Page 56 of High Season
Tamara took a sip of Pepsi through a plastic straw.
“I think you know the answer to that,” she said.
“Do I?”
Josie was feigning ignorance, of course. She wanted to see what Tamara would say. She wanted to know what she thought.
“He’s with your friend. Hannah.”
Tamara said the wordfriendas if it was too large for her throat. As if she had to force it out.
“Is that a problem?”
Josie’s defensiveness was quick, even though she also hated Hannah hanging out with Blake. It was one thing for Josie to think that Blake was no good for Hannah. It was another for Tamara to think that Hannah was no good for her twin.
Tamara peeled a string of cheese from a slice of margherita.
“So what if it is?” she said.
“Because.” Josie could feel a spark of anger beneath her words. “He’s not better than her, you know. Blake should consider himself lucky to be with someone like Hannah.”
Tamara paused, the cheese still pinched between two fingers, inches from her mouth. Josie had noticed that the Draytons had a habit of playing with their food. Her mother was always complaining about the plates that returned, fillings picked out of otherwise untouched sandwiches, pieces of meat cut into minute pieces but uneaten.
“It’s not Blake I’m worried about,” Tamara said, so quietly that Josie thought she might have misheard her.
“Josie,” Nina said. “Can we get chocolate ice cream?”
Tamara stood, her pizza still practically intact.
“I’m going to head back,” she said.
“Tamara?” Josie said. “What do you mean?”
But Tamara was already bending down, mussing up her little sister’s hair.
“I’ll see you back at home, Neens,” she said, in a voice that was entirely different. Softer. “You be good for Josie, yeah?”
EIGHTEEN
2024
When Josie wakes up, there is a moment when she is not sure where she is.
The fact does not alarm her. Instead, she feels only mild curiosity. Impermanence is a natural state for Josie. She is used to unfamiliar beds, places she only stays in for a couple of nights or a few weeks before fading into strange and disjointed memories when she tries to recall them. The place where the key always got stuck. The place where the electricity flickered off if you tried to use the microwave and the television at the same time. The place that had a meter for hot water, and Josie would have to search for spare coins when she realized it had run out.
Then, her thoughts recalibrate. Shift into place. She is not in her small shared flat in Paris anymore. She is not in the hostel she moved to when calculating the logistics of coming home, staying in her room, bleaching her hair so that nobody would recognize her from the newspaper article that had blown apart the scraps of a life she had spent years gathering together. She is back in her childhood bedroom. Her brother is probably still asleep next door.
She rolls over, and everything pulls more sharply into focus. The memories from last night arrive, clear and startling.
The drinks. Dancing on the sand. The warmth of Nic’s body as she walked beside him.
Nina Drayton, waiting for them outside the house.
She sits upright then, her stomach turning over, a combination of too many beers and the image of little Nina, all grown up, sitting out on their patio.
Josie has imagined so many times what she might say to Nina Drayton, if she ever saw her. She has thought of the girl that she used to know. The things that she said. She has wanted, so many times, to ask Nina if she remembers the long summer days that they spent together, before Tamara drowned. And then, last night, she had barely been able to speak. She let the fury that had been building up within her for years take over.
She found herself unable to look in the face of the woman that Nina had become.
