Page 29 of High Season

TWENTY

TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE BIRTHDAY PARTY

Hannah spent a lot of time at the pink house after she and Blake first slept together.

She went over when Evelyn and Harrison were out, or sneaked in late at night, when the rest of the family were sleeping.

She and Blake took midnight swims in the pool, kissed pressed up against the kitchen counter, had sex in his king-sized bed.

Each time made her feel closer to the life she had imagined, as if his touch pulled her deeper into his world.

She’d been seeing him for two weeks when he announced that his dad was visiting that weekend.

They were in that in-between phase—too soon for Hannah to ask him what they were, too far in to mistake this for anything fleeting and insignificant.

Blake liked her. She could tell from the way he looked at her. The way he said her name.

“It’s a last-minute thing,” he said, excitement seeping out around the edges of his words. “He was in Paris for some shoot his wife was doing and said he’d come down before he goes back to Italy.”

Rocco Mae’s arrival was treated like some kind of state visit, the air stretched thin with anticipation.

Fresh flowers started to appear in vases, an enormous grocery order that Patricia accepted from a refrigerated van.

Champagne, huge joints of meat even though Evelyn and Harrison rarely ate dinner at home.

“She’s pathetic,” said Blake. “She says that she hates him, but then she’s desperate to impress him.”

It was all Blake seemed able to talk about in the days beforehand.

He spoke about his father with a tinge of pride.

My dad had a platinum-selling album when he was just a couple of years older than us.

My dad once hiked the entire Camino de Santiago without stopping for longer than a night.

A top chef said my dad’s vineyard made the best rioja they’d ever tasted.

But in spite of all their preparations, Rocco surprised them all, arriving in the afternoon rather than late in the evening, as planned. He must have let himself in with his own key, announcing his presence by bellowing up the stairs.

“Blake? Tamara?”

Hannah and Blake had been lying in bed, in that sleepy, post-sex haze. She had planned to slip out through the back entrance while Blake distracted Evelyn and Harrison. But now, Blake sat bolt upright, his hair still messy, his eyes alert.

“That’s my dad,” he said. “Shit. How are we going to get you out?”

“I can wait up here,” Hannah said. “You could take him outside and—”

Blake was already shaking his head.

“Mum always puts on a show when Dad gets here,” he said. “There’s no way.”

He bit his lip. He momentarily looked very small and very young, a child caught out in a moment of bad behavior.

“I think you’ll have to come down and meet him,” he said. “My dad’ll be cool about it. And my mum won’t say anything in front of him. Is that OK?”

A flicker of something in Hannah’s chest. Hope. Acceptance. A thrum of nerves at the idea of meeting Blake’s parents, properly this time, not as someone that they occasionally hired to help out at parties—to serve their drinks and clean up their mess.

“Yeah, of course,” she said, trying to keep her voice as level as possible. “That’s cool.”

They dressed quickly. Hannah felt self-conscious, pulling on the clothes that she had arrived in. She could smell sex on her skin, noticed a streak of dirt on her jeans from where Blake had lifted her up onto a low wall when he had kissed her earlier on in the day.

“Come on,” said Blake.

He was twitchy, urgent. There was already the rumble of his father’s voice downstairs, the drawl of Evelyn’s response.

They were all in the hall by the time Hannah and Blake reached the stairs.

Hannah could see Evelyn as they descended, heavy circles of kohl around her eyes, a deep-red slash of lipstick.

Her hair was half-styled, a tumble of curls down her back, the rest of it clipped up on top of her head.

Heels. Behind her, almost hidden by the folds of her skirt, was Nina.

She was quiet, peering shyly from behind her mother’s legs.

Harrison stood territorially in the arched doorway to the kitchen, as if blocking access to the rest of the house.

Tamara hung back, her arms folded across her chest. Her face collapsed with relief when she saw her brother, that crackle of twin-speak seeming to pass between them.

Then she spotted Hannah and her mouth knitted back together, eyebrows furrowing.

A glance back to Blake, and this time Hannah understood exactly what it said. What the hell is she doing here?

“Blake, my boy,” his dad bellowed.

Blake was smiling. He went straight to his father, gave him the kind of back-clapping hug that Hannah secretly thought men only did to prove something. Then, he turned toward her.

“Dad,” he said. “This is Hannah.”

Blake’s dad looked up, a flicker of interest on his face.

But then, of course, he wasn’t just Blake’s dad.

When Hannah looked at him, she saw the 1980s newspaper photographs of Rocco Mae, music superstar, wound around a young Evelyn Drayton, their faces white-hot with the camera flash as they fell out of nightclubs.

