Note: This is a sequel of sorts to a number of my earlier stories --
An Apology in the Morning
,
The Education of Mrs Jones
,
Demagnetisation
, and
In Confidence
-- in that it shares a couple of characters with them. However, it should stand alone.
*
It was a fine summer day, and Fiona was sitting in the garden, revising, when the woman came out into the garden next door. Fiona caught the motion out of the corner of her eye, and glanced round, surprised; Mrs Lewis was supposed to be away for a few days, she thought. But the woman who'd appeared from her house certainly wasn't Mrs Lewis; she was much younger -- just in her twenties, by the look of her. She was carrying a folding garden couch, which she began to unfold on the lawn.
Well, she certainly isn't acting like a burglar or anything,
Fiona thought.
Is this any of my business?
But she carried on looking. The stranger was dark-skinned, with short dark hair in loose curls, and wearing a light, silky, patterned sundress. Well, it was a warm day. Fiona suddenly felt overdressed in her T-shirt and jeans. Fiona's hair suddenly felt wrong, too, although she was never quite sure about it; she liked to think she was strawberry blonde, and she wore it mid-length, currently in a plain, neat bunch at the back -- but she had a nasty feeling that was ageing or uncool or something.
Irritated at herself, Fiona tried to shrug off her doubts. She was about to go back to her textbook when the woman finished setting up the couch, and stood up straight beside it, kicking off her sandals.
Then the woman pulled her sundress up over her head, revealing that she was wearing just a skimpy pair of knickers underneath.
Fiona stifled a gasp and did turn back to her book as the woman extracted a pair of sunglasses from her small handbag, and then got a paperback out from somewhere and lay down on the couch.
Fiona forced her attention back onto chemistry.
A supersaturated solution is one which contains more of the dissolved substance than the quantity of solvent could normally contain at its current temperature and pressure...
After a couple of minutes, she'd regained her concentration. But then, the strange woman spoke.
"Hi," she called out. "You must be Fiona."
"Uh -- oh, yes." Fiona looked up from her book again. "Hello," she added uncertainly.
"Pleased to meet you. I'm Louise. Gran's told me about you." The woman strolled up to the fence and leaned on it to talk to Fiona, who turned on her seat to reply.
"Oh -- Mrs Lewis is your grandma?"
"Yeah." The woman named Louise smiled pleasantly. "I said that I'd keep an eye on her house for her while she's visiting her sister. Water the plants, stuff like that, y'know?"
"Oh, right. Sorry, but you didn't look like..." Fiona trailed off, aware that she was sounding foolish.
"Not much like Gran? No, I guess not. Seeing as she's a little old white-haired lady, and I'm..." Louise shrugged and gestured, implicitly indicating her young body and coffee-coloured skin. Fiona blushed, partly at the woman's near-nakedness and partly at what she herself had said. She remembered glimpsing a photo in a frame on Mrs Lewis's mantelpiece, which showed a woman who Mrs Lewis said was her daughter, with a man who was apparently her son-in-law -- and who was black. So Louise's appearance really wasn't surprising, was it?
"Anyway," said Louise, apparently unconcerned by anything Fiona had said, "it is nice to meet you. Gran says that you're really helpful to her -- you and your boyfriend."
"What, Alan? Oh, no, he isn't my boyfriend."
"He isn't? He's a boy and a friend, isn't he? And Gran says he comes round sometimes."
"Well, yes... I suppose... But..." Fiona realised that she was blushing again. She was furious with herself, and a little annoyed at Mrs Lewis for apparently saying or implying
that
about Alan.
"Well, I wouldn't worry too much about words, if I were you," said Louise, with another friendly smile. "Anyway, Alan sounds nice."
"Actually, he'll be coming around here a bit later," Fiona said.
"He will? Great. I'd like to meet him. Say thanks for keeping Gran company and all."
"Oh, right. Yeah, I'm sure..." Fiona found that she couldn't avoid looking up and down at Louise, and especially at her shapely and naked breasts.
Louise caught the glance, and laughed. "Don't worry, I'll cover up when he comes," she said.
"Oh, no... I mean, that's fine... I mean, you're fine..."
"Stop worrying!" said Louise, but not unkindly. "I gather that Alan's an eighteen-year-old boy who's supposed to be studying for his exams. Don't want to distract him with naked boobs, do we?"
Fiona didn't know what to say, but Louise didn't seem worried. She turned away from the fence. "I'm going to get a jug of iced water," she said. "Would you like a glass?"
"Yes, please," said Fiona, realising that this did indeed seem like a good idea. Louise disappeared for a moment, still in just her knickers, then returned with a tray, which she put down on the lawn next to her couch. She poured two glasses, and strolled up to the fence. Fiona got up, met her at the boundary, and accepted a glass.
