Page 91 of High Season

“You and Nic?” she says. “Are you… you know?”

“Are we fucking?” says Josie.

She laughs, in spite of herself, as Hannah’s hands fly up to her ears.

“Oh my god,” Hannah says. “Stop. That’s my little cousin you’re talking about.”

But she’s laughing, too, and Josie can’t believe how easy it is. How fast they’ve slipped back into their old roles.

“We’re friends,” Josie says truthfully.

“Do you like him?”

It’s like they’re teenagers again, talking about boys they have crushes on. The muscle memory of their friendship coming so easily back to life.

“Yeah,” Josie says. “I do.”

Hannah pushes the bottle of wine toward Josie.

“God,” she says. “I can’t believe this. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. I didn’t think Iwantedto see you.”

“Nic says you live in England now?”

“Yeah. I went over there for uni and never came back. What about you? I heard on the grapevine that you were there, too, for a while?”

Josie nods.

“London,” she says. “And then Devon, for a bit. Didn’t really agree with me though, in the end.”

Hannah nods again.

“I couldn’t come back here at first,” she says. “I didn’t, for a long time. I couldn’t stand it. Not just everything that happened, butthem. This whole world. The money, and the privilege. The entitlement, and the way they acted as if they had a right to do whatever they wanted with us, just because they could pay us to be there. The way they just took people’s whole lives and crushed them, and didn’t think twiceabout it. Like they did with your mum, after she gave her life to the Draytons. Like they did to you.”

She has to stop, as if she’s run out of breath. Josie catches the glimmer of something bright in her eyes. She thinks it might be tears.

“I never thought I’d hear you speak like that about the Draytons,” Josie says.

She only remembers how obsessed Hannah used to be, how she idolized them. She spoke of Evelyn in reverent tones, even though, as far as Josie could see, none of the Draytons had done much to deserve their lot in life. It was one of the reasons why she never told Hannah about her friendship with Tamara. She imagined how Hannah would react. How she would beg Josie to let her hang out with them, and then be fawning and deferent if Josie had said yes. Josie had been embarrassed by the thought of it, and then ashamed for thinking that way about her best friend.

“Yeah, well,” says Hannah. “I guess I saw the light.”

She straightens, seems to compose herself.

“I thought of writing to you,” Hannah says. “You know. When you were…incarcerated.”

She says the word carefully, like someone who has spent too many nights at home watching American prison dramas on Netflix.

“Why didn’t you?”

Hannah blinks as if she wasn’t expecting to be asked.

“Because I couldn’t,” she says. “I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was scared. And I wasn’t sure what to do. They don’t exactly cover that inMizzmagazine, do they? What to do when your best friend gets convicted for murder.”

“They don’t cover what happens when you actuallydoget convicted, either,” says Josie.

It comes out more sharply than Josie intends it to, and she sees Hannah flinch. She has to swallow back the spikiness that always comes when she thinks about those lost years. When she speaks again her voice is level.

“I wrote to you,” she says. “My lawyers told me not to, but I did. You never replied.”