Page 8 of High Season

Then, an arm reaching around Hannah, the heat of a body, the feel of someone’s breath against the back of her neck as the door was pushed shut.

“You know,” a voice said. “You really shouldn’t be sneaking around like this. You might hear things you don’t want to know.”

Blake’s room was dark, the air tight and sweet-smelling.

The scent of teenage boy: body spray and the earthy stench of weed.

A deep blue lamp cast the room in an unearthly glow, the reflection of the molten wax patterning the ceiling.

It would have been something that Blake’s father, Rocco Mae, bought for him, Hannah could tell.

After spending six years in and out of the Draytons’ house, she could recognize something that a man who didn’t really know his son would buy.

A thing that he might think a teenager would like.

Blake moved from behind Hannah toward the bed where another boy lay, a spliff glowing orange in one hand.

As her eyes adjusted to the half gloom, Hannah recognized him as Blake’s best friend, Barnaby.

She knew him, of course. She knew all the intricate networks that webbed the summer residents together.

Families and step-families and friends, people who belonged to the same members’ clubs back in London, or had drank together at university.

She had grown up with these kids, knew where their families wintered, the names of the boarding schools they went to back in England.

Barnaby’s parents were property developers, well-known for building garish mega mansions.

Their own house was an ugly monstrosity on the other side of the bay.

“I was just looking for Josie,” Hannah said. She held up the plate, as if it was evidence. “Patricia asked me to bring up some sandwiches, for the kids.”

“You don’t have to explain yourself to us, H,” Blake said, with an ease that made her flush. “I would just hate for Evelyn to catch you up here when she’s on the warpath.”

“Is she…” Hannah paused. “Is she… OK? Do you think you should check on her?”

“You don’t want to get between her and Harrison when they’re like this.”

A voice from the other side of the room made Hannah jump. She hadn’t seen her, sprawled in the window alcove, her legs propped up against the wall.

Tamara Drayton.

Blake and Tamara were of course not identical, and yet it still always struck Hannah with a kind of surprise how different they were. Blake had sandy blond hair, skin that turned tan easily. He had a way of fitting in, an easy confidence that filled whatever space he occupied.

Tamara, on the other hand, had short, dark hair cut into a pixie crop.

Skin pale from deliberately staying out of the sun.

A habit of wearing thick, black eyeliner.

She was confident, too, but in a different way.

A spiky way that seemed to draw a circle around herself, a warning not to enter.

She said things that other people wouldn’t, Blake often slipping in to soften her words.

The only way either twin appeared to have taken after their mother at all was Tamara’s tendency to have a cigarette perpetually hanging from one hand.

She smoked roll-ups, and Patricia was constantly sweeping up dropped scraps of tobacco at the pink house, muttering that anyone with Drayton money would smoke proper cigarettes, if they had half a brain.

Yet in spite of their physical differences, Blake and Tamara had myriad similarities, things that were more difficult to put your finger on.

The way they tilted their heads when they were listening carefully.

The way they laughed. The slant of their noses.

The specific slang they used, the way they spoke a beat more slowly than seemed necessary.

Blake had once mentioned that when they were children, they had developed a secret twin-speak and that it would drive Evelyn mad. The two of them, communicating in a language their mother was unable to access.

Tamara tilted her head then, in that specific way Hannah recognized.

“It’s like foreplay to them,” Tamara said. “All this yelling at each other, accusing each other of fucking other people. It’s their thing.”

In the half-light, Hannah could see Barnaby pulling a face. Tamara drew on the thin roll-up, exhaling a stream of damp, musky smoke into the air. It was so muggy, like nobody had opened a window in days. Was Hannah imagining that she was getting light-headed?

“So, what’s new round here?” Tamara drawled, as if they’d only been talking about the weather. “What have we missed while we’ve been rotting in London all winter?”

There was a taunt to her voice, and Hannah wondered if she was being mocked. She lifted her chin.

“Oh, you know,” Hannah said. “It’s been quiet. Always is, until summer.”

Blake sat down heavily on the bed.

“Oh, come on,” he said, kindly. “I bet you have loads of gossip. Stuff that goes on behind closed doors when we’re not here.”

“Upstairs, downstairs shit,” said Barnaby.

Tamara snorted. Blake’s leg jerked out to kick him, a movement subtle enough that Hannah almost didn’t catch it.

“I just meant… you guys who live here must have the run of the place, right? And your dad runs that restaurant, doesn’t he? Down by the beach.”

“Actually—”

“Barnaby, you’re such an idiot,” said Blake. “H’s parents run the dive shop, remember?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Barnaby, in a way that suggested he didn’t.

There was a pause that seemed to go on slightly too long.

“Anyway,” said Hannah, breaking it. “I should probably go and find Josie.”

“I’ll come with you.” Blake stood up. “Two pairs of eyes are better than one, right?”

