Page 118 of High Season
They left Tamara out by the pool. Out in the impossible, suffocating heat.
FORTY
2004
THE NIGHT OF THE BIRTHDAY PARTY
Tamara’s dress is torn where it caught against a cracked tile. There is a smudge of dirt on her elbow where she caught her own fall. A deep, fierce pain in her ankle.
She hobbles into the house via one of the passageways leading straight from the pool, designed for staff to ferry trays of cocktails and fresh ice out onto the terrace for her grandfather’s legendary parties. It leads straight into the service kitchen, a small, airless space with an industrial freezer and dusty cupboards, hardly used now that the Draytons’ staff has dwindled.
Tamara can feel her ankle swelling already, the tight throb of her skin stiffening over the injury. She digs in the freezer to find a bag of ice and uncovers another bottle of vodka. She slides to the ground and unscrews the cap with her teeth. She takes a large swig as she presses the ice against her skin. Already, she can see the pale shadow of a bruise beginning to form, can feel a tenderness that extends from her foot all the way up her calf. It’s just a sprain, and yet she feels a wound that runs deeper than the thread of purple beginning to pattern her leg. The fact that Blake did nothing to help her. The fact that he has invited Hannah here, when he told Tamara it was over. That her brother has lied to her, yet again.
Tamara waits until the ice is almost entirely melted before she climbs to her feet.
She tests putting weight on her ankle and feels a sharp twinge of pain. She needs something stronger than ice and vodka; some of the painkillers that her mum keeps upstairs. Tamara occasionally sneaks some for herself, knowing that Evelyn won’t notice. She likes the rush of endorphins, the twitch of the chemicals taking hold beneath her skin. The way that it makes something release inside her, the grasp of the world feeling a little looser. She gets why her mother sometimes needs everything to feel slightly less real. Understands the need to soften all the small losses that life deals out.
She hobbles up the back stairs, managing to avoid any of her mother’s guests, and makes her way through the arteries of the house to the first-floor landing. She pushes open the door that leads to her mother’s dressing room, a small enclave that separates her bedroom from the rest of the house. It’s messy, as always. Shoes left where they were slung off after a night out. A pile of dresses, tried on and abandoned. Makeup scattered on a countertop. Tamara digs through a drawer, crammed so full that plastic catches against the runners as she slides it open. She holds the small, metallic packets to the light, until she finds what she is looking for. Oxycodone. Much stronger than she needs, but something that she knows will do the job, and quickly. Enough to make it through the night.
Tamara pops two pills out of the packet. Places one into her mouth and swallows. Without anything to rinse it down, it leaves a lump in her throat. She winces as she forces down the second.
She plans, at first, to stay until the painkillers have taken effect. Long enough that she can shuffle downstairs and rejoin the party. She knows that people will be drunk by now, too far gone to notice the dark gaps of her pupils, the static hum of her movements.
But then she hears a murmur from behind the door. A clunk of something heavy being moved. A voice that unmistakably belongs to her brother.
As Tamara stands, she feels only a mild curiosity. Only a vague interest in what her brother is doing in their mother’s bedroom. A flicker of hope that perhaps he has told Hannah to leave. That he invited her tonight to break things off with her, properly this time.
She stands. Pushes against the door.
“Blake?” she says. “What are you—”
At first, Tamara does not exactly understand what she is looking at.
What she sees is a white flash of flesh. A dark tangle of sheets. Black lace, limbs that are bent strangely, a body spread out on her brother’s bed.
What she sees is her twin bent over Hannah Bailey’s inert form. His breathing heavy. Her head rolled back, her eyes out of focus.
It confirms both her worst fear and secret hope.
Tamara is not the bad twin.
Her brother has been the bad twin all along.
“Blake, what thefuck?”
Blake scrambles back, his face flushed, fully exposing the sprawl of Hannah’s limbs, the lengths of exposed flesh.
Tamara pushes past him, seized with an urge to cover her up, to protect this girl that she barely knows from her brother. She drags the bedsheets up over Hannah. She can feel the heat of her skin, can see that her hair is wet with sweat.
“I wasn’t doing anything to her,” Blake is saying, but Tamara isn’t listening. She is leaning over Hannah, saying her name. Hannah’s eyelids flicker, as though she can hear Tamara from whatever distant place she inhabits.
“What’s the matter with her?” Tamara says. “What has she taken? What have you given her?”
“I haven’t… Jesus, Tam, I haven’t given her anything,” Blake says. “Look at her, she’s just hammered. I was trying to help her. Put her to bed. What the fuck are you implying?”
Tamara looks at her twin, who she loves in a way that she can’t explain to anyone else, that transcends all the other types of love she has ever felt. Her brother, who is standing at the edge of the bed, hands on his hips, face flushed. Who reaches up one arm to sweep his hair out of his face, a nervous tic that Tamara instantly recognizes. Her brother, who she wants to believe, who she is desperate to trust.
But Tamara knows. She knows.
