Page 73 of High Season
Tamara would be thirty-seven by now. Nina cannot imagine what she might have been like, cannot assign an adult personality to the few scraps of the teenage girl that she barely remembers. There are a thousand possible versions of the person her sister might have become. An overachiever like Nina, with a string of high grades and degrees. Someone who improvised their way through life, like Blake—always seeming to land on their feet, falling into highly paid jobs and relationships with a succession of beautiful people. Or, perhaps, she would have rebelled, dropping out of university to go backpacking in Bolivia, or to work a job that her mother disapproved of, or to run off with an unsuitable boyfriend they would all worry endlessly about.
No matter what, they would have been close, Nina thinks. She hasfriends with sisters. Women from school or university whose siblings would come and visit, who would reminisce about squabbling over stolen clothes and staying up late comparing crushes. When Nina heard those stories, she always felt a sense of loss, as if she was glimpsing a world that was unknowable to her. A relationship she couldn’t quite fathom, but longed for nevertheless.
Nina did not exactly miss Tamara—couldn’tmiss someone she had barely known—but she did miss what the two of them might have been. She felt the absence of her sister in a profound but not exactly painful way, like a nonessential organ. An appendix, or a singular kidney. A thing that she could manage without, but that she would always know wasn’t there.
As she picks over the remnants of last night—the shattered wine bottle and streak of blood—Nina thinks about how they might all be different, had Tamara lived. If Nina would have picked some other career. If she might have friends other than Claire, hobbies other than sharpening every piece of herself until only edges and corners remained.
Blake might have met someone who he would stay with for longer than a year. Instead, it was as if nobody could fill the space that his twin had left behind. Evelyn might have found a way to be happy, to be more of a mother to Nina. Instead, she looked at Nina as if her youngest daughter reminded her of everything that she had lost.
Nina gathers up the pieces of glass, glinting green in the early morning light. It brings the entire night back to her. Blake holding back her hair as she vomited bile streaked red with wine. Ryan, furious. Nina, telling him that she wanted to stay. Telling him that she had spoken to the documentary makers and scheduled in a meeting with them on Monday. Typing out an email to her new employers that she’s too embarrassed to look at now, certain it will be littered with typos and drunken mistakes, telling them that there’d been a family emergency. Asking them if she could put her start date back byjust a few days.
Ryan had woken up early that morning for his flight home. The room was still dark, illuminated by the light of his phone as he gathered his things.
“You’re really not coming?” he said.
“I’ll be back in a couple of days,” she replied, her voice sounding small. Uncertain.
“This isn’t like you,” he said. “Come on, Nina. You’re more sensible than this. You can’t just not show up to work because of some ridiculous whim.”
“It’s not ridiculous to me,” she said, but she knew it was useless. He hadn’t been listening to her.
He hadn’t kissed her goodbye.
Then there was the video, posted a few hours ago by a gossipy but prominent news outlet. A clip that must have been filmed by a party guest, Nina standing on the stairs, her words slurred. Beneath the clip, comments flooded in so quickly that Nina couldn’t scroll fast enough to keep up.
Fucking nutter.
Nina WHO? Report on some REAL NEWS not these z-list NOBODIES
This girl needs professional help
Nina watched the video three times. The commenters had a point. In her own professional capacity, she could see that she was looking at someone who appeared on the edge of something dark and dangerous.
She was looking at someone who was losing control.
She hoped that Ryan wouldn’t see the video, or worse, her new employers. She had spent years avoiding the public eye, and now here she was, in the center of the storm. There was a surreal quality to it, like she was watching someone else break down. Like the Nina Drayton in the video clip was someone she didn’t know, had never met.
Now, with the sea hazy in the early-morning light, Nina wonders briefly if it’s too late to fix things. She could, after all, still make an afternoon flight. Arrive home by dinner, in time to iron her outfit for tomorrow, and check that she has her highlighters and her notepad and the color-coded Post-its in her bag, these talismans for her new, grown-up life. She remembers how she felt buying them, that tug of anticipation, the promise that everything was falling into place.
It feels so long ago. Now, the thought of moving forward feels impossible. The pull of her past is too consuming, too bottomless. Thereare things she cannot leave alone; there are things she has to settle first.
When Ryan said she was sensible, Nina had the strangest feeling that he was describing someone else entirely. She feels unpredictable, brimming with an unexpected energy that’s honest and raw. For the first time in her life, she’s unconcerned with the expectations of others, the need to be good, and tidy, and well-behaved.
She hears the pad of feet on the terrace behind her, and twists around to see Evelyn crossing the tiles with a mug in each hand.
“I made you a coffee,” she says as she approaches, her voice milder than Nina expected. “It’s absolutely vile, but Sandra isn’t here yet so I had to improvise.”
She sits down next to Nina, bare feet hanging off the edge of the terrace, and hands her a cup.
“Jesus,” she says, taking a sip from her own mug and wincing. “That really is terrible. Maybe I shouldn’t have given Sandra the morning off after all.”
“He’s gone,” Nina says. “Ryan.”
She expects her mother to ask her what she means. Where he’s gone to, and for how long. Instead, Evelyn just nods.
“They always go, darling,” she says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. “C’est la vie, as they say round here.”
Nina is fairly certain that her mother, in spite of spending most of her liferound here,doesn’t actually speak any more French than this, but she doesn’t comment on it. For a moment, they just sit in silence, their eyes on the horizon. Nina is waiting for her mother to start berating her, to say how disappointed she is. When nothing comes, Nina speaks instead.
