Page 36 of High Season

TWENTY-SIX

There is a smudge of orange foundation on the collar of Nina’s shirt.

She notices it in the bathroom, after a makeup artist has spent the best part of an hour plastering her face with products that she assured Nina were necessary to prevent her looking washed out by the cameras.

She looks washed out anyway, the result of barely sleeping or eating for the last few days.

But she will sleep after this interview, she is sure of it.

She will finally, finally be absolved. Everything will be better, brighter, once she tells the world the secret she has carried inside herself for so long. She will be able to breathe at last.

A runner manages to find some stage chalk to conceal the blot of orange on Nina’s collar, winks as she rubs the mess away.

“Tricks of the trade,” she says.

And then, Nina is arranged on a sofa, bright white lights pointed at her, in front of a set that she knows will have been hastily assembled to look like the living room of a society heiress.

It’s much nicer than any of the Draytons’ properties are in reality.

All fresh, white linen curtains and shiningly new furniture.

Nothing at all like the crumbling interiors of the pink house.

“Nina! Hi! So good to meet you!”

A woman breezes up to Nina, bending to plant kisses on both her cheeks.

“Katherine. I’ll be conducting the interview today.

You’ve been briefed? Yes? Wonderful. Now, the most important thing to remember is to talk to me and not the camera.

We’re just two friends, having a coffee and a chat, alright?

Oh, and we won’t be including any of my voice or questions, so if you could start your answers by repeating back the question.

And don’t worry too much if you mess up.

This is only a first interview. And we’ll only be pulling out the tiniest bits, don’t worry.

Most of it will end up on the cutting-room floor, so just talk as much as you like, take us wherever your mind takes you, and I’m sure that you’ll be just wonderful. ”

“It isn’t Imogen interviewing me?” Nina asks, dazed.

“Oh, Imogen ? You mean ‘truecrimefangirl’ two thousand and whatever?”

The implication of inverted commas around Imogen Faye’s screenname is obvious, and Nina suspects that Katherine is not pleased to be superseded by a twenty-two-year-old TikTokker.

“God, no. Imogen’s a bit… well, you know,” Katherine trails off with a raise of one eyebrow.

“She’ll really just be doing the to-camera stuff, you know?

A few little segues and voiceover segments.

You really have to work with these social media kids now, you know.

Gets their audiences on board. And an audience like Imogen Faye’s is well worth having. Anyway. Are we ready?”

Before the camera starts, before Katherine begins, Nina thinks of what she should have been doing today.

Her new job. The curt email response that she received this morning from the HR manager informing her that they understood, but that as she is in her probation period, they unfortunately can’t authorize any absence that exceeds three days.

Her messages to Ryan that have gone unanswered over the last twenty-four hours, the longest they’ve gone without speaking in their entire relationship.

“OK, Nina,” Katherine is saying. “Three, two, one. Let’s go.”

The interview is not what Nina expected.

She is eager to get to the point. To the day of her sister’s death.

But instead, Katherine fires off a flurry of questions that make Nina feel disoriented.

That make her mind feel thick, as if she’s reaching for something within the intangible mess of her memories that she can’t quite access.

What was Tamara like? Josie? How were the days leading up to Tamara’s death?

How did Tamara seem? When was the last time that Nina remembers interacting with Josie before the day of the party?

Nina tries her best. She says things she knows about her sister, although she isn’t sure if they are thoughts that she has formulated herself or things she’s only heard before—from her mother, or from Blake, or from articles that she’s read, episodes she’s pretended not to watch.

When she talks about what that summer was like, she isn’t sure if she is talking about that summer specifically, or an amalgamation of all her childhood summers, a montage of memories that come together into one hot, suncream-scented soup.

She finds herself saying generic, pointless things, hating how vague they sound.

A time for the family to be together. A break from their lives in London. Happy memories.

She tries to talk about Josie but finds herself swaying between two different versions of the teenage girl she barely remembers—the impression of someone warm and kind, and the impression of someone dark, and dangerous, and cruel.

Are both versions of Josie real to her, or is one a construct of all the things that have been said about Josie since Tamara’s death?

Does Nina know anything about Josie at all?

