Page 47 of High Season

“I’m already grown up, Mum.”

“Well,” her mother said. “Maybe that’s the problem.”

Josie was sitting on the wall outside of their apartment, scuffing her Converse in the dirt. Last summer the two of them had taken a Sharpie and decorated them with stars and hearts and tiny rainbows. Hannah could still see the faded scrawl of her initials close to the heel.

Josie sat up slightly straighter when she saw Hannah emerge, her face brightening.

“Hey,” she said.

Her eyes caught Hannah’s face and she grinned.

“Oh my god,” she said. “What’s that stuff on your face? You look like you’re doing fancy dress.”

Her laugh caught somewhere in her throat when she saw that Hannah wasn’t smiling, the sound hooked back by uncertainty.

“I think it looks good,” Hannah said.

What did Josie know anyway? Josie, in the same frayed denim shorts that she’d been wearing for two summers now, her eyelashes too pale for her face. Her hair so perpetually pulled back into a ponytail that it crimped when she let it loose.

“What are you all done up for, then?”

Hannah shrugged.

“Just trying something out.”

Josie’s eyes narrowed.

“It’s not for him, is it? You’re not getting all dolled up for Blake?”

“No,” Hannah lied. “’Course not.”

And then, with more conviction than she felt.

“Blake likes how I look, anyway.”

She caught a slight roll of Josie’s eyes.

“Sure,” Josie said.

She straightened, standing.

“Wanna go down to the beach? It’s so hot today. We could go for a swim, cool off?”

“I have to tutor tonight,” Hannah said.

The lies were coming so easily.

“On a Friday?”

“Yeah. You know what these parents are like.”

“Well.” Josie bit down on her lower lip and then released it. “Maybe we could hang out tomorrow?”

“Yeah, maybe. I might have some work to do. It’s getting kind of crazy for me at the minute.”

Josie nodded.

“The Oxford thing,” she said.

She sounded almost relieved, as if this explained everything.

“OK, well. Hope that they don’t go too hard on you tonight. They better be paying you good to work on a Friday night.”

“It all adds up,” said Hannah. “I’ll maybe see you in a few days.”

“Sure. In a few days.”

Josie stepped back, turning to leave.

“Hey, Josie?”

Josie turned around, hopeful.

“Yeah?”

“You should probably call, you know. Before you come over here.”

Something slipped in Josie’s face then. A tremor. A threat of collapse.

“Call?”

“Yeah. You can’t just show up at my house and hope I’m free, you know? It makes me feel like… I don’t know. Like you’re not giving me any choice. We’re not kids playing out in the road anymore. I’ve got other stuff going on now.”

Whatever was threatening to collapse dropped then, Josie’s mouth falling, her body seeming to droop.

“Oh,” she said. “I just thought—”

She swallowed. Seemed to gather herself.

“OK,” she said. “Yeah. You’re probably right. I’ll call you in a few days then?”

“Sure,” said Hannah, as if it didn’t matter to her either way.

Just then, she wasn’t sure that it did.

Hannah knew the caves where the bonfire was set to take place.

They were a draw for tourists, the start of an ancient network formed by millennia of water finding its way through the soft clay veins of the cliffside, burrowing into the earth.

An underground network of warrens and grottos, huge chambers and dark corridors.

Hannah’s parents used to run excursions down there, but had stopped when a lack of demand made them too expensive to operate.

Still, the caves remained a hangout for local teenagers, older kids gathering to sneak stolen bottles of vodka, younger kids daring one another to go deeper into the darkness.

The perpetually cool air would often be tinged with the smell of cigarettes, the occasional abandoned beer can floating on the surface of the underground pools.

Hannah had come up with the idea the day that Blake first mentioned the bonfire.

His comments about her not enjoying herself around his friends bothered her.

She worried that his line about wanting to keep her for himself hid a deeper truth: that Blake did not think she would fit in with the people he usually surrounded himself with.

The solution, she decided, was to simply go to the caves anyway. She would surprise him by showing up, looking like her very best self. He would be amazed by how well she fit in with his friends. How easy it all was for her to slide into his world.

Hannah saw the sunburn glow of the bonfire at the mouth of the caves long before she reached it. She recognized, among the mill of people, the kids that she had seen grow up around here, returning every summer taller and more polished. Somehow, even more beautiful.

For the first time in her life, Hannah felt like she could be one of them.

She took a bottle of beer from what must have once been an ice bucket but was now a pool of tepid water, fishing around in it in a way that reminded her of apple bobbing on Halloween at her grandmother’s house in Lincolnshire.

