Page 9 of High Season

SIX

When the sky is golden and Nina’s head is hazy from heat, she crosses through the garden room at the side of the house.

Outside, a set of stone steps leads down an entire story to the terrace where once a pool stretched out toward the sea.

Below it, beneath the balustrade, a meandering garden that used to bloom with rose bushes and lavender, a second set of steps that lead all the way down to the beach.

Now, the grass is scrubby, the bushes overgrown.

Evelyn hasn’t hired gardeners for a very long time.

It’s the time of day when the air thickens, soupy and warm, so dense that you can almost taste it. Salt and honey. Charcoal left smoldering after grilling meat outdoors.

Nina leaves the house through the same door that she ran through all those years ago. Screaming. The eyes of a dozen adults turned toward her.

She remembers it. She does.

Or, at least, she thinks she does. She can see it now. A little girl, her sandal torn, a tear-streaked face. One hand pointing in the direction of the pool.

She can visualize the entire thing.

Whether or not that is the same as remembering it, she isn’t exactly sure.

Nina has spent much of her life grappling with this fact.

She has read books. Attended lectures. Earned degrees.

Sat on a dozen therapy couches and been told over and over again that what she is experiencing is normal, for someone who has been through what she has.

She has spent years trying to understand this strange confluence of memory and truth, grappling with the idea that these things are not exactly the same.

She knows about false memory, and about how trauma can create great, gaping holes in your vision of the past. She knows that people’s memories are the most accurate in the eleven months immediately after the event, and then become hazy afterward, complicated by retelling and rehashing a story.

She knows that she should be reassured by the speed with which she was interviewed by the police.

The clarity that she apparently possessed back then.

And yet, no matter how many books Nina reads or how many letters get added on to the end of her name, nothing quite delivers the certainty she longs for. She has never quite managed to quell the hum of uncertainty that loudens whenever she thinks of her sister.

Ryan is out on the terrace, pacing across the tiles, his phone held close to his face. When he sees her, he shoots a thumbs-up. He points toward the handset.

Work , he mouths.

He rolls his eyes, both a performance and a promise that he won’t be long. He didn’t know the Draytons, all those years ago. He doesn’t realize that he is standing in the exact spot where they pulled Tamara out of the water, her skin glistening, her face an unnatural, terrible shade of gray.

Nina remembers that. She’s sure she does.

“You won’t make yourself feel any better, coming out here, you know.”

Her brother, so close behind her that she can feel his breath tickling her cheek.

She turns and reaches her arms out, and he’s there, ready to pull her into a hug.

“Why do you always sneak up on people like that?” she says, her voice muffled against his shoulder.

“Habit,” he says. “Mum’s just come down from her pre-dinner nap and is requesting martinis. You want one?”

He nods back toward the house. Toward the other terrace, with its quiet and its safety. A place where they can pretend that this terrace doesn’t exist, and the events that took place here twenty years ago, didn’t happen.

“Or,” Blake says, seeming to catch Nina’s hesitation. “I can get us an incredibly expensive bottle of wine and we can drink our troubles away very far from our mother.”

Nina exhales. She didn’t realize how tight her shoulders were until they release. How desperate she is to be away from everyone else.

“That sounds completely perfect.”

They go to the balcony that leads out from the master bedroom.

Even now, at the age of twenty-five, Nina feels that there is something delicious and rebellious about sitting there.

They were never allowed when they were children.

Evelyn always insisted that she needed something just for herself.

Herself, and whichever boyfriend she had hauled along for the summer.

Nina hadn’t even known the balcony existed until she was sixteen and Blake had shown her where the key was hidden, the two of them sneaking up when their mother was out for the evening.

Nina still remembers the strangeness of it, the discordance in something so new, so unfamiliar, having been here all along.

Blake places down a bottle of wine and two glasses, pouring them both generous measures.

“I thought she’d given up,” Nina says, nodding to another overflowing ashtray abandoned on the low table between them.

“Ah, right,” says Blake. “You haven’t seen her since she was with Jonas.”

“She broke up with Jonas?”

“Jonas broke up with her , to be totally accurate. Think her polo club membership was cramping his style.”

“Good. His homemade kombucha was terrible.”

“Vile. Who brews their own kombucha?”

“Unemployed men in their forties, I suppose.”

“Jonas was in his forties?”

“Yep.”

“He looked good for it.”

“Maybe there actually was something in the whole paleo thing.”

They both raise their glasses and take large slugs of wine. From below, Nina hears Evelyn’s voice, Sandra’s response.

“Do you really think we should ignore it?” Nina says. “This documentary? Or were you just saying that in front of Mum?”

Blake takes a moment to answer. His gaze is fixed out on the sea beyond them, burnished by the late afternoon light.

“I think Mum’s probably right,” Blake says at last, slowly, as if he’s considering this even as he speaks.

“People have always talked about the case. People have always said things. And these documentary makers? Unless they say they have any new information, what good can it do us? What’s done is done, Nina. Nothing can change that.”

“You didn’t read the email, did you?”

“I skimmed it,” Blake says, with a small shrug. “You know I’m always getting people emailing me about the case. Most of them are nutters, to be honest—”

“But this is different,” Nina cuts him off. “Blake. I think you should read it.”

For a moment her brother doesn’t speak.

“Fine,” he says. “Show me.”

Nina pulls out her phone, even though she could recite every word at this point.

That there’s been a popular online miniseries about the Tamara Drayton case, from a well-known true crime influencer who has blown up on TikTok.

A slew of new tips and information has emerged in its wake.

The serendipitous timing—here, the producer almost seemed giddy—with the twentieth anniversary of Tamara Drayton’s death.

