Page 41 of High Season

THIRTY

Hannah and Josie go outside, to the small walled garden, and sit opposite each other at a wooden table, still littered with wineglasses, empty beer bottles, a half-eaten bowl of crisps. The detritus of the warm summer evening that Josie has interrupted.

Hannah’s mum had looked at her with the horrified recognition that Josie was used to seeing in people’s eyes. She had ushered the children inside, said Mark, come on, when Hannah’s dad hovered, pink-faced, muttering something about it being good to see Josie again, after all this time.

“I’ll leave you two, for a minute,” Nic says. “I feel like you have some stuff to catch up on.”

He slopes inside after his uncle while Hannah reaches for an open bottle of wine. She starts to pour herself a glass, and Josie sees that her hands are shaking. A tremor running through her, like wind across the surface of water.

“I heard you were back,” Hannah says, in a rush. “If you were wondering. You know. Why I’m not surprised to see you.”

“I’m sorry to ambush you like this,” Josie says. “It was my idea. Nic didn’t think you’d agree to talk to me. So I suggested that I just…” She spreads her hands wide, apologetic. “Turn up.”

Hannah smiles. It’s faint, but it’s there. It makes Josie long to make her smile again.

“Nic’s probably right,” Hannah says. “I wouldn’t have wanted to see you.”

She lifts her glass and takes a large swig of wine.

“You and Nic?” she says. “Are you… you know?”

“Are we fucking?” says Josie.

She laughs, in spite of herself, as Hannah’s hands fly up to her ears.

“Oh my god,” Hannah says. “Stop. That’s my little cousin you’re talking about.”

But she’s laughing, too, and Josie can’t believe how easy it is. How fast they’ve slipped back into their old roles.

“We’re friends,” Josie says truthfully.

“Do you like him?”

It’s like they’re teenagers again, talking about boys they have crushes on. The muscle memory of their friendship coming so easily back to life.

“Yeah,” Josie says. “I do.”

Hannah pushes the bottle of wine toward Josie.

“God,” she says. “I can’t believe this. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. I didn’t think I wanted to see you.”

“Nic says you live in England now?”

“Yeah. I went over there for uni and never came back. What about you? I heard on the grapevine that you were there, too, for a while?”

Josie nods.

“London,” she says. “And then Devon, for a bit. Didn’t really agree with me though, in the end.”

Hannah nods again.

“I couldn’t come back here at first,” she says.

“I didn’t, for a long time. I couldn’t stand it.

Not just everything that happened, but them .

This whole world. The money, and the privilege.

The entitlement, and the way they acted as if they had a right to do whatever they wanted with us, just because they could pay us to be there.

The way they just took people’s whole lives and crushed them, and didn’t think twice about it.

Like they did with your mum, after she gave her life to the Draytons. Like they did to you.”

She has to stop, as if she’s run out of breath. Josie catches the glimmer of something bright in her eyes. She thinks it might be tears.

“I never thought I’d hear you speak like that about the Draytons,” Josie says.

She only remembers how obsessed Hannah used to be, how she idolized them.

She spoke of Evelyn in reverent tones, even though, as far as Josie could see, none of the Draytons had done much to deserve their lot in life.

It was one of the reasons why she never told Hannah about her friendship with Tamara.

She imagined how Hannah would react. How she would beg Josie to let her hang out with them, and then be fawning and deferent if Josie had said yes.

Josie had been embarrassed by the thought of it, and then ashamed for thinking that way about her best friend.

“Yeah, well,” says Hannah. “I guess I saw the light.”

She straightens, seems to compose herself.

“I thought of writing to you,” Hannah says. “You know. When you were… incarcerated .”

She says the word carefully, like someone who has spent too many nights at home watching American prison dramas on Netflix.

“Why didn’t you?”

Hannah blinks as if she wasn’t expecting to be asked.

“Because I couldn’t,” she says. “I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was scared. And I wasn’t sure what to do. They don’t exactly cover that in Mizz magazine, do they? What to do when your best friend gets convicted for murder.”

“They don’t cover what happens when you actually do get convicted, either,” says Josie.

It comes out more sharply than Josie intends it to, and she sees Hannah flinch. She has to swallow back the spikiness that always comes when she thinks about those lost years. When she speaks again her voice is level.

“I wrote to you,” she says. “My lawyers told me not to, but I did. You never replied.”

Hannah nods, slowly. Apologetically.

“I told my mum and dad not to forward them to me, when I left,” she says. “I didn’t want to see them. I wanted… I wanted to leave it all behind me. That summer. You.”

A moment of quiet passes between them and, for a second, Josie could almost believe that they are teenagers again.

How many summer nights, exactly like this one, have they spent together?

How many secrets have they told each other beneath these stars, the words unfurling in the darkness, never to be spoken again?

“Hannah,” Josie says. Her voice is quiet now. Serious. “After I was arrested, I waited for you to come forward and back me up. To tell them that you were at the party, too. Why didn’t you? Why didn’t you say anything?”

Hannah shakes her head. Her face is strained, like she is holding something back. As though, if she speaks, she might burst into tears.

“I know you were there,” Josie says. “I saw you there. Why did you lie?”

Hannah lets out a sound like a sob; a fast, desperate exhale.

“Hannah?” she says. “Did you see something? Did they threaten you? Did—”

Her voice catches then.

“Did you hurt Tamara?”

Hannah is shaking her head rapidly now, face tilted down toward her hands.

“Say something,” Josie says. “Please.”

Hannah stills. Swallows. Tries to compose herself.

“I didn’t say anything,” she says. “Because I didn’t know what to say.”

She lifts her head then. Finally looks Josie in the eye.

“The problem is,” she says. “I don’t remember what happened. So when the police asked, the only thing I could do was lie.”