Page 66 of High Season

The last year has been grueling. Flights back and forth between France and the UK.

Begging consultants and advisers to give her a cut-price rate and then funneling every spare penny back into the organization.

Meetings with her lawyer, who was filing a wrongful conviction claim to get Josie the compensation she deserved after losing a decade of her life.

Working odd shifts at the café, when she could.

And now, finally, her hard work is beginning to pay off.

Josie has checked her accounts, and dares to hope that this month she might be able to start paying herself a small wage.

She carries the knowledge of this inside her like a small, secreted jewel.

Her first salaried job ever, and from an organization she herself founded. The thought makes her glow.

“Josie! Nic! You found something to drink?”

Craig, a human rights lawyer who Nina met when he was doing pro bono work for Josie, emerges from the kitchen. He sweeps Josie into a hug, delivers a bracing handshake to Nic.

“So good to see you both,” he says. “Nina was so pleased when you said you’d come.”

He and Nic immediately launch into a detailed conversation about plans they’ve already sketched out for Craig and Nina to visit next spring.

Josie watches them, and feels a swell of love for Nic rise out of the center of her chest. She hasn’t told him about how close she is to making an actual full-time salary yet.

They’re going to Iceland next month to see the northern lights, something that has been on Josie’s bucket list since she was a child.

Her first proper holiday. She’ll tell him then. Give them something else to celebrate.

“I’ll get it!” Josie says when the door goes.

It’s Imogen, in London to promote the launch of the documentary.

Her first (and last, if her newfound determination to stay out of the public eye is to be believed) television appearance.

They’ve agreed to watch it together when it airs tonight.

It seems fitting, when the documentary was what brought them all together in the first place.

That prompted them to go looking for the truth at last.

“Dinner’s ready!” Nina says, emerging from the kitchen clutching an enormous casserole dish at the exact same time that the doorbell rings again.

Craig gets to the door just as Nina carefully sets down the food in the center of the table, her hands ensconced in oven gloves.

“Perfect timing!” he says, throwing it open.

Gabby bundles straight past him to throw her arms around Josie. She smells like airports and hastily applied deodorant, but beyond that Josie still catches the faint whiff of the sea. That place, so much a part of them all that salt still clings to their skin.

“We’ve missed you!” Gabby says.

Josie hugs her back, hard, while Calvin and Craig shake hands.

She’s missed them, too. She misses her life back on the C?te d’Azur.

Dinners at Gabby and Calvin’s place that last until midnight, candles stuck in empty wine bottles, leftover pastries from the café for dessert.

Nights sitting out on the sand, crates of beer, the crash of the tide.

Early mornings with Nic, mugs of coffee out on the balcony, the soft dawn heat.

A life that is so small and simple in some ways, yet so much bigger than she ever dared imagine for herself.

Laughter. People who love her. Work that gives her purpose. Peace.

“Sit down, sit down,” Nina is saying. “The documentary starts in half an hour, and I want to clear up before then.”

They cram around Nina’s small dining table, Nic having to balance on a comically small stool, Craig on a folding garden chair.

Nina asks Nic about the dive shop as she plates up.

Gabby asks Josie how she’s feeling about seeing the documentary, after all this time.

Imogen talks about a new opportunity she has, lecturing a series at a prestigious American college about media coverage of female murder victims.

“Anyway,” says Nina. Tendrils of hair have escaped from her ponytail. She raises a wineglass. “Thanks so much for coming, all of you. It’s been quite the summer.”

They all lift their glasses with murmurs of agreement.

A buzz at the downstairs door cuts through the background hum of a Spotify playlist. Nina’s smile tightens.

“Are we expecting anyone else?” says Craig, half standing, uncertain.

“Actually, yes.” Nina is already on her feet. “There’s one more person I thought should be here.”

She presses the door release.

“Well, come on, Nina,” Craig says with an uncertain laugh. “You’re not going to tell us who it is?”

Nina doesn’t answer. From the speaker, a folk singer croons. Gabby glances at Calvin, a look of confusion on her face. Nic sets down his fork. No one speaks.

A knock on the plywood door, and Nina pulls it open.

And there, standing in the doorway, a bunch of white tulips clutched in the crook of her arm, is Hannah.

The day after the video of Blake Drayton’s confession went viral, Hannah had gone back to the pink house.

She went out to the terrace, to the place where Tamara Drayton had drowned. Standing on the place where the pool once was, Hannah cried. For Tamara, but also for the person that Hannah herself was, back then. A lost, confused girl, not much older than Mason.

That afternoon, she had gone to the police station, and told them everything. About her relationship with Blake, and what happened after Maison de la Mer. The bonfire. The night of the birthday party. The way that she had lied for Blake, over and over again.

As she spoke, she felt something inside of her uncoil and release. The truth, unraveling its wings and preparing to take flight. The knot had been there so long, she had stopped noticing it.

