Page 18 of High Season
“I might stay here,” he says. “Finish this off.”
Nina stands.
“I’ll make your excuses.”
Their eyes catch, a glimmer of camaraderie between them. The thing about having a mother like Evelyn Drayton is that it bonds you. Nobody else will ever understand Nina quite like Blake does.
“Oh, and Nina?” Blake says. “I’m not going to tell you what to do about this documentary. But just… just think of Mum, OK? She can’t go through it all again. She lost her daughter.Ilost my twin sister. Is this really what our family needs? I don’t know if we can relive losing Tamara again.”
SEVEN
2004
SIX WEEKS BEFORE THE BIRTHDAY PARTY
“You can’t seriously want to go, though?” said Josie.
She and Hannah were sitting on the very edge of the Draytons’ pool. On the terrace, Nina was engaged in an intense imaginary game of mummies and daddies, pretending to smoke a cigarette fashioned out of a cocktail straw.
“Why not?” said Hannah.
Josie screwed up her nose.
“Because it’ll be lame,” she said. “All those posh twats showing off about where they’re going on their gap years and which car their parents got them for their latest birthday. I’d be so bored I’d scream.”
“Oh, come on, that’s not what they’re like. Not all of them, anyway.”
“I hated it when we went to the beach with them last year. They all thought it was weird we were there. You could tell.”
“But we were invited.”
“Youwere invited.”
“Blake said that you could come, too. He specifically mentioned you by name.”
“Well, aren’t I the lucky one?”
Josie put on a faux upper-class accent, sticking her chin up in the air.
“I am sothrilledthat Master Blake deigned to invite me to his piss-up on the beach.”
Hannah nudged her friend, elbow in her ribs.
“Come on. You know what I mean.”
“You go by yourself. I’ll stay here and hang out with Nina.” Josie turned around to look at Nina. “Right, Nina? I’ll just hang out with you. My little best buddy.”
At the sound of her name, Nina bowled over and piled into Josie’s lap, wrapping her plump arms around her neck.
“Ouch,” Josie said, laughing. “You’re getting heavy.”
Although she always complained to her mum about Evelyn’s babysitting demands, Josie adored the youngest Drayton. Nina was smart and happy, in spite of her dysfunctional family. Josie liked spending summer days with her, teaching her to swim in the Draytons’ pool, or taking her down to the beach.
Josie would never say this out loud, but she really believed that Nina loved her, too. She saw how Nina would look at her with the complete trust and uncomplicated adulation that only very small children have. She liked how, unlike her mother and older siblings, Nina couldn’t see the rigid walls that separated them. She didn’t understand that Josie was different from her. She just saw the older girl who played with her, and made her snacks, and took her out of the house when Evelyn was on the warpath.
Josie always knew to do that; she remembered what it was like, being trapped with a parent whose rages sent the entire mood of the house swinging.
“Darling?”
