Page 21 of High Season

FIFTEEN

Nic is already seated at an outdoor table when Josie arrives at the restaurant.

There are white tablecloths, railings wound with ivy, waiters in buttoned-up shirts.

Beyond the terrace, the sea is a hazy shade of gold.

It’s a notoriously expensive place, the kind Josie’s mum would once talk longingly about visiting but could never afford.

Not that Josie can afford it either. She had balked when Nic had suggested it.

I’m kind of broke at the minute , she had texted him back. His reply had been swift: My treat x

“Hi,” she says when a waiter shows her to the table.

Nic stands, his chair scraping back against the ground. He looks different, in a pale blue shirt and chinos. Older. He leans in to kiss Josie on the cheek.

“You look great,” he says.

“Thanks.” Josie plucks at the lengths of the lilac tie-dyed dress that falls to her feet. “It’s actually Gabby’s. She lent it to me.”

She had only had a few going-out outfits from Paris. Figure-hugging black dresses, skin-tight jeans. City clothes. Nothing that had felt right out here.

Nic laughs. “Only round here,” he says, “could you go on a date with someone and she turns up in your ex-girlfriend’s dress.”

The waiter pulls out Josie’s chair and she lowers herself down. “She was pleased,” she says. “That we were going out tonight, I mean.”

It had pained her, how delighted Gabby and Calvin had been when she had told them. Gabby clapped her hands together, and Calvin’s shoulders seemed to soften, as if he had been holding a weight on them this whole time.

“Nic’s a good guy,” he said over and over, as if he couldn’t quite believe it. As if he was floored by the relief of someone good wanting his sister.

Nic nods.

“He worries about you, I think.”

“He’s got nothing to worry about. I’m good. Better than ever.”

The waiter arrives to hand Nic a wine list.

“I’ll be honest with you,” says Nic as soon as he’s out of earshot. “I know absolutely nothing about wine.”

He holds the leather-bound list out toward her and she shakes her head.

“Me neither,” she says. “Do you think that they’ll look down on us if we just order the cheapest one?”

“Or two of their cheapest, finest lagers,” Nic says.

“Whoa.” Josie holds her hands up in mock horror. “You’re meant to be ordering a drink, not getting us kicked out of this place.”

She likes making him laugh. She likes the way his whole face floods with warmth when he does.

She has to remind herself, as she often does in these scenarios, that this cannot lead anywhere.

She cannot let herself like Nic, even in spite of his laugh, their shared history.

Like so many other things, the luxury of attachment is not something that Josie gets to have.

“Can I get you started with any drinks?”

The waiter’s return is so smooth that it makes Josie jump.

“Erm… maybe this one?”

Nic stabs a finger at the wine list. “The… Montepulci… d’Abrusso?”

“The Montepulciano d’Abruzzo?” the waiter says, with a perfect Italian flair, one eyebrow raised.

“Erm. Yeah. That one.”

“A few more minutes with the food menu?”

“That would be great.”

“Just let me know if there’s anything that you don’t…” The waiter’s eyes flit up and down, taking them both in. “Understand.”

As he hurries away with the wine list, Nic’s face flushes.

“Is it just me or was he…”

“A complete snob?” Josie says. “Yeah.”

She picks up her menu, her eyes automatically skipping to the row of numbers that line the right-hand side of the page.

“Jesus. This place. These prices are crazy.”

Nic is scanning the menu, too, his eyes flitting back and forth.

“Mmmhmm,” he says.

“Are you…” Josie lowers her voice. “Are you sure you can afford this? Seriously. I’d be just as happy with somewhere a bit cheaper.”

“No,” Nic says, sounding uncertain. “It’s fine.”

“I don’t mind. Really.”

“It’s fine,” Nic says.

He runs his fingers along his shirt collar, sticking too close to his neck.

“I just wanted to take you somewhere nice,” he says, in a smaller voice.

“It is nice. It’s just. Well… I don’t actually know what half these ingredients are.”

He glances up from the menu, meets her eye across the table.

“I mean, what’s samphire when it’s at home?”

There’s a flicker on his face then, a smile almost catching his mouth.

“Oh, I was actually thinking of going for the sea buckthorn,” he shoots back.

They grin at each other, a secret alliance formed.

