Page 90 of High Season

“You’realright, aren’t you?” he said into the darkness. “Like, you’re not thinking about… I don’t know.Doinganything to Mason? Because you can tell me if you are, you know. We can work it all out.”

Hannah had rolled away from him then, faced the bedroom wall.

“Don’t be stupid,” she said. “What kind of person wants to hurt a child?”

She went on medication not long after that, and the bad thoughts mostly went away. But now that Mason was almost at the age when Hannah had done some of the worst and best things of her life, she would look at him and wonder.

“You alright, babe?” Eric says, breaking through her thoughts. “You look off in your own world over there.”

Hannah gives her head a small shake, quickly, before anyone can see, as if she could dash the thought away.

“Fine,” she says.

From inside the house, the doorbell rings. It sounds very far away.

“Hannah?” her mum calls. “Can you get that?”

“If it’s Nic, he’s got a key,” Mark says lazily. “He’ll let himself in, in a minute. Don’t know why he even bothers ringing the doorbell.”

“It’s fine,” Hannah says. “I don’t mind going.”

She wants to be inside again. She wants the cool shade of the house. A moment to shake off her thoughts, the cold feeling that always sets in whenever she thinks about that dark, terrible time before she got the right pills, before she could look at her own son without feeling a wave of despair. A rare few seconds to gather herself without one of her children asking her for something.

She takes a few deep breaths in the hallway. She feels lighter by the time she reaches the front door. She can see the shadowy shape of her cousin through the misted glass. She doesn’t see, at first, that there is someone standing beside him. It doesn’t register, until she’s already swung the door open, smiling, ready to pull Nic into a hug.

She is looking at Josie Jackson for the first time in twenty years.

She looks so different. So much older than Hannah remembers her, the reconfiguration of her features reminding Hannah that she has also aged in the last two decades.

She is surprised that the gut-shock of horror lasts only for a millisecond before it’s replaced by the thrill of familiarity and longing. She is overcome with the urge to tell Josie everything. That she went to England, like she always said she would. That she graduated from university, fell in love. She wants to squeeze her friend by both hands and squeal,I’m MARRIED,because now that she’s looking at Josie, the thought of being married feels laughably, hilariously grown-up. They used to talk about this stuff all the time. What their ideal husbands would be like, how Hannah would have Josie as her bridesmaid, but Josie wouldn’t have bridesmaids because she would elope and get married on a beach somewhere.

All the monumental things that they have missed hit Hannah squarely in her chest, and she stares at Josie, open-mouthed, before finding her voice.

“You’reblond,” she says.

And just like that, all those lost years disappear.

THIRTY

2024

Hannah and Josie go outside, to the small walled garden, and sit opposite each other at a wooden table, still littered with wineglasses, empty beer bottles, a half-eaten bowl of crisps. The detritus of the warm summer evening that Josie has interrupted.

Hannah’s mum had looked at her with the horrified recognition that Josie was used to seeing in people’s eyes. She had ushered the children inside, saidMark, comeon, when Hannah’s dad hovered, pink-faced, muttering something about it being good to see Josie again, after all this time.

“I’ll leave you two, for a minute,” Nic says. “I feel like you have some stuff to catch up on.”

He slopes inside after his uncle while Hannah reaches for an open bottle of wine. She starts to pour herself a glass, and Josie sees that her hands are shaking. A tremor running through her, like wind across the surface of water.

“I heard you were back,” Hannah says, in a rush. “If you were wondering. You know. Why I’m not surprised to see you.”

“I’m sorry to ambush you like this,” Josie says. “It was my idea. Nic didn’t think you’d agree to talk to me. So I suggested that I just…” She spreads her hands wide, apologetic. “Turn up.”

Hannah smiles. It’s faint, but it’s there. It makes Josie long to make her smile again.

“Nic’s probably right,” Hannah says. “I wouldn’t have wanted to see you.”

She lifts her glass and takes a large swig of wine.