Page 16 of High Season

It takes her longer than she remembers to reach sea level.

The path skews sideways, and she wonders if she took a wrong turn.

And then, just when she is about to pull out her phone and check, the trees thin.

The path joins into pavement and the smell of the sea hits her.

Salt and sulfur. A fragrance that takes her straight back to her childhood.

She breathes in deeply. Fills her lungs.

The shape of the street is the same, but everything else is different.

New restaurants. Shops transformed into wine bars.

Bars turned into boutiques. Josie stops outside a dive store, the one place that seems to have stayed the same, seems to have weathered all the changes of this place, boogie boards and wetsuits still strung up outside.

Of all the places to survive. Of all the places that Josie never thought she would see again.

She hovers for a moment on the opposite side of the street, watching a disembodied wetsuit swing in the breeze. She remembers her first morning here. Seeing this street. That shop.

She lifts her eyes to the windows above the storefront and sees a flicker of movement. A shadow, behind a blank stretch of glass. Somebody is watching her. Josie steps back, looks down at the pavement. Walks away, as if there is nothing to see.

Josie finds the café easily. Calvin had written down the name for her on a slip of paper that she tucked into the back pocket of her shorts.

She checks it now, as she pushes against the locked front door.

She jiggles the handle. Presses her hands to the glass to shield her eyes from the light, and peers inside.

A woman emerges from the darkness, holding up a pair of fingers. Two seconds . She’s younger than Josie, maybe in her mid-twenties, with a pile of dark curls on top of her head and an easy, trusting smile as she scrabbles to unlock the door. Josie can see what Calvin likes about her.

“We’re not open yet,” she says, her voice bright as the door swings open, a blast of cool air releasing from within.

“I know. I’m Josie? Calvin’s sister?”

The woman blinks. A smile spreads across her face.

“Josie!” she says. “You’re early. I don’t think the producer is turning up until… what? Eight?”

“Yeah, I just…” Josie shrugs, spreading her palms out wide. “I didn’t have much else on.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.”

The woman steps back to let Josie pass. Inside, the air is mellow and inviting, the scent of fresh coffee, pastries baking.

“I’m Gabby, by the way.”

“I know. Calvin told me. And I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this, Gabby. Letting us use this place before opening time. I didn’t want to invite anyone over to the house, and I didn’t want to attract attention so—”

Gabby is already waving Josie’s thanks away.

“A friend of Calvin’s is a friend of mine,” she says, and Josie is struck by how easy she makes it seem. “Can I get you anything? Coffee? Water?”

“Water would be great, thanks.”

“Still? Sparkling?”

“Tap is fine. Thanks.”

Gabby disappears into the back of the shop and there’s a clatter of cupboards opening, taps being rattled.

Josie sits at a seat closest to the window and then stands, chooses a table near to the back of the shop instead.

She experiments with both of the seats. Her back to the wall, or her back to the café.

Her hands drum against the bare skin of her calves.

The smell of pastries makes her stomach ache, but she can’t stand the thought of eating.

“Here you go.” Gabby emerges with a glass of water. “I have some stuff to be getting on with round the back, but just give me a shout if you need anything, OK?”

Josie nods. Her hands close around the glass as if confirming its solidity.

“Oh and Josie?”

Gabby is hovering. An uncertainty crosses her face.

“I didn’t believe it,” Gabby says. “What they said about… you know.”

Without meaning to, Josie’s hands tighten around the glass. Gabby looks embarrassed, as if she’s said too much.

“I just wanted you to know. So we get off on the right foot.”

Josie is silent.

“Well,” says Gabby, flustered now. Her hands flutter against a stack of napkins on one of the tables, starting to fold them and then unfold them unnecessarily, an invented task. “You let me know if I can help out with anything.”

The producer is late.

Not unforgivably late. Not even to the point of being rude, really.

But late enough for Josie, who was thirty-two minutes early, to become anxious.

To begin to glance at her watch every thirty seconds.

To think, with concern, about what they will do if the meeting runs over.

If Gabby will have to open the café late.

If Josie, on her first day here, will be an inconvenience, yet again, to the people around her.

Then, at exactly twelve minutes past eight, a woman dressed in a linen shirt and wide-legged trousers, the kind of effortless chic that always baffles and sparks longing in Josie in equal measure, glides up to the door.

She has square-framed glasses, her hair pulled into a tortoiseshell claw.

She looks exactly how Josie would imagine a documentary producer to look.

Elegant and full of energy. When she sees Josie through the glass she smiles, raises up one hand in a wave.

“Josie Jackson,” she says as soon as she piles through the door. “I really can’t tell you how excited everyone is that you’re here.”

Josie doesn’t answer. She’s not used to people being pleased to see her. She half stands until the producer waves her down.

