Page 132 of High Season
By the time the second interview came around, it was too late for Hannah to go back on her story. She was a side character by then, someone to support the vague motives that the police had been toying with, to back up all the things people were saying about Josie. Josie had been obsessed with Tamara Drayton, everyone said so. Olivia and Chrissie told the police what Tamara had said to them the night of the bonfire. They described Josie as intense, strange; they claimed that just a few days before Tamara’s death, Josie had tried to kiss her. They hadn’t known the details, but it hadn’t mattered. It was a motive: romantic rejection. And it fit with Nina’s story.
The police wanted to know about Hannah’s relationship with Josie. Was it true that they were unnaturally close? There was a rumor they had practiced love bites on each other, turning up to class with theskin of their forearms puckered with pale violet bruises. On the side of Josie’s Converse, the shoes that she was wearing when she was arrested, there was a small inked heart with the letterHin the center of it.
Had Josie once had a crush on Hannah? And, more important, could she have moved on to someone else? Was Josie in love with Tamara Drayton?
And Hannah had found herself shrugging. Saying yes. Maybe. She didn’t know.
By omitting the truth, she was embroiled in an unimaginable lie.
Hannah’s mum had sent her to stay with Nic and his mother after that. There were swarms of reporters all over the place, people peering through the window of the dive shop and forcing them to close before the end of summer. It was better for Hannah to be away from it all, they said. Somewhere the specter of Tamara Drayton wouldn’t hang over everything.
But when the end of summer arrived, the blaze of August fading into the soft heat of September and then a damp, cool October, Hannah had not returned. She had stayed with her aunt, spending most of her days indoors, playing video games with Nic and avoiding the news.
Over time, the text messages from Blake had thinned. Hannah would call him, surreptitiously, buried beneath her bedsheets late at night, only for the phone to ring out to nothingness. She heard that they had left the pink house, gone back to England. She imagined him in London, barely thinking about her at all.
Hannah had missed three months of school by the time she returned home. The Oxford application deadline had come and gone. Her teachers had tried to be understanding, promising she could catch up. There were other universities, after all. Oxford wasn’t everything.
Hannah hadn’t listened. She didn’t care where she went anymore, as long as it was somewhere else. As long as she was far away from home. When she was accepted by Manchester, she had been inordinately, impossibly grateful, even though she had never been to the city before, could barely imagine living there. All that mattered was the promise of a fresh start. A place where people wouldn’t know who she was. Where she could try to forget all about Blake and Tamara Drayton.
Her parents had been unsure, still talking in concerned tones about the cost of university. That was until a letter had arrived. A check from Evelyn Drayton. Hannah showed it to her parents, who had been astounded, unable to fathom that Evelyn Drayton would want to do something to help them. Hannah had spun a lie about how she had been giving Tamara some tutoring when she had been at the pink house. That the money was probably a thank-you for all that Hannah had done.
What she did not show her parents was the note that came with the check. Handwritten.Blake tells me you’ve always wanted to study. Maybe it would be good for you to be away from here.
What she did not tell them was how clearly she understood this message. How a desperate feeling of unease had overtaken her when she read it. This, she understood, was hush money. It was a payment for Hannah’s silence. And if Evelyn Drayton wanted Hannah to stay silent, there was something more to Tamara’s death, something that she had not—at least at first—understood.
Since then, Hannah had tried to press down the ache of worry. She had tried not to think about Blake. Tried not to think about what it would mean if she had lied for him, unwittingly protected him.
But when Imogen showed her those pictures, she could not ignore it anymore.
Now, she stands in front of the man who changed the course of Hannah’s life completely.
“I can’t do this anymore, Blake,” Hannah says. “I can’t keep lying.”
Blake lets out a sharp, hard laugh.
“You’ve been happy enough to lie for the last twenty years, haven’t you?” he says. “What’s changed now?”
“Everything,” she says.
She thinks of Josie. The years her best friend lost. The guilt that has festered inside Hannah for decades, growing too big, too consuming to ignore.
When her son was born, Hannah had been scared of what he might become.
But when she watched her daughter, she was scared of somethingelse. The things that she might say yes to, even when she didn’t want to. The lies she might believe. The lies she might be forced to tell.
She stands up slightly straighter.
“We let an innocent person go to prison,” she says. “Ilet an innocent person go to prison, because I was young, and I was stupid, and I was scared. But I’m not scared anymore. I’m not scared of you.”
Blake takes a step closer.
“Don’t you get it, Hannah?” he says. “You’llgo to prison. We both will. And for what? Josie Jackson’s already done the time. Why should we put ourselves through that? What for?”
“Because,” she says.
Because she’s imagined a life where she lives this lie for the next twenty years, and the next. As it gets bigger and bigger, until there’s no space left inside her.
“Because it’s the right thing to do,” she says. “And because Josie never left prison. Not really. She won’t be free of it until we tell everyone what really happened.”
