Page 122 of High Season
Even twenty years later, the betrayal is a knife. Imogen’s and Josie’s faces swim in front of Hannah’s eyes, and she has to duck her head, taking a deep, gasping breath of the sharp, salty air.
“But I wasn’t the only one who knew,” she says, her voice tight, fighting for something to undo what Imogen is telling her. “Josie, you knew. And Tamara. Tamara knew—”
She breaks off, the logic of Imogen’s argument smacking her full in the chest. Tamara knew. And Tamara ended up dead.
Neither Josie nor Imogen speak. They don’t need to. The facts are there, laid out before them all for the first time. Hannah closes her eyes.
From what feels like very far away, she can hear her family. The distinctive sound of Eric’s laugh. Isla’s childish babble. The sound of Mason and Noah calling out to each other as they paddle in the sea. Just like her and Josie, when they were girls.
When she finally regains her composure, she’s made a decision.
“Actually,” she says. “There’s something else you don’t know about that night.”
And then, Hannah tells them everything.
FORTY-TWO
2024
Nina is not sure whether or not she is awake.
She is lying flat on her back, the sun a hazy yellow through a gap in the curtains. At first, she thinks it must be morning, and then she is not sure how it can be, if she hasn’t been asleep. But then, perhaps shehasbeen asleep, because she can’t remember any conscious thought for a very long time now. But if shewasasleep, then maybe she still is, because she also cannot remember waking up.
She is briefly concerned, before the worry mellows out. The center of her chest feels warm and heavy. Her limbs feel light.
She realizes that she knows this feeling well. God, she’s missed it. She’s forgotten how good, howeasyit feels, to simply eradicate the fears that usually feel so large and consuming. It only takes one of the small white pills that Blake went to fetch for her. Although, she might have taken two. Or three? Blake had given her the pills and a glass of water to wash them down, and she had felt so tired, so relieved that her big brother was making the decision for her, that she hadn’t questioned it. She needed sleep so badly that she was willing to do anything.
It had felt so momentous when Nina had come off the pills last year, but now her reasoning feels ridiculous. Why would you ever resist this? The bliss of feeling like there was absolutely nothing toworry about, nowhere to be. She wants to exist in this state forever. She wants to sleep for a thousand years.
Beside her, her phone is humming, but Nina can’t summon the will to answer it. She sees the caller ID flash up,Josie Jackson.The name that has filled her with dread and guilt for years is now just a name. Just a combination of letters. Just a message that saysNina, please answer, it’s important. Nothing that Nina has the energy or the will to worry about.
The light is softening again, simmering. Nina rolls over. She closes her eyes.
FORTY-THREE
2024
That night, Hannah finds herself going through the motions.
Those strange, half-familiar images of Hannah’s body as it was twenty years ago had been like seeing an old friend—or an old enemy—across the room. After she told Imogen and Josie her story, she had risen unsteadily to her feet. Made some excuse about Isla needing a nap, rounded up her children, murmuredlaterwhen Eric asked if she was OK. That promise, passed between them, of togetherness and truth. A promise that Hannah has broken over and over again across the course of their marriage.
Josie had said that they would stay and wait for Nina, by then almost an hour late. She had told Hannah that they’d give her time to absorb what she’d seen, had promised that she would message if there were any updates, but Hannah has not checked her phone. Besides, there is something Hannah needs to do first.
She gets through dinner and bath and bedtime. Negotiating another hour before lights out with Noah, and letting her dad and Eric take care of the washing up while her mother reads Isla another story. With an unexpected schism of time to herself, Hannah escapes into the garden and turns her face to the pale night sky.
It has been impossible not to think about that summer ever sinceshe heard Josie Jackson was back. Impossible not to think about the heatwave, and Blake, and the iridescent edges of girlhood. Impossible not to think about Tamara Drayton.
But now, Hannah is tangled up with other memories. The dinner with Blake’s dad; the taste of blood in Hannah’s mouth. What happened after, Hannah convincing herself that the whole thing was erotic, somehow; sexy. That it was proof of just how badly Blake wanted her, how much he needed her.
Those pictures felt familiar for a reason. Not because Hannah has ever seen them before, or even knew about their existence. She had no idea that those photographs had been taken. But whatwasfamiliar—what sparked an agonizing, uncanny lack of surprise within her—was that, deep down, Hannah has always known what Blake Drayton was capable of. She has always known, and she has let him get away with it.
Eric emerges from the house, his hands dug in his pockets, his face soft. He lowers himself into the chair next to Hannah and reaches out for her, his hand finding the small of her back. It’s a gesture he picked up years ago, when Hannah was pregnant with Mason. When the lower curve of her spine was always aching, her hips perpetually sore. When the pressure of his thumb against her muscles would ease the pain. A small habit of touch that has never left them, even after Mason was born, even after they had convinced themselves that they would never have any more children.
Sometimes their entire relationship feels like a story of such small gestures—in-jokes and touches weighted with almost-forgotten meanings. It means that Hannah can’t imagine being with anyone else. There would never be enough time, enough love, to build a palace out of the small bricks of kindness and history in the way that she and Eric have. A love completely unlike the heady infatuation with Blake Drayton that she experienced all those years ago. The excitement and the longing. Falling for somebody because of what you imagined you might be when you were with them, rather than because of who they were themselves.
With Eric, it’s safety. Trust. Nineteen years of loving each other. Of making the choice to love each other over and over again, even when things felt exhausting, or boring, or hard. Eric always chose Hannah.
Now, Hannah’s going to have to ask him to choose her again.