“You know,” she says. “They haven’t taken our order yet. We could absolutely still cut and run.”

Nic hesitates. Places down his menu.

“I actually know a really fun spot not that far away from here,” he says.

“Do they do sea buckthorn? Because I really had my heart set on the sea buckthorn.”

They pause, the possibility hanging briefly between them. It sends a hum of excitement through Josie. Like schoolchildren, daring each other not to get caught.

“There’s a path down to the beach right over there.”

“On the count of three?”

“One, two, three .”

They go to a tiny shack on the beach, away from the main strip. Wooden benches are set out on the sand, fairy lights strung up between poles. There’s music, a bonfire in a metal barrel, a makeshift dance floor of wooden pallets.

They order bottles of beer and thick, buttery baguettes stuffed with crab meat.

Nic tells Josie about the shop, and his year backpacking in Southeast Asia in his late teens, the two seasons diving in Thailand.

Josie tells him how she always wanted to go traveling without feeling awkward about the very obvious reason why she never has, and they compare bucket lists. Goa. Cuba. The Philippines.

They’re two drinks in by the time their food arrives, and an ease has fallen between them.

“You know,” says Nic. “I always had the biggest crush on you when I was a kid.”

Josie swallows a mouthful of baguette.

“You did not. Nobody had a crush on me.”

“For real! When I was about twelve or thirteen. I basically thought you were the perfect woman.”

“I dread to think what thirteen-year-olds look for in a woman.”

“I just thought you were super cool. That day that you and Hannah first took me diving?” He let out a mock wolf whistle. “I didn’t realize that girls did stuff like that, before then. Man, I was smitten.”

“You were creepy and sexist when you were thirteen?” Josie says. “No wonder it took us this long to go on a date.”

“I mean, I hadn’t actually talked to many girls at that age, so my understanding of them was fairly skewed,” says Nic. “Obviously, you and Hannah proved me wrong. You were always much braver than I was. Still are, probably.”

Josie wipes her fingers on a paper napkin.

“Sorry to burst your dream-woman bubble,” she says. “But I haven’t been diving in years. I only ever really did because it came with the territory, if you were friends with Hannah.”

Hannah had known the water. The best swimming spots and the best diving spots. She knew where the water was clear and safe and where there were jagged rocks right beneath the surface that could catch you and tear your skin to shreds.

“I’m not even sure I could do it now,” she admits.

“’Course you could. It’s like riding a bike. Hey, we could go tomorrow, if you like? Take the boat out, go for a swim around the bay? Diving optional.”

Josie almost says no.

A date on her third day here was a crazy, out-of-character decision, but two dates in two days?

But then, she imagines the rise and fall of the waves. The cool, clean water.

“I can probably move a few things around in my diary,” she says, with a slight upturn of her mouth that shows him what he surely already knows. That Josie doesn’t have things to move around in her diary. That she doesn’t even have a diary.

Nic raises his beer.

“It’s a date,” he says.

Josie raises hers back.

“It’s maybe a date,” she says, but he’s already clinking his bottle against hers.

They order another round of drinks, and Josie can feel the world growing soft and dappled around them.

Nic undoes his top shirt button, ruffles his hair.

He looks good. She thinks how easy it would be to go home with him tonight, how uncomplicated.

Someone who knows her past without her having to tell them.

Without having to worry what they will think of her.

“So we don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to,” says Nic. “But you coming back—is it anything to do with a certain documentary?”

Josie swallows the last bite of crab.

“You know about that?”

“Everyone knows about that. It’s created a bit of a buzz round here, actually. Lots of people not happy about it. Not exactly good for business, your town being infamous as the site of a murder.”

Josie wipes her fingers on a napkin.

“Maybe you’re right,” Josie says. “Maybe we don’t have to talk about it.”

“But that’s why you’re back?”

“Sort of,” Josie says.

And then she surprises herself by telling him everything.

She tells him about getting an email from the producers a few months back, before the newspaper article that had changed everything.

Their excitement about the social media storm that had revived the case.

Their promises that people were starting to see things differently now.

The way they had suggested, so casually, that Josie might be able to get hold of her case file.

You’re the only person who can access key documentation about the investigation , the email had read. And believe me, we’ve tried! We think that this, combined with the renewed interest in the case, could shift the public’s perception of what happened to Tamara Drayton.