Page 126 of High Season
There had been the time that Blake was sleeping with a girl with an older boyfriend, a secret that only Tamara knew. When the boyfriend found out, he turned up at their house when Evelyn and Harrison were away, and beat the crap out of Blake, right there on the doorstep, the girl standing a few feet behind doing nothing to stop him. A few weeks later, pictures of the girl were posted all over the corridors of their boarding school. Pouting at the camera, her body bare, her breasts pushed up. It had been a huge scandal, and the girl had had to switch schools. Nobody knew who posted the pictures.
Nobody except Tamara.
She tried to convince herself that it was a coincidence the girl’s nudes were leaked so soon after Blake had been slighted. That he would have done the right thing for the girl he tried to take home from that London bar.
And yet, there had been other things. Other small signs. The way he sneered at their mother, talked about her relationships with men as if they were the things that lessened her, cheapened her. The way he talked about Cordelia to Barnaby, calling her a slut for doing the things he had asked her to do in bed. Showing his friend the nudes that Cordelia had sent him, the dark hollow of hair between her thighs that Blake said grossed him out. Eventually, he made her shave it off because the pictures that Tamara later glimpsed were smooth and pink like raw meat, speckled with a rash from the razor.
So as much as Tamara tried to ignore these things, something dark and irrepressible told her that there was something cruel in her brother. That Tamara was not the bad twin, after all.
It was why she had tried to warn Josie, all those weeks ago. Why she had resisted Hannah’s relationship with her brother so strongly. She understood the power that Blake had over Hannah, larger and more frightening than the power he had over the girls in their own social circle. And she loved Josie, after all. She did not want Josie’s friend to get hurt.
As the sky darkens, the moon rising, Tamara goes out to the balcony that backs out of their mother’s bedroom. She comes here, sometimes, when she wants to think. The one place in the house where she and her brother are expressly forbidden from going. A place where she can be alone, without the connection that hums between them interrupting her thoughts. In her hand, she holds her brother’s phone. It looks so small. So unassuming.
It feels like a grenade waiting to blow apart everything Tamara wants to believe about her twin.
She insisted that Blake leave once he had deposited Hannah onto her bed, physically pushing him through the door and locking it behind her. She pulled the sheets up over Hannah’s inert body, gentlyremoved the pins from her hair so that they didn’t dig into her scalp as she slept.
Outside, her brother had pounded on the door. He had called out to Tamara. Begged for his phone back. Tamara stayed in the room with Hannah, even after he fell quiet. She had been able to feel his presence, like always, through the door. A prickle on the surface of her skin telling her that her twin was close. She had waited until she heard a shift of movement. The sound of footsteps walking away. The thread that stretched between them feeling thinner. His phone, digging into the palm of her hand.
Now, as she taps into the photo album, she finds that she is holding her breath.
She is braced for what she will see. The unnatural arrangement of limbs. The terrible vulnerability of Hannah’s body. Even so, the pictures make Tamara’s heart still. She flips through them, steadily, the shock of each new photograph refusing to lessen. Each small, awful confirmation of the kind of person her brother is.
She flips into his messages next and finds the thread of his conversation with Cordelia. Not breakup texts, but Blake telling his girlfriend that he’s sick. That he’ll be staying in bed for the duration of their mother’s party. That Cordelia should stay home. The confirmation Tamara needs that her brother planned this. That he brought Hannah here with the intention of getting these pictures.
The hum of coke in Tamara’s system has twisted, the pleasant buzz from earlier contorting into something ugly. Her heart is beating too fast. Her lungs are stiff, metal rather than flesh, so that each breath is labored. She is painfully aware of her insides, can imagine the guts and bones of herself, the way that her chest tightens and her stomach twists with each image. She’s aware of the blood in her veins, the same that inches through her brother’s body. The differences in DNA that separate Tamara from her brother, tiny fractures of genetics that once seemed small now feel like vast chasms. She used to think that they were almost the same person. Now she feels as far from Blake as she ever has.
She scrolls back to the photo album, her thumb hovering over the small digital rendering of a bin that will wipe it clean. It feels like thesimplest thing to do. To protect Hannah by destroying anything that Blake could use against her.
But then, she finds herself exiting the album, the photos untouched. Perhaps they do not belong to her. Perhaps this is not Tamara’s decision.
She is struck by an urge to speak to Josie; Josie will know what to do. Josie will be able to talk to Hannah. She will tell her about the pictures in a way that will hurt the least. Together, they can offer Hannah the opportunity to decide what to do with them.
With a small lurch, she thinks of the things that Hannah might do with the photos—the things that she has every right to do. To show them to Cordelia; even, perhaps, the police.
The thought makes Tamara hesitate for only a moment. She cannot protect her brother any longer.
She starts to stand, staggering as she does. Her ankle is still throbbing. The pills have eradicated the pain, but not the pulse of her muscles swelling, the twinge of protest as she puts weight on her foot.
“Tam?”
Tamara spins around, almost losing her balance as she does. She hadn’t heard him behind her. Hadn’t heard the slide of the patio doors from her mother’s bedroom. She hadn’t, she realizes with a twinge of surprise, sensed her brother close to her. It’s as if the thread between them has finally snapped.
“Tam,” Blake says again.
He looks smaller than usual. Forlorn. He is holding a drink in each hand. He extends one out toward her.
“Please don’t hate me,” Blake says. “I couldn’t stand it if you hated me.”
Something within Tamara crumples then. A softness blooming within her, in spite of everything. A memory of the two of them, hiding at the top of the stairs together when they were young. The two of them against the world. She supposes, really, that the softness is love. That it never really goes away, even when someone does the worst possible things.
“Can we just talk?” Blake says. “Please?”
FORTY-EIGHT
2004
THE DAY OF THE BIRTHDAY PARTY
