Page 26 of High Season
EIGHTEEN
When Josie wakes up, there is a moment when she is not sure where she is.
The fact does not alarm her. Instead, she feels only mild curiosity.
Impermanence is a natural state for Josie.
She is used to unfamiliar beds, places she only stays in for a couple of nights or a few weeks before fading into strange and disjointed memories when she tries to recall them.
The place where the key always got stuck.
The place where the electricity flickered off if you tried to use the microwave and the television at the same time.
The place that had a meter for hot water, and Josie would have to search for spare coins when she realized it had run out.
Then, her thoughts recalibrate. Shift into place.
She is not in her small shared flat in Paris anymore.
She is not in the hostel she moved to when calculating the logistics of coming home, staying in her room, bleaching her hair so that nobody would recognize her from the newspaper article that had blown apart the scraps of a life she had spent years gathering together.
She is back in her childhood bedroom. Her brother is probably still asleep next door.
She rolls over, and everything pulls more sharply into focus. The memories from last night arrive, clear and startling.
The drinks. Dancing on the sand. The warmth of Nic’s body as she walked beside him.
Nina Drayton, waiting for them outside the house.
She sits upright then, her stomach turning over, a combination of too many beers and the image of little Nina, all grown up, sitting out on their patio.
Josie has imagined so many times what she might say to Nina Drayton, if she ever saw her.
She has thought of the girl that she used to know.
The things that she said. She has wanted, so many times, to ask Nina if she remembers the long summer days that they spent together, before Tamara drowned.
And then, last night, she had barely been able to speak.
She let the fury that had been building up within her for years take over.
She found herself unable to look in the face of the woman that Nina had become.
Gabby is making breakfast when there’s a knock on the door.
The three of them still. Calvin’s hand hovers midway to the coffee pot. Gabby turns off the hob, a pan already spitting. They don’t get visitors.
“Maybe it’s Nic?” Gabby says, a trace of hope in her voice.
Josie knows that it isn’t. She has been waiting for this. She has known, somehow, ever since she came back, that this would happen.
“I’ll go,” says Calvin.
“No, I’ll go,” says Gabby, wiping her hands on a tea towel. “I can say you’re not here, if it’s…”
She doesn’t finish the sentence. That is how Josie knows that the two of them have been waiting for this, too.
Gabby goes out into the hallway. They hear the click of the latch. The name of the newspaper that the man announces. The pause before Gabby responds.
“Josie Jackson?” she says, as if she doesn’t recognize the name.
“I got a tip-off that she might be back?” the reporter says. “I drove down right away. With all the renewed attention on the case, the timing was just perfect.”
Gabby’s voice comes out clear this time, strong.
“You think Josie Jackson would come back?” she says. “With the way people feel about her round here?”
“The person who called this in was absolutely certain,” the reporter says. “Said they used to know her when she was a kid, and they spotted her in town yesterday. I figured she must be staying here. This is still her family home, right?”
“That’s private information,” says Gabby.
“Any idea if she’s back in town? You haven’t heard anything?”
“I told you, there’s no chance Josie Jackson would be back here. She’d be run out of town.”
“Well, if you do hear anything…”
“I won’t.”
When she rounds back into the kitchen, Josie and Calvin are silent at the table.
“He’s gone,” she says. “I just watched him drive off. Don’t look so worried.”
She bustles back to the hob, presses down on the gas ignition.
“He’ll be back,” says Josie.
A ring of blue flames blooms beneath the frying pan.
“You don’t know that,” says Calvin. “It’s one rogue reporter. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“How many eggs do you both want?” Gabby says, picking up a fork from the countertop in a voice that suggests the conversation is over.
And because Josie doesn’t want to ruin things—because she doesn’t want to spoil Gabby and Calvin’s morning off, doesn’t want to splinter this small fantasy of normality—she asks for two eggs, please.
She doesn’t mention the reporter again. She doesn’t tell Calvin how na?ve he’s being.