“No! No, don’t get up for me. I’m late, I know. I’m so sorry. We had a planning meeting last night that ran over and I ended up staying up late to brainstorm some ideas and… well. It’s so good to meet you, I suppose is what I’m trying to say. I’m Katherine.”

She holds out one hand toward Josie. Josie takes it, tentatively.

“I’ll get an espresso, please,” the woman says, before Gabby has a chance to ask for her order. “Double.”

She collapses into the chair opposite Josie.

“ Well ,” she says. “Look at you, back here! It must be crazy for you!”

Josie nods. Opens her mouth.

“Did you want anything, by the way?” Katherine is already asking. “Coffee? Breakfast? All on us, of course.”

Josie smiles tightly.

“I’m good with water, thanks.”

“So well-behaved of you. I’m a total caffeine addict.

You have to be in this line of work. Speaking of which, I am so excited to talk to you about the documentary.

The team and I have been here for a week so far, conducting preliminary interviews and so on, and my god!

This place! It’s beautiful. And then this undercurrent of darkness .

Such terrible things that have happened here, over the years, Tamara Drayton’s death included, of course.

It’s completely delicious. Perfect for TV. ”

Josie can feel her face stiffening. The muscles of her cheeks starting to ache with the rictus smile that she’s somehow managed to maintain throughout this monologue.

“And your story—my god. It’s just devastating . I can’t imagine how it must have been for you. To have all of those things said about you, everything out in a public forum. I’m so glad we managed to track you down. So glad we’re able to tell your side of the story now.”

Josie manages a nod. Swallows.

“Well, yeah,” she says. “It’s… well. It was pretty terrible.”

“I have to ask you, of course.” Katherine lowers her voice, conspiratorial. “ Did you do it?”

The nerves inside Josie quiver. Stall. Something within her collapses. Katherine is laughing.

“I mean, of course you’re not going to tell me,” she says. “But you have to ask, you know? You can’t not ask the question.”

Josie bends down to unzip her backpack.

“OK, OK. We’ll revisit that one later,” Katherine is saying cheerily.

Josie straightens.

“Here,” she says. She drops a cardboard file on the table. It’s so thick, so stuffed with papers, that it falls with a satisfying thud that silences Katherine.

“The case file,” Josie says. “That’s what you wanted, right?”

“Josie.” Katherine looks like the only thing stopping her from whisking the file up from the table immediately is Gabby approaching with her double espresso.

“My god. You star . You’re the only person who can request most of this stuff, but even then we weren’t sure they’d grant access to all of it. ”

“It’s all there,” Josie said. “Everything they’d give me, at least. I looked through it. It’s mostly boring legal stuff, but I’m sure there’s something you can use.”

“Of course, of course. I’m sure there’ll be plenty we can sink our teeth into. We’ll get it copied today and get this back to you.”

Josie zips her backpack up with one decisive motion.

“It’s fine,” she says. “You can keep it. I don’t want it.”

“You don’t—?”

“No.”

Josie stands.

“Enjoy your coffee.”

She almost delights in the panic that flashes in Katherine’s eyes.

“But—I thought we could set up your first interview? Or at least have a chat through what information you might be able to offer us about—”

“I said I’d help,” Josie says. “And I got you the case files. I didn’t say that I’d be interviewed. Or talk about the case, for that matter.”

“But Josie.” Katherine has flushed an unflattering shade of pink.

Her coffee remains untouched in front of her.

She forces out a strained-sounding laugh.

“You’re our star interviewee! This documentary could be so good for you.

It could change people’s opinion of you. Convince them of your innocence.”

“I think it might be difficult to do that,” says Josie, “when the people making the documentary aren’t convinced of my innocence themselves.”

A look of horror dawns on Katherine’s face.

“Is this because I asked if you did it?” she says. “Josie? I was only asking a silly question. Of course I think you’re innocent! But I have to ask . The evidence against you was so compelling.”

“Right, yeah,” says Josie. “You don’t have to tell me. I spent ten years in prison on the basis of that evidence. Clearly someone found it compelling. ”

“Josie. Let’s start again. Please. We can talk this through.”

Josie shifts the now empty backpack onto her shoulders.

“It’s all there in the file,” she says. “Everything. You don’t need me, telling the same story all over again.”

“But Josie—”

Josie doesn’t wait to listen to her. She has already turned to leave.

“Josie, please,” Katherine calls after her. “Let’s just talk!”

Josie turns back then, pausing with one hand on the door.

“Actually,” she says. “There’s one thing I did want to ask you.”

Katherine nods, too eagerly.

“Yes,” she says. “Of course. Why don’t you sit back down and we can—”

“Have you managed to track down Hannah Bailey?”

Katherine’s face creases.

“Hannah…?”

Her confusion tells Josie everything she needs to know. She pushes hard against the door. As she walks away, she finds that she is trying not to cry.