Granny Iris was a fiercely working-class woman who considered a trip to London something to plan months in advance.

Once, she took Hannah to see a show in the West End as a special treat.

Afterward, they had gone to Harrods, where Hannah had gawped at the rows of velveteen bears and wooden rocking horses in the children’s department.

Her grandmother had tutted, and promised that she would buy her something from Argos when they got home instead.

Hannah remembered thinking there and then that she would move to London when she grew up. That one day, she would be the kind of person who shopped at Harrods. It was the first time that she remembers wanting something more for herself. More than this life.

“Hey, it’s Hannah, right?”

A girl who had long, dark hair and a crop top that showed the silver glint of a belly-button piercing was waving. Hannah knew her, although it took a moment to reach for her name.

“You took my brother for a diving lesson last year?” the girl said. “I came out on the boat. It was just, like, not my thing?”

She had an upward lilt to the end of each sentence, turning statements into questions. Olivia. Her name was Olivia.

“My dad took him,” Hannah said. “I was just helping.”

“Right.”

Olivia grabbed a bottle from the bucket.

“Hey, do you have, like, a bottle opener or something? The boys are always showing off, opening these with their teeth and I’m always like, are you guys insane? I am not wrecking my teeth just so I can drink some shitty lager.”

She flicked her head so that her hair fell over her shoulder.

It was impossibly glossy, cut into long layers.

Hannah had wanted long layers, too, but when she had finally got them last year she had found that the saltwater made the top layer puff up like a mushroom cloud, and she had to spend the entire summer with her hair tied up in a ponytail waiting for it to grow out.

“Who invited you here, anyway?” Olivia asked in a way that seemed genuinely curious, not exactly unkind. Her eyes flicked up and down, as if taking Hannah in for the first time. Hannah felt herself shift, an automatic recalibration of her body, an awareness of her limbs.

“Blake,” she lied. “You know, Blake Drayton?”

There was a flash of something across Olivia’s face. A smile.

“Well, obviously I know Blake,” she said with a tiny roll of her eyes. “Doesn’t everyone?”

She flicked her hair again.

“Hey, do you want something else to drink? I think I saw some wine. Or maybe something stronger?”

She dropped the bottle of beer back into the bucket. Hannah hesitated, just for a second. Just long enough for the thrill of acceptance to register. As if Blake’s name was all that it took for this girl to want to be her friend.

Olivia’s eyebrows were raised. Expectant. Challenging Hannah to say no.

Hannah dropped her bottle, and it sank with a dull clink of glass against the metal basin.

“Yes,” she said. “Let’s get something stronger.”

They walked close to the bonfire where the air was hot and dry, a rasp of smoke in Hannah’s throat.

“Some of the girls are just over here,” Olivia said.

She led Hannah to the opening of the caves, a place where the rocks sloped upward, forming the arch of a high-ceilinged tunnel.

Three girls sat, half-lit by the flames. Hannah stopped dead when she saw Tamara perched at the top of a rock, as if on a throne.

“This is Phoebe,” Olivia said, pointing at one of the girls. “Chrissie. And Tamara.”

Hannah’s eyes locked with Tamara’s.

“We know each other,” Tamara said, coolly.

“Oh yeah,” said Chrissie, white-blond and wearing a row of gold bangles up an arm. “Aren’t you the girl who hangs around with that weird kid whose mum works at the pink house? Jodie something?”

“Josie,” Tamara says flatly.

“Yeah, Josie,” Chrissie said. “She always looks like she’s been dragged through a bush.”

Phoebe, a girl whose auburn hair had been disguised with highlights, whose pale freckles were just visible through a thick layer of foundation, giggled.

“Oh yeah, she’s always, like, lurking when we’re at your house, Tamara.”

“She was always such a freak,” added Olivia. “Do you remember, Tamara? She was always staring at you when we were in the pool in our bikinis. So gross.”

Tamara picked up a bottle of vodka and took a swig.

“Josie?” Hannah said, confused.

Tamara swiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Erm, yeah, didn’t you know your friend was a lesbian?” Chrissie said the word with a gleeful delight. “She tried to snog Tamara—right, Tamara?”

Tamara didn’t meet Hannah’s eye.

“Josie tried to kiss you?” said Hannah.

It didn’t make sense. Hannah and Josie were always talking about their celebrity crushes, sharing elaborate fantasies about boys at school. Josie would tell her if she was into girls. Hannah was sure of it.

“Yeah,” said Tamara loudly. “She just lunged at me. It was so weird. She’s basically been obsessed with me for ages.”

She passed the vodka to Olivia.