Page 78 of High Season

Tamara swallowed. There was something about this girl. An ease. An openness that seemed to spool out and wind its way into Tamara.

“I’m not the best swimmer,” she said.

Josie’s hand slowed in the sand.

“Serious?” she said. “I thought the pink house had a swimming pool.”

“Yeah, well.” Tamara shrugged, helplessly. “I don’t mind the pool so much. But the sea…”

She stretched out one hand toward it, as if by explanation. The vastness. The emptiness.

“Well.” Josie sat up straighter, propping herself up on one arm. “Do you want me to help you?”

“Help me?”

“Yeah. It’s easy, once you get used to it.”

In spite of herself, Tamara had found a smile creeping onto her face.

“OK,” she had said. “Alright. You can help me, if you want.”

When Tamara gets back from her night in Montpellier, Blake is waiting up for her, sitting on her bed in the light of a single lamp, his arms crossed over his chest.

“What do you think you’re playing at?” he asks.

“What do you thinkyou’replaying at?” she echoes him. Grins. The room is swaying slightly, a slow, back-and-forth tilt, as if they are in the bow of a ship.

He stands.

“Harrison knows you took the car, by the way. He’s been fuming all afternoon.”

“So? What’s he going to do? Call the police on me?”

He pulls a face.

“You stink of booze. You shouldn’t be driving.”

“Sorry, Mum.”

“Yeah, right. Like Mum would care. Seriously though, Tam. I don’t know what’s got into you this summer.”

“Like you’ve never let Barnaby drive you anywhere drunk.”

“Tamara, stop.” He places his hands on both of her shoulders, maneuvers her to sit on the bed. “It’s like you’re in self-destruct at the minute. I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.”

“So don’t. Don’t talk to me.”

“Tamara—”

“You’ve been too busy fucking Hannah Bailey all summer to bother with me anyway.”

She regrets it as soon as she says it, the petulant, childish way that it sounds. But mostly, she regrets how it invites her twin brother, the person she loves most in the world, to lie to her again.

“I’m not—”

She covers her ears with her hands.

“Don’t,” she says.