Page 19 of High Season

FOURTEEN

SIX WEEKS BEFORE THE BIRTHDAY PARTY

Hannah did not have to work on her Oxford application that afternoon.

She was not used to lying to Josie like this.

She always told Josie the truth, even about the stuff she’d be embarrassed to say to anyone else—the fact that she’d once had a crush on their maths teacher, or that she’d once cheated on a history exam and still felt bad about it.

And yet, when she had received a text message from Blake that morning, she had known that she would not tell Josie.

She had known, somehow, that this was something she wanted to keep for herself.

What are you up to today? the message had read.

Not much , she typed in response. Might go to the beach. Might help out my parents with some diving lessons later.

The reply was almost instant.

You know, I’ve never dived before. Crazy right?

It took Hannah a few minutes to respond to this.

A pause as she agonized over the right thing to say.

Was Blake hinting that he wanted to go diving with her?

Was she reading too much into it? What if she suggested it, and he responded with complete repulsion at the idea they might spend more time together?

What if this entire thing was in her head?

I could take you out, if you like? she had eventually replied. Casual. Like it didn’t matter to her either way.

She held the phone tightly in her hand, the screen inches from her face. Holding her breath as she waited for it to light up again.

I thought you’d never ask x

Her parents were late coming back from the dive lesson that afternoon.

They were irritable, short with each other as they navigated their nightly ritual of counting the day’s takings.

Hannah could tell they’d been fighting again.

When she asked if she could take the smaller boat out—the speedboat that they used for private lessons—they were too caught up in their silent grievances to ask why.

By the time she got to the beach Blake was waiting for her. She was out of breath from hauling diving equipment all the way from the shop, her feet catching in the sand in her hurry not to be late. He was dressed in swimming trunks, his chest bare. The suggestion of a tan.

“I thought you’d stood me up,” he called, getting to his feet as she approached. “Here, let me help you with those.”

He jogged over and prized an oxygen tank out of her hands, staggered with the unexpected weight.

“Shit,” he said, laughing. “They’re heavier than I thought they’d be. You must have muscles.”

Hannah wasn’t sure whether having muscles was supposed to be a good thing. The girls she usually saw Blake with were petite, their bodies neat and toned from horse riding and hockey.

“It’s pretty physical,” she said. “Come on, we’re going this way.”

“Aren’t we going in the sea?”

Hannah tried to hide the way her mouth lifted into a smile.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” she said. “You have to practice first.”

There was a natural salt pool close to the beach, only a few feet deep. It was designed for children to paddle in, the water always warm and still, a contrast to the cold, unpredictable heave of the sea.

They practiced in the lagoon-like basin, Hannah showing Blake how to breathe and demonstrating the tricks they taught in classes—removing and replacing his regulator while submerged, clearing his mask.

It was dusk by the time they took the boat out, the sun low, the sea bronzed with its reflection.

Blake had been eager to move their lesson into the deeper waters, and on the boat he made a big performance of checking his equipment the way Hannah had showed him.

He’s trying to impress me, she thought, but then batted the idea away.

“Are you ready?” he asked, as they trod water next to the boat.

And Hannah ignored all the things she knew about diving, all the times her parents had told her not to leave the boat without someone on board, all the times they had told her not to take somebody out alone.

“I’m ready,” she said. “Let’s go.”

And together, the two of them plunged beneath the surface.

Hannah loved diving when it was almost night. Perhaps it was because evening was often the only time when she could actually dive for fun. Not assisting a group dive, shepherding beginners on shallow descents, spending more time adjusting equipment than beneath the surface.

Or perhaps it was the fact that the sea seemed to come alive at this time, creatures emerging into the half-light.

Octopuses and luminescent jellyfish. The water a deeper, darker shade of blue.

The glow of her flashlight stretching far out ahead of them, reminding her of the vastness of space around them.

Making her feel like they were the only people alive.

They descended slowly, using the rope as a guide. Hannah knew that a first dive could be disorienting. That without the gravity of the world above, you could lose your bearings, forget which way was up. She signaled to Blake.

Are you OK?

He nodded. Shot her the I’m OK sign that she had taught him back at the salt pool.

