Page 131 of High Season
FIFTY
2024
Blake is silent now, as Hannah forces herself to hold his gaze. As if he, too, is remembering. As if he, too, is seeing that night, as if hours have passed instead of years.
“You told me that you would stay quiet for me, because you loved me,” Hannah says again. “But really, I was staying quiet for you.”
“Hannah,” Blake says. “You hurt Tamara. She fell. She tripped, because of an injury you inflicted. I stayed quiet to protectyou.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” says Hannah. “It never did. Why would you protect me? If you really thought it was my fault that Tamara was dead, why would you protect me?”
Blake is standing, slowly now.
“For years, I thought you protected me because you loved me,” Hannah says quietly. “It’s what I wanted to believe—you counted on me wanting to believe it. But you didn’t care about me. You only invited me to the party so that you could drug me, and… and… take those pictures. In fact, I think you planned to do it the night you came to my parents’ place, only I didn’t want anything to drink. Which is when you realized it would have to happen at your mother’s birthday.”
She can see that his fists are clenched. His jaw is set, hard. Behind his feigned nonchalance, Blake is afraid.
“You didn’t protect me, because there was nothing to protect,” Hannah continues. “The only person you were protecting was yourself. Because Tamara didn’t trip, did she? She was pushed.”
Blake doesn’t speak. A muscle twitches in his jaw.
“I never understood why I woke up inTamara’sroom,” Hannah continues. “Why you wouldn’t have put me to bed in your room, or even Evelyn’s. It only makes sense if Tamara put me to bed. If Tamara knew that my drink had been spiked. If she knew about the photographs. And you couldn’t risk anyone knowing what you’d done to me. You couldn’t risk your reputation being ruined.”
She knows from his silence that she is right. His quiet bolsters her, and her voice grows stronger.
“You wanted to make sure I didn’t tell anyone what I saw,” Hannah continues. “So you let me believe it was my fault. You tried to scare me into lying about being at the party. You thought that the police might believe it was an accident. There were no witnesses. And Tamara was drunk, and high. You counted on the police thinking she’d fallen into the pool, and that you would get away with it.”
“Hannah, I’m warning you…”
“But the police started looking at you anyway, didn’t they? They knew, right from the start, that it wasn’t an accident. They took your phone. They started poking around the house, on the terrace. And you panicked.”
She takes a deep breath. She can’t believe how, after all these years of feeling off, of feeling wrong, the events of that night have only now begun to make sense.
“And, conveniently, that’s when Nina mentions that she saw Josie and Tamara in the pool together. You knew right away that she wasn’t talking about the night that Tamara died. But you needed something to distract the police. Another scapegoat, because you couldn’tactuallyuse me, could you? You couldn’t tell the police that I’d been at the party, and that I’d fought with Tamara, because then they’d question me, and I’d tell them about seeing you on the terrace.”
He is still now. Completely focused on her. No longer smiling. This is how she knows that finally, finally, twenty years too late, she has hit on the truth.
“Was it you who coached Nina to tell everyone what she’d seen?”she asks. “At the very least, you must have confused her? Made her change her story just slightly? Or was it your mother, when Harrison got taken into questioning? Were you pissed off that your mother was willing to protect Harrison but not you? Was it her idea to throw Josie under the bus, or yours?”
“I wouldn’t sound so smug if I were you,” Blake says, his voice sudden and sharp. “You were happy to drop your best friend in it, after all. I didn’t hearyouspeak out when Josie got arrested.”
“I was scared,” Hannah says, though it’s the truth she has been evading for years. “I thought that I was responsible for Tamara’s death. I thought I’d go to prison for it. And you were making sure I said what you wanted me to. You were completely in control of me by then.”
Her voice trembles as she says this.
She is thinking of those days, after Josie was arrested. How she and Blake had met, late at night, when nobody would be watching. How he had told her how much he loved her. That he had already lost his sister, and he couldn’t stand the thought of losing Hannah, too. Hannah had taken his twin away from him, butnow you’re the only good thing left,he had said.Tamara wouldn’t want me to lose you, too.
Then, there were the times when he was less kind to her, less gentle. When they would have sex in a way that left bruises on her skin, a pain between her legs. The memory of his hands on her throat. Afterward, he would remind her that she had better not go to the police, because if she did, he would destroy her.
When she was at home in bed alone, trying to stop the tears from coming, Hannah told herself that she deserved this. Blake’s anger was justified: she had caused Tamara’s death, and this was her punishment.
After she and Blake had parted in that dark corridor, Hannah had been unable to leave the pink house via the gate that led directly past the stone steps at the side of the property. Already, people had been filtering outside—toward Nina’s sobs, and the pool where Tamara was floating, oxygen-starved now, clinging on to the very last scraps of her life.
The only other exit that remained connected to the servants’ tunnels was the garage. She was panicking by then, not thinking straight,her hands shaking as she unhooked Harrison’s car keys and clambered into the vehicle. She couldn’t think far enough ahead to wonder what she would do with the car once outside the house. All that seemed important was getting away. Leaving the pink house behind her as fast as possible.
As soon as she pulled out of the driveway, she knew it was a mistake. She had no plan for what she would do with the car, no idea where she would take it. And besides, she was too drunk to drive. She could feel the way the steering wheel slipped, the car swaying even as she maneuvered it out of sight of the house. She had abandoned the car halfway down the hill, tossed the key in the undergrowth.
When she was called to her first police interview, she was sure that they had found her fingerprints in the car, or that someone had seen her driving. In hindsight, it was a foolishly attention-attracting way to leave the scene of a crime. She had no idea that Josie had already been arrested that morning, and the interview confused her. So much of it had been about Josie—what her role would have been at the party, her relationship with the Draytons. When the police had asked her, right at the end of their questioning, if Hannah herself had been at the party, she just shook her head. She said that she had been at home, working on her Oxford application, and had gone to bed early. As Evelyn Drayton could confirm, there was no reason for her to have been invited to the party.
