It's that time of the afternoon when the fiercest heat of the day has subsided to a delicious warmth. Lee finishes her last lap of the pool and climbs out. She shakes her head and pats some of the water off herself with a towel. Then she walks to where she has left her things and lies down in the sun. She takes her book out of her bag and starts to read. She bets herself that she can read twenty pages before the girl in the white bikini appears.
She loses. The girl comes down the steps after only ten. Lee doesn't have a watch with her but she is sure that she does this at the same time every day. And, she thinks to herself, why not?
The girl smiles and says a quiet hello. Lee does the same. She watches as the girl picks a spot a few metres away from where Lee is and spreads a blanket carefully on the ground. Then she undoes the knot at her breastbone that ties the length of cotton cloth she is wearing around herself and stands there in her bikini as she folds it up. Lee enjoys watching this. She's very pretty, with the kind of figure that Lee has always admired, partly because it's rather like her own, slim, with small breasts and hips which are not exactly broad but still manage to be unmistakably feminine. The caramel colour of her tanned skin and the whiteness of the bikini emphasise her shape. Her dark brown hair, a shade or two darker than Lee's own, is straight and thick, but unlike Lee's, which is cut short, it's shoulder-length. Her features are strikingly delicate. A lovely girl, Lee thinks. She must be about twenty.
The girl looks down at her body and then frowns. She says something, but Lee doesn't hear it. Then she rummages in her bag and comes out with a bottle of tanning lotion. She sees Lee watching her and grimaces.
"I forgot to put in on before I came out," she says, and gives a little laugh.
Lee watches as she squeezes some of the oil from the bottle into her hand and massages it into her body, beginning with her legs, then her arms, then her stomach and chest and neck. Her brown skin glistens in the places where she has applied it.
She looks across to Lee and holds out the bottle. "Do you think you could help me?" she says. "My back?"
"Sure," Lee answers. She puts down her book, gets up, and goes across to where the girl is standing. She takes the bottle from her.
"It'll probably be easier for you if I lie down," the girl says. "Is that OK?"
"Sure," Lee answers again. The girl lies down on her front, arms crossed above her head, and Lee kneels to one side of her. She squeezes out some oil. It is reddish-brown and warm and sweet-smelling.
"Where do you want me to put it?" she asks.
"Could you begin with my shoulders and then do the rest of my back?"
Lee leans forward to oblige. The girl's skin is soft and warm to the touch and the oil spreads easily. Her back is covered with tiny hairs that have been bleached by the sun. The oil clings to them and makes them more visible. Her tan, Lee notices, is uninterrupted by the thin white straps of her bikini top. Lee puts more oil into her hands and moves downwards, her hands feeling the knobs of the girl's vertebrae and the softness of her flanks.
By and by her hands reach the waistband of the bikini.
"Is that OK?" she asks.
"Would you mind doing my thighs and my bottom as well?" the girl asks in her quiet voice. "It's so easy to miss something there when you do it yourself."
Beginning at the backs of her knees, Lee rubs oil into her thighs. The girl spreads her legs slightly to make it easier for her. The skin on her legs is very smooth and absolutely hairless, and the soft flesh yields beneath Lee's hands. When her fingertips reach the crease at the top of the back of the girl's thighs, she squirms slightly and lets out a little gasp.
"Sorry," Lee says. "Did I do something wrong?"
"No, not at all," the girl murmurs. "You've got a lovely touch. Please, do carry on."
The bikini bottom is one of those high-cut ones and the girl's buttocks are almost totally bare. Lee spreads the oil with the flats of her hands, working it in by rotating her thumbs and making sure she gets it everywhere. The brown hemispheres ripple slightly as she presses against them with her hands. Playfully, she gives one of them a little mock slap as she finishes. The girl lets out a squeak.
"There we are," Lee says. "Finished."
"Mmm, pity," the girl laughs. "I was enjoying that. Like I said, you've got a lovely touch."
"Thank you," says Lee. "It was my pleasure."
And it was, too, she thinks to herself. She enjoyed the feel of the girl's soft golden skin against her hands.
"Would you like me to put some on you?" the girl asks.
Lee hesitates.
"Go on," the girl says. "It'll be nice, I promise."
And it is. Lee lies on her front and the girl loads her hands with the warm oil and gently rubs it into her, in much the same way as Lee herself had done. Lee too is wearing a bikini, although there's a bit more to hers than to the tiny one the girl is wearing, and Lee too can't help letting out a little gasp now and then as the girl's hands touch her in places where she hasn't been touched by anyone else for a long time.