We’ve asked the host of the TikTok series if they’d like to front the documentary and we’re delighted to say that they’ve accepted.

We’ve also been in touch with a number of sources close to the case, and many individuals wish to come forward to share their side of the story, in the wake of the renewed interest. But what we’re still looking for is a member of the Drayton family who is willing to speak out about what happened that summer.

And we believe that you—Nina Drayton—are the missing piece to the puzzle.

Twenty years ago, you became the youngest-ever witness in a French murder case.

We believe that the trial was flawed, and that someone so young should never have been able to testify.

Whether you agree with this premise or not, we feel that it’s important for you to have the opportunity to share your truth.

What do you remember about your sister’s death, and the resulting trial?

Do you, as someone with firsthand experience, think that a five-year-old is a reliable witness?

We know you’ve never spoken out about your role in this life-altering case. But we feel now could be the perfect time. If Josie Jackson is innocent, as a growing number of people believe, you could be the only one who knows the truth.

Nina watches as Blake scans the message. As he reaches the end, he shrugs.

“So?” he says. “Just like I said. No new evidence. Nothing of merit. Trying to pretend that they’re on your side, that they’ve got your best interest at heart, when all they really want is to drag our family through the mud again. Just like the rest of them.”

There’s a stab of resentment in his voice.

Nina has to remember to temper her response.

To remind herself what her mother and Blake went through all those years ago.

After all, she had been so young, and protected from the media firestorm.

But her mother and Blake had been right at the heart of it.

She knows that it still hurts them both, the things that were said about Tamara.

“But the video series that they’re talking about,” Nina says. “Blake, I watched it, and—”

Blake lifts his glass and drains it in one.

“See,” he says, placing it down hard on the table. “This is the problem. You watch this rubbish online, and you fall into an internet rabbit hole, and next thing you know, everyone’s a conspiracy theorist. Even you, the person who actually knows what happened. The person who was actually there.”

Nina closes her mouth. She knows about how internet conspiracy theories work. She has a master’s in psychology, for goodness’ sake.

“Nina,” Blake’s voice is softer now, almost sad. “What you went through back then was traumatic. Incredibly, deeply traumatic. It’s no surprise that you keep coming back to it. That you have this… this obsession with it. But this isn’t healthy.”

He reaches out, places one hand over hers.

“This is exactly why Mum didn’t want you to get into all this child psychology stuff,” he says.

“All this worrying. All this trying to understand what you saw. What happened. Some stuff is beyond our ability to understand. Some stuff is cruel, and senseless, and terrible. Some stuff can’t be explained away with… with bloody therapy , Nina.”

He takes a deep breath. His eyes are wet. She hates that she cannot leave alone something that hurts him so much.

“What Josie Jackson did was terrible,” he says.

“It was evil, and brutal, and monstrous. She’s monstrous.

And what you did was the right thing. But you’ve spent your entire life feeling guilty about it.

And I understand. I can’t imagine what it must have been like, to have had all that weight on you.

To have had to say something that sent someone to prison.

And maybe all of that responsibility shouldn’t have been put on a kid.

Maybe this producer got that bit right. But the important thing is that you got it right, too, Nina.

You put our sister’s killer in jail. And you have nothing to feel guilty about.

You have nothing, and nobody, to answer to. ”

On the horizon, the sun is close to setting. The sea is a bloody, violent shade of red.

“Do you ever think about her?” Nina asks, softly. “Tamara?”

Blake stiffens, his glass still to his lips.

“I hardly remember her,” Nina continues. “I feel bad about it sometimes. This person—my sister—totally changed our lives. And I can only remember snatches of her, weird things. Like, I can remember how she smelled, but not how she looked. Don’t you think that’s strange?”

Blake lowers his glass.

“Memory is strange,” he says quietly. “You of all people know that. You can’t control the things you hold on to.”

“But I wonder if we’d talked about her more, if I’d remember. If we had any pictures of her out—”

“Mum couldn’t cope with it,” Blake says. “You know she couldn’t.”

“But it’s been so long…”

“Like you said, you don’t remember, Nina. You don’t know what it was like.”

He sets down his glass and threads his hands together in front of him.

“I was older. I saw what it did to Mum. It almost killed her,” he says. “People cope in their own ways, Nina. You have to let them.”

For a second, there’s quiet between them.

“Kitty used to think we were morbid, coming out here every year,” Blake says at last.

“Kitty?”

Nina hasn’t heard Blake mention his most long-term girlfriend for a while. Before they broke up last year, Kitty had been around for almost eighteen months, a marathon-length relationship for Blake. Nina had liked her. She was sad when they had broken up.

“Yeah,” says Blake. “When you stopped coming out here, she said that she got it. She said most people would have sold this place, after what happened. I told her it was fine. That we’ve been coming back for so long we barely think about it anymore.

” He pauses, a note of dark mirth slipping between the edges of his words. “I guess I was wrong about that.”

Just then, they hear Ryan’s voice coming from the terrace below, the sound of a chair being pulled out.

“I should probably go back down,” says Nina. “They’ll be wondering where we’ve gone.”

Blake lifts the wine bottle to refill his glass.

“I might stay here,” he says. “Finish this off.”

Nina stands.

“I’ll make your excuses.”

Their eyes catch, a glimmer of camaraderie between them. The thing about having a mother like Evelyn Drayton is that it bonds you. Nobody else will ever understand Nina quite like Blake does.

“Oh, and Nina?” Blake says. “I’m not going to tell you what to do about this documentary. But just… just think of Mum, OK? She can’t go through it all again. She lost her daughter. I lost my twin sister. Is this really what our family needs? I don’t know if we can relive losing Tamara again.”