“And now.” Katherine is leaning in. “If we could shift to the actual day of Tamara Drayton’s death. Can you tell us everything that you remember?”

This is it. The question that Nina has been waiting for. She sits up slightly straighter.

“Well, this is the problem,” she says. “I don’t actually remember what happened the day that my sister died.”

She expects the room to change. The atmosphere to shift. She almost imagined a collective gasp rippling around the ring of producers and cameramen surrounding the set. But instead, Katherine goes on with just a small raise of her eyebrow.

“Understandable,” she says. “You were very young, of course. But absolutely nothing?”

“Nothing,” Nina repeats. “I really don’t remember whether Josie went anywhere near my sister.”

“Well, no use flogging a dead horse if there’s nothing you can say about it,” Katherine says breezily. “Let’s move on to your role in the trial.”

And just like that, the moment is gone, the opportunity snatched away from Nina.

She keeps answering questions, keeps telling Katherine what she remembers about the police interviews and the trial.

It is only as they move further and further away from talk of the day of Tamara’s death that Nina realizes.

Katherine doesn’t seem to care whether or not Nina remembers at all.

Nina corners Katherine later, when a senior producer announces a break and they are guided into a room where baskets of fruit and plates of pastries are set out on a long trestle table.

“Katherine!” Nina says. “Katherine, hi. Can I just… do you mind if I just grab you for a second?”

“Grab away,” Katherine says, still rooting through a basket of brightly packaged snacks.

“Well… it’s just… the question about whether I remembered what happened to Tamara?

I thought we’d talk about that a bit more?

I thought that that might be—you know. Quite a big thing.

That it’d be a sort of turning point. After all, I’m basically saying there’s a good chance Josie Jackson didn’t do it.

Isn’t that something we should focus on a bit more? ”

Katherine is inspecting the ingredients on the back of a protein bar wrapper.

“Well,” she says. “Do you know what did happen to Tamara?”

“Well, no,” Nina says. “Like I said. I don’t remember.”

“Mmhmm,” Katherine says. “You see our problem?”

“I…” Nina trails off.

“The thing is, Nina.” Katherine begins to unwrap the protein bar.

“That this isn’t exactly new evidence, you understand?

Sure, you don’t remember now . And don’t get me wrong, that’s incredibly interesting.

It gives our viewers something to think about.

But if I was watching at home? Well, I’d be asking myself what’s more reliable.

Do I believe the testimony of someone—albeit a little kid—who says that they saw exactly what happened—and their memory is fresh, right?

They saw it happen literally a couple of days before they speak out. ”

She breaks off a piece of the protein bar.

“Or do I believe that same kid, twenty years later, who says that they don’t remember anymore? Not that they remember that they made the whole thing up, or that they know what really happened. But that they simply don’t remember anything anymore.”

She places the small, compact square of ultra-processed nuts and chocolate into her mouth.

“Honestly, I’d believe the little kid,” she says between chews. “I don’t remember my first day at school, or the day my dad left, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen . It doesn’t mean I didn’t know about it, and understand it, and remember it at the time. You see?”

She swallows noisily.

“And anyway,” she continues. “We have a fantastic neurologist, all lined up. He’s going to give us some great material about false memories, and how trauma can lead to us blocking things out.

All that good stuff. What you said was brilliant .

I can just see it now. You saying you don’t remember, and then cutting straight to Dr. Edmonson to explain why you don’t remember something now that you remembered so vividly at the time.

It’ll all flow together brilliantly. All very thought-provoking, for our viewers. ”

“So it doesn’t matter?” says Nina. Her voice comes out faint. She feels, suddenly, very far away from this woman. Almost like she isn’t in the room at all. “It doesn’t matter that I’ve… that I’ve confessed ?”

Katherine laughs then.

“Oh, sweetheart,” she says. “You have nothing to confess to! You’re just telling us your side of the story, as you remember it. Nobody expects someone to remember exactly what happened, all that time ago. We have the case file for that.”

She stuffs the remainder of the protein bar into her handbag, pats it conspiratorially.

“I’ll need my energy later!” she says. “And between you and me?”

She winks at Nina, an exaggerated flutter of her eyelash extensions.

“I think that Josie Jackson is guilty as hell.”