Page 84 of High Season
Josie shifts slightly.
“She’d freak out if she knew you were with me,” she says.
Tamara doesn’t answer.
“I guess she doesn’t know about Hannah and Blake yet?” Josie says.
“Hannah and Blake?”
Josie rolls her eyes.
“Don’t act like you don’t know,” says Josie. “Hannah’s a good person. I don’t want her getting hurt.”
The words sting.I’m a good person,Tamara wants to protest. Or at least, she wants Josie to think she’s a good person. Josie had always treated her as if the fact that she was a Drayton didn’t matter. As if she didn’t see all the darkness inside Tamara.
Tamara knows how close Josie and Hannah are. She’s jealous that Hannah gets Josie all year round. Tamara doesn’t mind that their friendship has always been a secret from their parents and siblings. It stops people asking questions; makes it feel more special somehow, sacred. But sometimes she wonders why Josie doesn’t at least tell Hannah about her. Wonders what Josie feels like she has to hide.
“It won’t last,” Tamara says.
“What makes you so sure about that?”
There’s a defensive spring in Josie’s words. The same spike that Tamara heard in the pizza restaurant.He’s not better than her.Tamara had kicked herself afterward for letting Josie think that was what she meant, realizing that she had inadvertently laid another inch of distance between them.
All of a sudden, she is tired of protecting her brother.
“He has a girlfriend,” she says.
She feels Josie stiffen beside her, alert.
“A girlfriend?”
Tamara lifts the bottle of vodka and takes a swig. Too late to go back now. “He’s been with her for a while,” she says. “Her name’s Cordelia.”
“Cordelia?”
Josie says the name like it’s a bad punchline.
Tamara shrugs.
“She’s old money,” she says. “Like,properold money. Her dad’s an earl. Mum’s descended from some European royalty or something—Spanish, or maybe Portuguese. I can’t remember. Anyway. Blake’s obsessed with… well. Not withherexactly. But, I guess, what she means. What she represents. He’s always had a chip on his shoulder, about us beingnew money.Always been embarrassed about it. I know, I know…” She breaks off, preempting the snort of laughter that emitsfrom Josie’s mouth. “But, look. It’s big, being associated with a family like that. It legitimizes you. Gives you access to all these parts of society that no one else can touch. Sure, Mum knows a load of has-been actors and supermodels from the seventies. But you have no idea the power that families like Cordelia’s have. The connections. The doors they can open.”
She hates herself for saying it, for knowing these things. For understanding these fine distinctions, the knowledge of the intricacies of class and wealth that have been baked into her since birth.
“He’s not going to break up with Cordelia,” she says. “Not for Hannah. HeneedsCordelia. Or, at least, he needs her family. Her dad’s got him an internship at a big investment bank next summer in Switzerland. He’s talked about renting out this beautiful house for him and Cordelia in Zurich. Then, they’ll go and stay with her family at their place in Lake Garda. It’s everything he wants, Josie. He’s not going to throw it away for—”
Josie stands then. Brushes sand off her thighs.
“I should go,” she said.
“But we just got here.”
“I’m not in the mood, Tam.”
Josie hasn’t called her that in a long time. Their eyes meet. Josie looks so sad.
“Everything’s different now,” she says. “It’s not how it used to be, when we were kids.”
Then she turns and walks away. Leaves Tamara alone, with only the sound of the waves. The endless stretch of the sea.