The water darkened. Hannah flipped on her head torch, and the world around them illuminated. A shoal of fish darting past, their fins an electric blue. A field of bright green sea grass. A plume of red coral, its arms extending out like the branches of an aged, underwater tree.

The beauty of it never failed to shake something within her. Being beneath the water, for Hannah, was always like coming back to life.

She started to swim from the rope, kicking slowly. She only got a meter away before a hand closed around her arm. When she turned, Blake’s eyes were wide behind his mask. Panicked. He tapped at the plastic, a foggy sheen misting the surface. Gestured wildly.

It’s OK , she signed to him. Pointed at the surface. Let’s go back up. Her hand against his to reassure him. Slowly.

They weren’t particularly deep, and it took them just seconds to ascend. Still, when they did, Blake tore off his mask, gasped for air.

“You did it!” Hannah said. “Your first dive.”

He shook his head, tossing his wet hair out of his face, his bravado gone.

“Are you kidding?” he says. “I completely messed up. I panicked.”

“No way. Most people don’t manage to get into the sea on their first lesson at all.”

She was lying, but it felt like a kindness. His face was flushed, salt-burned.

“You want to try again?” she said.

He looked out to sea, toward the orb of the sun, now so close to the horizon that it looked huge and blazing.

“Nah,” he said. “I think that once was enough, for now.”

“OK, let’s go back to the beach.”

He shook his head.

“Let’s stay out here, for a bit? It’s nice. Peaceful.”

He turned to look at her, and his face was lit up by the sun.

“I like being here with you.”

Hannah pulled up the anchor and taxied the boat out farther. The water softened, waves passing beneath them in slow swells. They lay on their backs so that their heads were close together, their faces turned up toward the fading pinks and oranges of the sky.

“I can see why you enjoy this,” Blake said.

“The boat?”

“Diving.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call that diving,” Hannah said, testing how it felt to tease him.

He laughed, and the sound felt like liquid gold in her stomach.

“Do you come out every day?”

“Not every day,” she said. “Sometimes it feels too much like work. It’s something I have to do, to help my parents out.”

She didn’t tell him how, as much as she loved diving, it often felt like a reminder of all the things she didn’t have, the precarious line they were always walking. The days when her parents canceled trips because not enough people signed up, when the bell over the shop door never rang.

“I get that,” Blake said. “Sometimes I feel like so much of my life is about who my parents are. Like who I was going to be was already decided, before I was born. Like I never had a choice.”

Hannah trailed her fingers against the surface of the water, considering this. She wouldn’t mind not having a choice, if it meant she were a Drayton. If she could live in the pink house, and have staff, and never have to worry about money.

“What would you want to do?” she said. “If you had the choice?”

“Honestly?” Blake said. “If I had the choice, I wouldn’t have been born a Drayton in the first place.”

He shifted so that he was propped up on one elbow.

“People think it’s great,” he said. “This life. They think they would want the money and the attention. But they have no idea what it’s like having the legendary Evelyn Drayton as a mother.”

There was a twist behind his words, something sharp and bitter.

“Right,” said Hannah carefully. “She’s a bit… well. She’s not your typical mum.”

Blake snorted at this.

“That’s an understatement,” he said. “And it’s not fun, you know?

Having all the guys at school know who your mum’s slept with.

Knowing that their parents gossip about us.

Laugh at us. Think we’re trash, because we’re still new money, even though my granddad made his fortune back in the fifties.

But we don’t have houses and a family name that goes back generations.

So—as far as they’re concerned—my mum is some dumb heiress whose only notable achievement is pissing away our grandfather’s cash. ”

Hannah had never heard him talk like this. It was as though that moment beneath the water—that flash of vulnerability she saw in his eyes—had carved something out of him. Created an open hollow that he now spoke to fill.

Blake flashed a sideways look at Hannah, and seemed to catch her surprise.

“You didn’t know that she’s running out of money?” he said. “She’s always been running out of money, as long as I can remember, and yet she can’t stop spending it. Somehow, every time we’re in crisis, she conjures up a miracle.”

He leaned back again now, so that he was no longer looking at Hannah. So that his face was tilted toward the sky.