All too soon, the treat is finished. Just as Lee had done, the girl gives her a playful slap to show that it's over.
Lee sits up. "Mmm, thank you," she says. "You've got a nice touch too."
The girl smiles.
"Why don't you get your stuff and come and join me? she asks.
"OK," she says after a second's thought, and goes to collect her things. When she comes back the girl, who is lying on her stomach, rolls over on to her side and holds out a hand.
"I'm Amber," she says.
Lee introduces herself and they lie down together side by side. Soon they are deep in conversation. Amber, it turns out, is not twenty but twenty-two. Her eyes, which are clear and brown, with long lashes, widen in surprise when Lee tells her she's twenty-eight.
"You don't look it," she says, and then laughs in embarrassment. "You must think I'm really stupid," she says. "I don't mean twenty-eight is old or anything, but I thought you must be about the same age as me."
"Don't worry about it," Lee says, laughing with her. "I'll take it as a compliment."
Amber laughs again, but it's obvious that she's still embarrassed.
"So what are you doing here?" Lee asks, not wanting the conversation to stop.
Amber launches into an explanation of how she's here on a holiday with a group of people she has nothing in common with and whose company she is completely bored by. She seems happy of the chance to talk to Lee about how she feels. Lee listens and then says that she's more or less in the same boat. She starts explaining how she was brought here by well-meaning friends after the break-up of a long-term relationship that went horribly wrong and that she appreciates their motives but she's just not really on their wavelength right now, and, without meaning to, she finds herself pouring out her heart to this person she's only just met.
"But this must be really boring for you," she says when what she's saying reaches some kind of natural halt.
"No," says Amber. "Not at all. Honestly." And she looks into Lee's grey eyes with her brown ones and smiles and reaches out and gives Lee's hand a squeeze with her own. She has nice fingernails, Lee notices, and then laughs inwardly for noticing something so trivial in the middle of such a serious conversation.
Their talk moves on to other things. Lighter things. Things which make both of them laugh and smile and feel good inside.
And then Amber is looking at her watch and pulling a face and saying that she has to go because she needs to meet the people she's with, and she's standing up and tying the bright blue cotton cloth with the yellow flowers around her, and she's saying that she's had a lovely time talking to Lee and that she hopes she'll see her later, and then she's walking away across the grass and up the steps and round the corner and out of sight, and Lee is left there alone.
She picks up her book and starts trying to read, but she finds she can't concentrate any longer. After a while she stops trying and packs up. She decides to go to her room and take a long bath.
Lee doesn't see Amber in the evening. Her friends persuade her to go out with them and they stay in a garden restaurant till quite late. When they come back to the hotel, the others decide to go to the bar for a last drink. Lee pleads tiredness and leaves them to it.
Her room is hot, so after opening the window to let some air in she takes off her clothes and lies down on the bed in her underwear. She tries her book again, but she's not in the mood. Then she tries the TV, but there's nothing there that catches her attention, so she turns if off and lies there looking at the ceiling and thinking. And then, just as she is trying to make up her mind to finish undressing and turn off the light and go to sleep, there is a knock at the door. It's a quiet, almost diffident knock, quite different from the one her friends use. Who can it be at this time of night?
While she is debating with herself what to do, she hears it again. She gets off the bed and pads across the room.
"Who's there?" she whispers through the door.
"It's me, Amber," comes a voice from the other side. "Am I bothering you?"
"No, no," Lee says back, happy to hear Amber's voice.
"I thought you might be lonely and want some company," she hears through the door. "But if it's too late just say so and I'll go away."
"No, don't," Lee says. "Just a second, though. I'm not exactly dressed for company."
"So let's leave it, then," Amber's voice answers through the door.
"No, really," Lee says, eager for Amber not to leave. She turns the key in the lock and throws the door open, so that she greets her standing in the doorway wearing nothing but a skimpy powder-blue bra and matching briefs.
"Mmm, nice outfit," says Amber, scanning her from head to toe and smiling. "It suits you."
"I'll take that as another compliment," Lee smiles back. She's always enjoyed wearing nice underthings and is pleased that Amber has noticed.
"Can I come in, then, or would you rather be alone?"
Lee ushers her in. Amber is wearing a banana yellow summer dress in some light material, with little orange flowers on it. It's short and simple and sleeveless and, like the bikini Lee has seen her wearing during the day, shows off her deep tan. Lee thinks she looks beautiful in it.