The famous snapshots of their shotgun Vegas wedding.

The infamous pictures of Evelyn’s face screwed up with fury the night that Rocco Mae was charged with assaulting a photographer who’d ambushed them as they left a Mayfair bar.

“Hannah,” Rocco Mae said. “Nice to meet you.”

And then he was just Blake’s dad again. A salt-and-pepper-haired man in a clean white shirt.

Good-looking still, if now carrying a slight paunch.

And Evelyn, not the fiery twenty-two-year-old who’d married a man that she’d only known for three weeks, but a woman in her forties who hovered too close, her face pinched, her eyes darting.

“I didn’t know you two were friends,” she said, as Hannah descended the last steps.

“I thought you’d given those up?” Rocco interrupted, nodding at Evelyn’s cigarette.

Evelyn sniffed.

“We can’t all afford a team of hypnotherapists to rid us of our addictions, Rocco.”

“Never start smoking, Hannah,” Rocco said, almost conspiratorially. “It’s a tough habit to break.”

He had a way of looking right at her, of making Hannah feel like they already shared some kind of confidence.

She could see why he had been such a heartthrob back in the day.

Still was, she supposed. She’d seen the magazine coverage when Rocco and his supermodel wife renewed their vows on their Italian vineyard estate last summer.

They had twins about Nina’s age, who always looked spookily perfect whenever they were photographed, glossy double-paged spreads of the whole family smiling in front of their sprawling countryside farmhouse. They looked nothing like Blake.

“You know full well everyone smoked when I started,” Evelyn said. “It was the seventies, for god’s sake.”

Rocco ignored her.

“Is your friend coming with us to dinner?” he asked Blake. “Hannah? Would you like to join us?”

“You’re taking him out for dinner?” Evelyn said. “I thought we were all eating here. I got Patricia to set up the dining room…”

“But I’m here early, and I’ve got reservations,” said Rocco, cutting across her smoothly. “Down at La Maison de la Mer. They’ll be able to add another seat for Hannah, I’m sure.”

“I’m vegetarian now. I don’t eat seafood,” Tamara said triumphantly, and then, under her breath, “which you would know if we ever saw you.”

Rocco seemed to ignore his daughter, whipping around to place his hand on Blake’s shoulder.

“Actually, I was thinking I’d just take Blake out tonight. A boys’ night. Well, the boys and Blake’s new friend, I suppose. I’ll take Tamara out tomorrow.”

Hannah saw Blake falter. A quick, worried glance at Tamara. Tamara’s face was impassive, her mouth set into a hard line.

Evelyn let out a small, disbelieving laugh.

“Well,” she said. “That’s how to parent like Rocco Mae, I suppose. One child at a time.”

“I thought it’d be better to have quality time with them,” Rocco said. “Me and Flora have been talking about how to be really present with the kids, you know? Give them our undivided attention.”

Tamara let out a small, sharp snort. There was a brief, terrible moment of silence. Evelyn, swaying foot to foot, her cigarette burning down in one hand. Rocco, looking straight back, his face still, his jaw set square.

“And what am I supposed to tell Patricia?” Evelyn said at last, her voice smaller now. “Harrison and I can hardly eat a whole leg of lamb between us.”

“Patricia’s handled worse dramas from you, I’m sure,” Rocco said, and Hannah saw the way that Evelyn flinched before she gathered herself again, straightened, frowned.

“Blake, Hannah, how about it? Maison de la Mer?”

“I was actually just leaving—” Hannah started, but Rocco wasn’t looking at her.

“Blake?” he repeated.

She watched as Blake hesitated, the eyes of both parents boring into him. He glanced between them. Then, he looked at his sister.

“Yeah,” Blake said, at last. “Yeah, let’s go to Maison de la Mer.”

“Great.” Rocco clapped his hands together. “The car’s waiting outside.”

“Right, perfect.” Evelyn stubbed her cigarette out hard. “I’ll just tell Patricia that nobody wants the dinner that she ordered in especially, I suppose.”

Nobody seemed to be listening. Hannah would have almost felt sorry for Evelyn, if it wasn’t for the way that Blake took her hand. Claiming her, in front of everyone.

“Come on,” he said, his face brightening. “You’ll love this place.”

For Hannah, going out for dinner was a rare occurrence.

The stretch of coast that they called home wasn’t designed for people on their budget, with their tastes. Her mum said she hated the restaurants that patterned the small seaside towns. Her dad said going out was a waste of money anyway.