Page 17 of High Season
There’s a stab of resentment in his voice. Nina has to remember to temper her response. To remind herself what her mother and Blake went through all those years ago. After all, she had been so young, and protected from the media firestorm. But her mother and Blake had been right at the heart of it. She knows that it still hurts them both, the things that were said about Tamara.
“But the video series that they’re talking about,” Nina says. “Blake, I watched it, and—”
Blake lifts his glass and drains it in one.
“See,” he says, placing it down hard on the table. “This is the problem. You watch this rubbish online, and you fall into an internet rabbit hole, and next thing you know, everyone’s a conspiracy theorist. Even you, the person who actuallyknowswhat happened. The person who wasactuallythere.”
Nina closes her mouth. She knows about how internet conspiracy theories work. She has a master’s in psychology, for goodness’ sake.
“Nina,” Blake’s voice is softer now, almost sad. “What you went through back then was traumatic. Incredibly, deeply traumatic. It’s no surprise that you keep coming back to it. That you have this… thisobsessionwith it. But this isn’t healthy.”
He reaches out, places one hand over hers.
“This is exactly why Mum didn’t want you to get into all this child psychology stuff,” he says. “All this worrying. All this trying to understand what you saw. What happened. Some stuff is beyond our ability to understand. Some stuff is cruel, and senseless, and terrible. Some stuff can’t be explained away with… with bloodytherapy, Nina.”
He takes a deep breath. His eyes are wet. She hates that she cannot leave alone something that hurts him so much.
“What Josie Jackson did was terrible,” he says. “It was evil, and brutal, and monstrous.She’smonstrous. And what you did was the right thing. But you’ve spent your entire life feeling guilty about it. And I understand. I can’t imagine what it must have been like, to have had all that weight on you. To have had to say something that sent someone to prison. And maybe all of that responsibility shouldn’t have been put on a kid. Maybe this producer got that bit right. But the important thing is thatyougot it right, too, Nina. You put our sister’s killer in jail. And you have nothing to feel guilty about. You have nothing, and nobody, to answer to.”
On the horizon, the sun is close to setting. The sea is a bloody, violent shade of red.
“Do you ever think about her?” Nina asks, softly. “Tamara?”
Blake stiffens, his glass still to his lips.
“I hardly remember her,” Nina continues. “I feel bad about it sometimes. This person—my sister—totally changed our lives. And I canonly remember snatches of her, weird things. Like, I can remember how she smelled, but not how she looked. Don’t you think that’s strange?”
Blake lowers his glass.
“Memory is strange,” he says quietly. “You of all people know that. You can’t control the things you hold on to.”
“But I wonder if we’d talked about her more, if I’d remember. If we had any pictures of her out—”
“Mum couldn’t cope with it,” Blake says. “You know she couldn’t.”
“But it’s been so long…”
“Like you said, you don’t remember, Nina. You don’t know what it was like.”
He sets down his glass and threads his hands together in front of him.
“I was older. I saw what it did to Mum. It almost killed her,” he says. “People cope in their own ways, Nina. You have to let them.”
For a second, there’s quiet between them.
“Kitty used to think we were morbid, coming out here every year,” Blake says at last.
“Kitty?”
Nina hasn’t heard Blake mention his most long-term girlfriend for a while. Before they broke up last year, Kitty had been around for almost eighteen months, a marathon-length relationship for Blake. Nina had liked her. She was sad when they had broken up.
“Yeah,” says Blake. “When you stopped coming out here, she said that she got it. She said most people would have sold this place, after what happened. I told her it was fine. That we’ve been coming back for so long we barely think about it anymore.” He pauses, a note of dark mirth slipping between the edges of his words. “I guess I was wrong about that.”
Just then, they hear Ryan’s voice coming from the terrace below, the sound of a chair being pulled out.
“I should probably go back down,” says Nina. “They’ll be wondering where we’ve gone.”
Blake lifts the wine bottle to refill his glass.
