The woman was swimming in the sea again.
Rose had seen her so many times over the last few weeks that she'd lost count. Her work brought her along this quiet stretch of the beach around the same time every day, and more often that not, it was the same time the mystery woman was out there swimming. Rose had got used to seeing her and welcomed the sight. Not just because she was good to look at, but because it marked that she was almost midway through her work, about to turn around and head back down the long beach towards the town.
Rose wondered what it was that drew the woman out to this empty stretch of beach. Even on the hottest and sunniest days it was almost ethereally quiet. The holidaymakers stayed close to the town, not wanting to come down the battered old road – little more than a footpath, really - that led here, but it didn't deter the swimmer. Rose had worked out that battered old red Beetle that rested on the verge by the road was hers, and she'd pieced together her routine from the fractions she'd witnessed on her repeated passes through. She'd park the car, get out already clad in the tight black swimsuit that accentuated her curves and walk quickly down to the water's edge. There'd she crouch down and splash water over herself to acclimatise, before strolling forward into the waves for a long swim before heading quickly back to the car and towelling down, then driving away.
On days like this, Rose really wanted to join her. The sun was beating down hard and a thick patch of humidity had rolled in from inland, making the air thick and sticky, sapping energy from her. Rose's job was a simple one – she'd soon discovered that Field Research Assistant for the Marine Lab meant little more than Sample Collector – but she had to walk the length of the long beach, to the end and back, every day. Several weeks of doing that had soon worn away the initial buzz she'd had at the prospect of spending the entire summer by the seaside.
Whoever the woman was and whatever her reasons for swimming at this point every day were, she'd become one of the highlights of Rose's day. They'd only ever exchanged a few words in coincidental passings – and most of them just variants of 'hello' – but a series of casual glances had helped Rose pick up a detailed picture of her body. A swimmer's body, made of supple curves concealing powerful muscles beneath. Long dark hair that she kept loose, even in the sea, shot through with blonde streaks from the sun, and all of that framing a heart shaped face centred around gorgeous full lips. Rose guessed she was in somewhere around her mid-twenties, a few years older than her.
God, I need to get laid. Rose told herself as she caught herself daydreaming. She'd thought there'd be lots of sex by the sea, but had discovered herself caught at just the wrong age for it. At twenty-two, she was too old to play cradle snatcher and hang out with hormone-addled teenage boys and girls, but too young to find much interest in their parents, especially when they were usually lobster-red from long days in the sun with no protection. Anyone she might have been able to make a connection with obviously had better things to do than hang out in a seaside resort for the summer.
She'd had a variety of lovers in the past, both male and female, but no one in this town had caused her any excitement except for the swimming woman. And she's probably completely straight. Rose had got attention when she'd gone out on the evenings – the sun had coloured her skin a deep brown while the constant walking had burnt off the fat from her winter temp jobs and revealed her slim figure again – but not from anyone she'd even remotely considered inviting back to the poky flat the Lab had rented for her.
She squatted down on the wet sand at the edge of the sea and got ready to take another sample. It was all routine for her now. Slide the corer into the ground, rotate it around, pull out a thin tower of sand, place that in a canister, seal it, take a GPS reading and write it on the canister before stowing it in her backpack. It was another routine sample, until she realised she was in shadow and someone was standing over her.
"Hi." The swimming woman said. Rose turned her head to see she was standing right next to her, droplets of water clinging to her body, hair gripping wetly along her shoulders.
"Hi." She replied. "Nice swim?"
"Lovely. We seem to keep passing each other here, so I thought it was time I said hello properly. I'm Shauna, by the way."
"Rose." She replied, quickly stowing away the thin canister and rising up to her feet. "Nice to meet you."
"You too. I've got to admit my curiosity finally got the better of me. I keep seeing you here digging up stuff at the water's edge and can't help but wonder what you're doing."
She noticed me? Rose had always thought she looked pretty anonymous and forgettable while she was at work. "It's pretty dull, really. I'm collecting soil samples. They're all part of a study into how tides affect organisms in the beach."
"Really? You're researching that?"
"Not me personally. Well, not yet, anyway. I just collect the samples and then they get taken off to the lab. Maybe I'll get a promotion to doing some actual science if I stick at it, though. There are a lot worse jobs I could be doing."
"Definitely. So are you going to be doing this for a while?"
"I've got a three month contract, so still two months or so to go. What about you? What brings you down here so often?"
"I've been coming here for years. I live in town, and swimming in the sea's my favourite exercise, but when all the tourists are here, it's hard to find any space, so I come where they aren't."
"And what do you do when you're not swimming?"
"Well...when I asked what you were doing, it wasn't just idle curiosity. I run a restaurant down by the harbour. Well, my family owns it, but I'm the manager."
"Which one?" Rose asked. There were several around there, and she'd been in a few, but it was hard to remember their names or the differences between them.
"Metcalfe's Catch. We specialise in fresh local seafood, so I was worried you might be checking pollution levels, about to shut us down."
"Nothing to worry about there." Rose smiled. "At least not from me." She was thinking about the places she'd been in, and didn't remember any of them offering much beyond several varieties of fish and chips. She was sure she'd never seen Shauna anywhere but here too. Rose was glad she had her sunglasses on, hoping that they were obscuring her eyes enough to stop Shauna noticing how her gaze kept flicking downward to where the swimsuit gripped her large round breasts.
"That's good. Why don't you stop in the restaurant some time?"
