Page 25 of High Season
SIX WEEKS BEFORE THE BIRTHDAY PARTY
Barnaby picked them up for the party in a bright red convertible that Hannah knew his parents had gifted him for passing his driving test, honking his horn, laughing as he pulled up outside the pink house. Tamara raised her eyebrows when she came outside and saw Hannah and Josie waiting there. She opened the car door and collapsed onto the front seat.
“You invited them,” she said to her brother. “You can cram into the back with them.”
Hannah felt Josie stiffen beside her. She expected her best friend to make a sharp comment, and was surprised when she simply clambered into the backseat, not looking at Tamara as she did.
Barnaby made a big performance of rolling down the roof before they set off. Hannah slipped into the middle seat, between Blake and Josie, painfully conscious of the warmth of his body beside hers. Keeping her leg still to preserve the half inch of space between them, until the muscles of her hip started to twitch.
In the muggy heat, Hannah’s thighs stuck to the leather seat. She had chosen the kind of outfit that she saw the teenage girls who descended here every summer wear. Gladiator sandals, as if Hannah wasn’t the kind of person who had to walk everywhere, trainers theonly footwear that made any sense. Small, gold earrings that she had sneaked out of her mother’s jewelry box.
Her parents had been fighting earlier. They often seemed to be fighting. The landlord wanted to increase the rent on the shop. They couldn’t afford it.
This summer, money—or specifically the lack thereof—had seemed to loom larger than ever before. A few months ago, her dad, exhausted and irritable after a long shift, had looked horrified when he had found Hannah at the kitchen table, university prospectuses spread out in front of her.
Most of the kids at the international school where Hannah had a scholarship were planning on going to universities in the UK or America, and Hannah had long had her heart set on England. She had grown up reading Enid Blyton’s boarding school stories, had begged her mum to drive her to an English-language bookshop so that she could buy the latest Harry Potter. She had spent a long time coming up with her shortlist, all for universities in the UK, a country she had never lived in but in some ways still considered her home. Bath. York. Edinburgh. Oxford, an idea that still felt so crazy, so dizzying, that she could barely dare to think about it. Her teacher said that she had a good chance, as long as she knuckled down a bit this year. Cut down on the tutoring. Dedicated a bit more time to her own studies.
Hannah felt as though she had been waiting all her life to go to university in England. To be shoulder to shoulder with people like Blake and Tamara and Barnaby, on a level with them for the first time in her life. A place where her intellect would permit her into the parts of society that had been out of bounds to her all her life.
“Want a beer?” Barnaby said, taking one hand off the steering wheel to grope in the footwell beside Tamara’s bare legs.
They had been driving for almost an hour, far enough away for the roads to become unfamiliar, Barnaby navigating corners too quickly.
The car swerved as Tamara slapped Barnaby’s hand away and bent down herself, retrieving two bottles. She passed them back without looking over her shoulder.
Hannah handed a bottle to Blake and then hesitated before pressing the second into Josie’s hands. She could feel her friend growing tense beside her, fidgeting against the creaking seats. Hannah had promised that they could leave whenever she wanted to, but by now it was becoming clear that they’d have no way of getting back by themselves.
“How much farther?” Josie asked.
“Not far,” Blake said. He cracked the bottle of beer open with his teeth and held it out to Hannah. “We’re getting close.”
Hannah took the bottle from him.
“Whose party is it anyway?”
“It’s one of my friends,” said Tamara, her eyes still fixed on the road ahead, arms folded across her chest. “From school. Her parents are away. It’ll be cool.”
Just then, Barnaby jerked the steering wheel, pulled away from the main road onto a thin, single-lane track.
“Pretty sure it’s down here,” he said.
“Wait until you guys see this place,” said Tamara. For the first time the entire car ride there was a gleam of excitement in her voice. “You’re gonna freak.”
The house rose into view like the moon edging up into the night sky, pale and luminous. It was modern, built into a cliff face, with sharp, white edges, a spotlit façade. The kind of house that Hannah dreamed of living in, one day.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“It’s just like all the other houses round here?” Josie said, causing Hannah to kick her beneath the seat.
Blake laughed.
“I forgot that it’s completely impossible to impress Josie Jackson,” he said.
Barnaby pulled on the handbrake.
“I think I’d be a bit more impressed if I lived in basically a shack,” he said.
The air stiffened.