She doesn’t tell them that, in the moment she heard the name of the newspaper, she felt the small dream that she had allowed to take root last night fall away.
That she knows, even though neither of them will say it, that Gabby won’t want her working in the café now that people are looking for her.
That she probably won’t even be able to go to the café anymore, or to the beach.
That she’ll have to find somewhere new to live, because she knows that it isn’t fair on Calvin to stay here.
To drag him through this all over again.
She doesn’t, as she wants to, tell Calvin that they have the capacity to ruin your life, these people.
That once they find you, they won’t leave you alone.
That word of where you are, and what you are doing, will spread like mold blooming across the surface of food left out in the heat.
That once they have you, they won’t let you go.
Instead, Josie eats eggs and bread. She drinks coffee. She holds on to this moment, this tiny slice of tranquility—a Saturday morning breakfast, a mug of fresh coffee—because she knows how fragile it is. She knows how quickly it will pass.
She knows, already, that her time here is running out.
After breakfast, Josie walks alone to a rocky outcrop that sprawls out beyond the beach, far from the hordes of people who fill the sand.
It was somewhere that she and Hannah used to go often, all those years ago.
Josie has lost count of the days that they spent stretched out on the bleached white rock, hoping that their skin would turn the exact right shade of tan instead of taking on the pink hue of sunburn.
Paddling in pools among limpets and crabs with their claws braced up, strings of seaweed like dark, glistening pearls.
Talking about their plans to get out of here, Josie to faraway and unfamiliar places, Hannah to England.
It was there that Josie had seen Blake Drayton for the first time.
He had been standing in a circle of friends, a portable speaker breaking the peace, rupturing the serenity of Josie and Hannah’s secret, special place.
Josie had noticed how Hannah’s body tensed when she saw him, how she rushed to rearrange herself, rolling over and putting a towel over the almost invisible folds of her stomach.
“Who are you trying to impress?” Josie had asked.
Hannah had looked at her like she was mad.
“You must have heard people talk about the Draytons?” she had said.
It was the first time that Josie had heard their name.
It had been the year that Josie moved to France, the single summer tinged with optimism for her family. Her dad had just started to make good money. Her mum was talking about starting up a business out there, perhaps doing nails or hair for the kind of women who would pay well for the service.
Josie’s stomach aches when she thinks of the hope they all had.
How her mother had practiced French tips on her and Hannah at the kitchen table.
How the nail polishes and drying lamp that she had bought then sat abandoned in the hallway cupboard for years after Josie’s dad left, her mother having to take any work that she could get.
Everyone said that they should go back home to England after he walked out, but Patricia Jackson was determined to show that they could manage on their own.
She said Josie and Calvin would have a better quality of life here.
She heard rumors that some employers were so desperate for British staff, so unwilling to mix with the locals, that they would pay the fees at the expensive international school over the hill as part of their employment contract.
That was how Patricia Jackson ended up spending her days catering to the whims of the Draytons.
It was all supposed to make things better for them, to give Josie and Calvin the best shot possible.
Josie didn’t fail to see the irony in the way things had turned out.
Josie hadn’t known when her mother got sick.
She was living in Paris by the time Patricia was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, after months of putting off going to the doctor.
Josie called home rarely, and when she did, her mother was always bright.
Cheerful. Asking Josie when she would come and visit.
Josie never did, even though she often said she would.
Back then, the thought of returning had still been unbearable.
She was ashamed of how little she had to show for the years she’d been out of prison.
She was afraid of seeing the disappointment in her mother’s eyes—to see her realize that, despite all the sacrifices she had made, her daughter had made nothing of herself.
Calvin only told Josie right at the end. Patricia had been admitted to a hospital in Nice, he said in a hurried phone call. Things were much worse than they had thought. They didn’t have long left.
Josie tried to get to her mother, a frantic, multiple-train, cross-country trip. She arrived an hour too late. Calvin’s mouth had been a furious, hard line when he saw her. She went to hug him, and his body had been stiff.
“You don’t know what it’s been like,” he told her.