To Hannah’s surprise, she had not been arrested on the spot. She was being treated as a witness, rather than a suspect. Still, she spent the next few months on edge, waiting for a phone call, a knock on the door.

There was an investigation, and a decision was quickly reached. Yes, Hannah had lied to the police, but she was young and vulnerable. The statute of limitations was short for that kind of crime, and if she was willing to testify against Blake, her role in it would disappear.

Two months ago, Blake was found guilty of manslaughter—the same crime that he had dangled in front of Hannah as a threat all those years ago.

Evelyn was charged with assisting an offender, a trial that had floundered and collapsed on the basis of weak evidence, the truth eroded by time.

Hannah had heard that she was living in Paris, awaiting Blake’s sentencing.

Apparently she was newly engaged to what would be her fifth husband, the arrest of her son and estrangement from her daughter not dampening her belief in her right to a happy ending.

And so, Hannah’s life went on. Mealtimes, and school runs, and social media posts, and longing, and sleepless nights. Birthdays, and arguments, and bills, and grief, and love, and all the small things that make up life, that make it easy to forget. She was the same, and yet irrevocably changed.

And now, Hannah stands in the doorway and looks straight past Nina. She looks past Gabby, and Calvin and Nic. Hannah stands in the doorway, and the only person that she sees is Josie.

“Hi,” she says. “Do you think we could talk?”

They go outside, to a small shared terrace with smatterings of flowers in terra-cotta pots, a bench painted bright pink. London stretches out around them, rooftops silhouetted against a pale ochre sky, the sunset just coming into view.

When Josie was still locked away, Hannah would occasionally watch the sky turn crimson—all the beauty, and the light, and the darkness coming together—and be struck by the fact that Josie could not see it.

That Tamara would never see a sunset again.

This realization never failed to floor her.

In some ways, every sunset since Tamara’s death has led her here.

Josie is gazing out at the sky. The sweep of color, the lilac clouds spooling like bruises against skin, the pale sphere of the rising moon.

“Do you remember,” Hannah begins. “When we would sit on the beach and watch the moon come up over the cliffs? We used to say that moonrises were better than sunrises. Although I’m pretty sure I only thought that because I was never awake in time for sunrise.”

Josie turns to face her. Her skin is golden in the strange, honeyed light.

“Why wouldn’t you talk to me?” she says. “After…”

She trails off, but Hannah understands. After the day that Imogen’s video went viral. The day that their lives changed forever for a second time.

In truth, Hannah had not been able to face her former best friend.

The shame had been colossal. The guilt that she had hoped would dissipate had clung on.

She had seen it in Josie’s face on the day that Hannah confessed.

The sadness. The exhaustion. The fact that nothing that Hannah said or did would give Josie back the time she had lost.

She had been relieved when Josie had not attended the trial. Glad that she hadn’t had to face her.

And yet, over the past year, she has thought of Josie every day. She has wanted to do this every day. Now or never, Hannah thinks. Speak now, or forever hold your peace. And Hannah has spent more than enough time not speaking out.

“Josie,” Hannah says. “I am so sorry. I’ve been carrying this guilt inside me for years.

And look—I know it doesn’t fix anything.

But I wanted to say I’m sorry for not coming forward back then.

And, I suppose, for just not being brave enough.

Not standing up to Blake Drayton. Not protecting you.

I never got the chance to tell you before. And I wanted you to know.”

The sun is almost gone. Only a schism of light, just above the rooftops, remains.

Hannah looks at the woman standing beside her, and she sees Josie Jackson. The girl whose name had been notorious and terrible. A byword for evil, and then, a byword for injustice.

But Hannah also sees Josie Jackson as she was nearly thirty years ago. The lost child who wandered up to Hannah’s parents’ shop and asked the way to the beach. The girl who Hannah grew up with. Who she loved. Who she betrayed.

She sees the two of them, peeling back the cover to the Draytons’ swimming pool with all the world stretching out ahead of them. Infinite summers. Thousands of sunsets.

“I don’t know if I deserve it,” says Hannah. “But I hope you can forgive me.”

Josie’s eyes are damp. It occurs to Hannah that she has never seen her friend cry. Slowly, Josie nods her head.

“I already did,” she says. “You never had to ask.”

Something inside Hannah splits in two then.

Relief flooding through her like a wave breaking against the shore.

Josie is hugging her, and she still smells the same, like saltwater and summer.

Like Hannah’s childhood, and all the best and the worst years of her life. Like coming home. Like high season.

Josie pulls away then, looking past her, out at the sky. The last embers of the sun.

“So,” says Hannah, searching for her gaze. “What do we do now?”

This is when Josie looks at her, and Hannah sees a world inside her best friend’s eyes. The hurt, and the healing. The years lost, and all the years ahead. The sadness. The forgiveness. The hope.

“We go on,” Josie says.

She takes Hannah’s hand, and they could be girls again. They could be two girls, looking out over the sea.