Chapter 16

16

Hana, now washed and dressed, scrapes her hair back into a ponytail, a ponytail that never really works since her hair is too short. Stubby , Liam used to call it, ruffling the ends. An attempt, Han, but a misguided one.

Retying it, she slips on her sandals and makes her way out into the corridor. The scent of coffee, bitter and fragrant, is filtering in from the living space.

Jo . She's the early bird. It will be her in there, making coffee. Act normally , she tells herself, pasting a smile on her face. Don't react.

But she finds that it's not Jo, but Maya, sitting on a wicker chair in the sunshine, a green scarf knotted around her curls.

She glances up, smiling. "You just missed coffee..."

"It's fine, I'll make one." Hana looks down at the book lying open on her lap. "What are you up to?"

"Drawing." Maya gestures at what Hana can now see is a sketchbook. "I couldn't sleep. It's always the same when I've been drinking. Wake up in the night, can't get off again."

"I know what you mean, I didn't sleep well either. I think the whole beach thing was a bridge too far." She pauses. "Did you hear Jo and Seth's row?"

"Bits of it. He took a call, didn't he? A friend." Maya shakes her head. "Not sure why Jo's surprised—he's always been like that. Loads of women ‘friends.'?" She makes quote marks with her fingers.

Hana pauses, picking up on the significance of Maya's words. "What you said, about always being like that—do you know Seth, I mean, outside of Jo?"

Maya hesitates, flushing. She lowers her voice. "Well, I wouldn't say know . I've climbed with him a few times. A mate of a mate. It's how Jo met him, through me. A night out."

"You never said." Not just about how Jo met Seth, but the night out, she thinks, stung.

"Didn't seem important. And for Jo, probably not quite the romantic story she wants out there for her followers—some drunken hookup in the pub."

"What did you make of him? Before Jo, I mean?"

"Thought he was a bit of an idiot. All smiles, charm to your face, but behind your back... shallow's the word." Shrugging, Maya glances toward the corridor, dropping her voice a notch lower again. "There were rumors about him being aggressive too, before bouldering competitions. Trying to psych out his rivals." Her fingers worry the stud at the very top of her ear.

"What is it?" Hana's voice is barely more than a whisper as she, too, looks to the corridor, part of her convinced Jo will burst in at any moment.

"The aggression, I reckon it's spilled over with Jo. He was going on about her drinking last night, that she shouldn't go so hard."

"Maybe he's just worried. She was pretty wasted..."

Maya's face clouds. Hana changes the subject, nodding at the sketchbook as she waits for the coffee machine to start gurgling into life. "I didn't realize you still drew." Art had always been Maya's thing. It started after the fire: intricate, dreamlike pictures.

"Bits and bobs here and there. Fame and fortune has most definitely eluded me." She looks up. "It's funny, isn't it? When you're young, you're convinced you'll make it, that you've got all the time in the world. I really thought that after college I'd get there. Success, recognition, that it would all somehow magically slot into place."

"It still can. You're only twenty-eight."

Maya laughs. "Dreams. You need time, Han. The concentration. Enough cash. The reality is I'm good, but I'll never be brilliant."

Hana, taken aback, makes a fuss of putting her cup under the nozzle of the coffee machine. When she glances at Maya, for the first time she sees how thin she is, the harsh morning light picking out the hollows of her cheeks. Her burn is visible: puckered, melted skin creeping in a line up her calf. Jo has one too—her scar ragged, bubble shaped, on her arm. Bea's is barely noticeable, a blotchy pattern on the side of her right foot.

Permanent reminders of the fire that changed Sofia's life forever.

Hana was the only one who came out unscathed. It made her feel guilty when they were younger, but looking at Maya now, she wonders if everyone focused too much on the external scarring to the detriment of what was going on inside. At the time, they all assumed that Maya had coped okay. Children are adaptable , her mother said, but perhaps she'd suppressed it—only now was it catching up with her.

"Enough about me. We didn't finish our conversation yesterday. How are you doing?"

Hana's touched. No one has asked her how she is—and meant it—for a long time. She shrugs. "Bad days and not-so-bad days. I think..." Hana pauses, working out how to word it. "I think how it happened doesn't help, not having all the facts. If I knew, it might be easier to process." As it is, all she has are the lurid, graphic projections of her own mind. The bare facts: that one sunny April morning, Liam went on his own to the Haldon Forest bike park.

He was on the hardest trail, attempted an obstacle called Free Fall, a wooden plank structure with a pivot point high above the ground. At the inquest, they worked out that he'd never made it over the pivot point, tumbled, landing directly on his head. He broke his neck, fracturing his C6 vertebra.

Instant death.

"Morning."

Hana turns, reverie broken. Seth's standing in the doorway in a pair of boxers emblazoned with tiny palm trees, his dark hair wild, electrified. "Jo not back yet?"

"What do you mean?" Hana says.

"Gone for a run, but she didn't message to let me know. She usually does."

"A run, in this heat?"

"Her thing after a night out. We normally get images of ‘broken Jo' at every mile in her stories, complaining about running with a hangover." He looks down at his phone. "Saying that, none so far today. Perhaps she's feeling the booze—"

"She must have gone pretty early," Maya murmurs. "I've been up since six."

"Probably." He shrugs. "But I thought she'd be back by now. Breakfast's calling."

Maya stands. "I need a shower, but I can be ready in fifteen if you all want to go?"

Seth nods. "I'll knock for Caleb and then message Jo, let her know we've gone up."

As everyone drifts from the room, Hana's left alone with her coffee. She's about to take it outside when she notices Maya's sketchbook on the chair. Curiosity getting the better of her, Hana wanders over. Putting her coffee down on the table, she nudges open the book, flicking through, one eye on the corridor. Sketches of the rock face, each one slightly smaller than the last. A Russian doll of an image.

She keeps flicking, but the rest of the pages are blank. About to close it, she hesitates, catching a glimpse of a sketch toward the back. A drawing of Jo.

Hana's skin prickles. Although Maya has drawn Jo accurately—slightly crooked nose, full mouth, the slight dimple to her chin—she realizes that it's how Maya's drawn her that's odd. Each line is leaden, as if she's pressed the pencil so hard that it's nearly gone through the page.

The effect is curious: it's as if she's captured Jo but at the same time is trying to overpower her with her pencil, battling her image into submission with each mark and line.