Page 52 of High Season
“Nina,” Ryan said slowly. “You said that you never wanted to go to one of your mum’s birthday parties again.”
“Well, I changed my mind.”
She bent to pick up the pile of workout clothes, business-like.
“It might be fun,” she said, her voice lighter than she felt. “And it’d be brownie points with Mum. Get her off my back for a bit.”
“Nina—”
“You can go back, if work needs you. I don’t mind flying on my own, and—”
“Nina.”
She looked up at him then, sitting on her bed, his hands laced together, his jaw tight.
“Please tell me,” he said, “that you don’t want to stay because of this documentary.”
Nina folded her leggings in two even though they needed to go in the wash and there was little point making them neat.
“Of course not,” she said. “I already told you. I’m not doing the documentary.”
“Because your mum and Blake are right,” Ryan said. “There’s no good that can come of you putting yourself out there. It’s done. It’s best we leave it that way.”
“That’s not what you said back in London.”
She turned her back on him, started to roll the leggings up into a tight, compact ball.
“What I said in London is that it would be a good idea to talk to your mum and Blake about it. Because I knew that Blake would talk sense. This documentary, Nina—there’s only one way it can go, and it’s badly. Putting your family under the microscope like that. Putting whatyousaid—what you told the world—under the microscope. Nina. You’d be setting yourself up to be torn apart.”
“Why?” Nina asked, still not looking at him. “Do you think that if I let them put what I said under a microscope, they’d find out it wasn’t true?”
There was a moment of silence. A moment where the only sound was the soft fabric shifting through Nina’s hands as she rolled and unrolled the leggings.
“You know I don’t think that,” Ryan said at last.
“But what if Iwaswrong?” Nina said. “Would I have theresponsibility to find that out? Would I have the responsibility to tell the truth now?”
Another silence. This time, Nina turned to face her boyfriend. He was looking straight at her. He looked, she thought, unbearably sad.
“Anyway,” she said brightly. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not about the documentary. It’s a beautiful day, and I don’t want to spend it in an airport.”
“Nina—”
“Just a few more days, OK? Just a few more days, and we’ll go back home.”
He hesitated. She could see him thinking. Could see his eyes twitch as he watched her. Trying to figure her out.
“Promise me,” he said. “That you’re not going to go looking for something.”
“Looking for what?”
“I don’t know. Something. I don’t want you getting obsessed with this. I don’t want you to go looking for Josie Jackson.”
Nina scoffed.
“Why would I go looking for Josie Jackson?” she asked. “Josie Jackson is the last person I want to see.”
And now, Nina stands across from Josie Jackson, and the first thing she thinks is that she has lied to Ryan. Another break in her family, because of this woman. Another reason why she has to make this count.
