Page 103 of High Season

He tugged at the hair, making her neck jerk toward him.

“Your hair is way too long,” he said. “It gets in the way.”

She had noticed him saying these things lately. Small, throwaway comments about her appearance. That she looked better in skirts, rather than the jeans or shorts that she usually wore. That she should think about getting her ears pierced, because she’d look more feminine that way.

She knew that changing herself for Blake was the kind of thing that would make Josie roll her eyes at her. That, even a few months back, Hannah would have insisted that she would never do.

Still, she couldn’t deny how good it felt when his eyes skimmed over a new skirt that she’d bought a few days back. How she hummed with pleasure when he said that he’d seen a pair of earrings that would suit her, knowing it meant he had been thinking of her when she wasn’t there. How, with each suggestion, he gave her the secrets to fitting into his world.

She lifted her hand, easing the hair out of his grip.

“I should probably get it cut,” she said. “I haven’t had it done for a while.”

Blake stretched his arms up above his head, his body lengthening, a schism of skin between his boxers and his T-shirt.

“Hey, Evelyn and Harrison will be back soon,” he said, with the air of a conversation that was over. “You should probably think about leaving.”

The day of the bonfire was also the first day of the heatwave.

The streets were quiet, even as the sun started to set, anyone with any sense staying inside where it was shady and cool. As soon as Hannah applied her makeup she could feel it slide against her skin, a gossamer-thin slick of sweat already melting it away.

No one realized, just then, that this exceptionally hot day was only the start. That they would spend the next week fanning themselves hopelessly, stripping down to their underwear, throwing open the windows, gray rings of perspiration soaked through all their clothes.

Hannah did not know that by the time the heatwave ended, Tamara Drayton would be dead.

Her mum knocked on her bedroom door just as Hannah was applying a second layer of foundation.

“Josie’s downstairs,” Marie said. She wrinkled her nose. “Is that my perfume?”

“No,” Hannah lied.

She snapped the powder compact shut. She had taken the bus to the market down the coast that sometimes sold knock-off beauty products, and asked the woman manning the stall to help her match the bottles of foundation to her skin tone. Still, she didn’t look quite right. She couldn’t blend out the faintly orange line that skimmed her jaw no matter how hard she scrubbed at it.

“What’s all that on your face?”

Hannah zipped her brand-new cosmetics bag closed.

“Just a bit of makeup.”

“I didn’t think you liked wearing makeup.”

“I just wanted to try something.” Hannah stuffed the bag back into her bedside drawer. “Can’t I try anything new without you commenting on it?”

Her mother held up her hands in mock defeat.

“Fine,” she said. “I won’t comment on anything I notice around here.”

“You should have told Josie I’m not here,” said Hannah. “I don’t want to see her.”

Her mother folded her arms across her chest.

“What’s going on with you two?” she said. “I usually can’t keep you apart.”

“Nothing.”

“Doesn’t seem like nothing to me. Have the two of you had a fallout?”

Hannah winced without meaning to. A fallout sounded so childish. This was bigger than that. A distance that Hannah could feel expanding between them, an embarrassment when she would think of how Blake would see Josie. She was so unlike the Draytons, so unlike all the people that Blake was friends with. Hannah was ashamed for thinking it, but it was there now, impossible to suppress.