"How's the revision going?" Louise asked.
"Fine, thanks," Fiona replied.
"Alan's coming round to help?"
"Yes. Well, we help each other..."
"Sounds good... Oops, excuse me."
Fiona realised that Louise had heard a distant doorbell. She gathered up her dress from where it lay on the couch, threw it on quickly and loosely and jumped into her sandals, then scurried back into the house. A few minutes later, she returned, accompanied by a nice-looking man of about her own age.
"Fiona?" she called, as Fiona had sat down again. "This is Nick, my boyfriend. Nick, this is Fiona, who's so good to Gran."
"Hi," said Nick, at the same moment as Fiona said "Hello." They both laughed awkwardly, and then Louise took off her sandals and dress again and returned to the couch. Nick sat down on the edge, and they conversed in low voices as Fiona returned to her book.
Then she saw movement out of the corner of her eye, and glanced around -- and gasped quietly again. Nick had put a hand on Louise's breast, and was fondling it as Louise smiled. Then Nick leaned over and kissed Louise rather passionately.
After a moment, though, Louise apparently noticed that Fiona was watching, even though Fiona was trying not to make it obvious. She didn't break the kiss, but she did raise her own hand and firmly move Nick's away from her. After a moment, it was Nick who broke the kiss. He nodded, and Fiona heard him say "See you, gorgeous," before he got up and walked back into the house.
"Sorry about that," Louise called to Fiona once he'd gone. "Men, huh? What can you do with them?"
"I wouldn't know," Fiona replied, and hated herself for sounding priggish.
"Wouldn't you? You're at school with a bunch of teenage boys, aren't you?"
"I keep them off," said Fiona, and hated her own tone of voice a little bit again.
"You do? Must take a bit of work."
"Pardon?"
"Oh, I remember teenage boys. And 'scuse me saying so, but you look like you've got something they'd want to grab."
Fiona glanced down reflexively, and realised that the plain dark red T-shirt she was wearing had shrunk very slightly in the last wash, and hence wasn't as baggy as she'd thought. She'd sometimes worried that she was getting a bit plump these days, but her mother had told her not to be silly, she just had a rather nice bust -- and maybe that was true.
She did her best to smile like a sophisticated woman who'd simply solved the problem of boys. "The lads in my year aren't too bad," she said.
"That's good." Louise didn't sound or look like she was being sarcastic. "So that's why Alan isn't a boyfriend, then?"
"I guess." Fiona realised that she'd sighed a little there. "We've got the exams coming up," she went on, "and like you said, we can't go getting distracted."
"Oh yeah, Gran said that you were bright. Alan too?"
"Yeah. But there's a lot riding on these exams, you know? It's kind of a climax ... after thirteen years at school, university places riding on this stuff ... We've got to concentrate."
"Oops, sorry. I'll stop distracting you."
"No! I mean, no -- sorry, I didn't mean to imply... I need a break sometimes, after all."
"I bet you do. Actually, if you'll take my advice, you'll go careful about the concentrating."
"What do you mean?"
"Look, it's a few years since I did any exams, but I remember enough about them. And the best advice I got about taking them was to relax a bit in the run-up, you know? You want to hit them fresh and rested, not all tired and tense."
"I guess." Fiona allowed herself a real sigh. "But it's difficult sometimes."
"I know, love. Best of luck. But I really shouldn't keep you any longer." Louise picked up her paperback again. Fiona nodded, finished her water, and picked up her textbook.
The dissolved material may be...
There was a distant but audible sound from the house -- the sound of that one's doorbell. With a feeling of relief, Fiona put her book down again and got up. As she turned to the house, she saw Louise glance at her and smile.
"That'll be Alan," Fiona said.
"Oh yeah," Louise replied. Then she glanced down at her naked breasts. "Oops, yes," she added, and reached for her dress. Fiona hurried into the house.
When she returned, though, with Alan trailing after her, she saw that Louise hadn't actually put the dress on, but had simply pulled it over her to cover her breasts. She was technically
decent,
but her lack of clothes wasn't exactly hidden, and it didn't look like it would take much to expose her again. Still, she looked unworried, and smiled and waved when Fiona introduced Alan to her. Alan did a small but definite double-take, but tore his eyes away once Louise had finished saying again that she appreciated what he'd done for her grandmother. Then he sat on the garden bench seat with Fiona.
"Chemistry?" he asked.
"Yeah," Fiona replied. "Supersaturation, remember?"
"Oh yes," Alan said, then closed his eyes and recited from memory;
"The dissolved material may be precipitated from the solution by the introduction of small particles (seeds) into the solution, or even if the solution suffers a physical shock."
