Didn’t you see it? It was right next to the bottle.”
    “Was it? I can’t see a thing in this light. Come on.” She loops her arm through mine. “Let’s go and see what the other two are up to.”

Chapter 9
    “You okay?” Al touches the back of my hand. “You didn’t come to breakfast.”
    “I couldn’t find my tablets.”
    We’re sitting on the back seat of the rusty, ramshackle bus that will take us to the base of the mountain so we can trek up to the retreat. It’s a lot more rickety than the bus that took us from Kathmandu to Pokhara but, according to Leanne, this journey will only take half an hour rather than a six-hour slog. I made it on the bus first and took a seat by the window, folding up my waterproof jacket to cover the springs poking through the ripped leather seat. Al, Leanne and a sunglasses-wearing Daisy filed on several minutes later. Al immediately tucked herself in next to me.
    “Not your malaria tablets?”
    “No, the anti-anxiety ones. I looked everywhere. I’m sure I packed them.”
    “They’ll be in a side pocket, or something. Don’t worry, I’ll help you look once we get to Skanky Yaka, or whatever it’s called.”
    “Cheers, Al.”
    We lapse into hungover silence. We didn’t carry on drinking for long last night. When we returned to the patio, Leanne had already gone to bed, and, with no sign of the hotel manager, we only had Daisy’s half bottle of wine to drink between the three of us. By the time I dragged myself into the room I was sharing with Leanne, she was snoring softly.
    I glance across the bus. Leanne’s laughing uproariously at something Daisy’s just said. She looks remarkably fresh-faced in her My Little Pony T-shirt and skinny jeans, while Daisy looks like she dragged herself out of bed and crawled into her clothes. She notices me staring and presses a hand to the side of her head.
    “You as hungover as me?” she asks.
    I nod. “I feel like hell.”
    Satisfied with the response, she sits back in her seat and whispers something to Leanne, who glances at me and laughs.
    I close my eyes to try and conjour up the memory of Daisy stamping on the gecko, but the images in my mind are blurred by my hangover and lack of sleep. If she couldn’t focus on me without her contact lenses in, and I was sitting across from her on the bench, how could she even have seen it? I’m misremembering what happened. I have to be. There’s no way she deliberately stamped on a living creature, not after the accusations her mum levelled at her when her sister died.
    Al snorts with laugher beside me, and I open my eyes.
    “I don’t suppose you got a photo of that gecko, did you?” she says. “I just remembered I was supposed to get my camera, but I