“Bro,” said Barnaby, the upper-class cut of his accent dragging against the word. “I thought we were gonna go get that vodka?”

“I’ll get it on the way back,” Blake said. “Chill.”

He turned to Hannah.

“Come on then, H,” he said. “Let’s go and find your friend and my elusive sister.”

Blake offered to carry the sandwiches. It left Hannah unsure what to do with her hands.

They felt ungainly swinging next to her sides, hanging gorilla-like, drawing attention to her long limbs, the fact that she was half an inch taller than Blake.

She folded them across her chest, but then remembered that she had read a magazine segment by a body language expert saying that doing so would make her look hostile and unapproachable.

In the end, she settled for burying them in the pockets of her denim shorts as they circled the ground floor of the house.

“They were supposed to be by the pool,” she said.

“Probably Nina, leading Josie astray,” said Blake, and Hannah had to glance up to check that he was joking.

“Hey,” he said. “Sorry about them. Tamara and Barnaby. They think they’re being funny, but—”

“It’s fine,” said Hannah, too quickly. “I can take a joke.”

“But they shouldn’t take the piss out of you like that,” he said.

The words, said so easily, confirmed Hannah’s fears. That they were, in fact, mocking her. She tried not to let her face show the hurt scrabbling to the surface.

“Barnaby’s always been kind of a dick,” Blake continued, not noticing. “But I dunno what’s going on with Tamara lately. Usually I know exactly what she’s thinking, but she’s different this summer.”

They rounded out of the patio doors and onto the terrace.

Even though Hannah had spent years going in and out of this house, the beauty of it never lessened.

The deep blue glow of the swimming pool.

The sea, pink with twilight, glinting with the last traces of sun.

Guests had begun to dip their feet in the pool, their trouser legs rolled up, silk skirts spooling around thighs.

The rattle of ice in a cocktail shaker. The distant pop of a champagne cork.

“Down here,” said Blake.

His hand reached out and brushed the inward curve of Hannah’s spine so lightly that it could have been a breeze, the shifting of clothes against her skin.

She shivered, in spite of the warmth of the night.

She was remembering last summer, a day when Blake had invited her and Josie down to the beach with him and his friends for the first time.

How they had cracked open bottles of beer with their perfect, dentist-straightened teeth.

Grilled hamburgers on disposable barbecues and eaten them on plain white buns with squirts of ketchup, sand peppering each mouthful.

How they had climbed up the cliffs and dive-bombed into the water. How she and Blake had jumped at the same time, their fingertips stretched out toward each other, as if trying to touch.

How, in that dark, tumbling moment after submersion—that second of panic when your body wants to fight for the surface but isn’t sure which way is up—his hand caught hers.

All of a sudden, the water had cleared, and she had seen him, his face close, the breath that escaped him tangling up with hers, pockets of water rising up toward the light together.

For a moment, it was just them. They were the only people in the world.

And then, he had let go of her hand. Kicked up toward the world above, his body rising toward the shattered light of the sun.

When Hannah had surfaced, Blake was laughing. Splashing. He flipped onto his back and swam quickly and easily over to where his friends were waiting for him. The moment was over so fast, but Hannah could still feel it. His hand. His thigh brushing up against hers.

She thought about that moment often. All through last summer, when she would see Blake occasionally, with his friends or at the pink house, and both of them would act as if nothing had happened.

In September, when the Draytons went back to London, and she clung on to the memory of that moment while her parents worried about whether they could afford to keep the shop open for another year, what they would do if they had to sell.

In spring, when the prospect of summer loomed back into view, and Hannah dared to let herself imagine what it might be like when Blake returned.

To imagine other things—his hands against her skin.

His body. Him, touching her in the way that she had only ever touched herself.

Somehow, Hannah never mentioned the moment she and Blake had shared to Josie, even though they told each other everything. It felt private, somehow. Sacred. It was the warm hum in the pit of Hannah’s stomach when Josie teased her about having a crush on Blake. A secret that only she and he shared.

“Knew it,” he said, leaning over the balustrades at the edge of the terrace.

Peering up at them, crouched on a slope of grass below, Josie and Nina. Dolls strewn on the ground around them, resplendent in tulle party frocks.

“This is Nina’s favorite place right now,” Blake said.

“She didn’t want to be around all the people,” Josie shot back.

“I know that feeling,” said Blake.

He stepped back so that Josie and Nina disappeared from view, and held out the plate of sandwiches toward Hannah.

“You have fun down there,” he said.

She took the plate, aware of the brush of her hand against his.

“Hey,” he said. “What are you doing tomorrow night?”

She shrugged. She was supposed to be tutoring; a family who were renting a property down by the beach for the summer had gone to great lengths to tell Hannah how important it was that their children were fully immersed in the culture.

“Nothing much,” she said.

He tilted his head to one side so that his hair fell in his face.

“I think it’s time we showed you girls what a real party is.”