I can't help but smile when I see you through the window. In your hands are a pair of my floral bikini bottoms and they appear to have transfixed you.
Until a moment ago I was irritated that you had asked to wear them but your awkward stance and the blush that has crept round to the sides of your neck give you a vulnerability that makes me want to take care of you.
You don't want to put them on, I can tell, but you aren't sure whether it would be more embarrassing to try to back out.
This is our second trip to the swimming pool during your stay with me. Usually the lodgers on my total immersion language course have a working knowledge of French, but yours is faltering and you lack the confidence to make yourself understood. Perhaps this is why you find yourself holding a "bas de bikini" decorated with pink flowers and a lacy frill around the waist.
On our first visit to "la piscine" you could be excused for bringing the wrong type of swimming costume. Your shorts were quickly spotted by the lifeguard and you slunk back to our changing hut. I offered you my bikini bottoms. They were shiny, but black and plain and looked to anyone passing like a man's costume. Maybe they fooled you too.
In any case, you were without a usable swimming costume when we returned a few days later and meekly requested to borrow mine again as it was your turn to go into the changing hut. I rolled my eyes. I wanted to wear them myself and besides the black ones were still in the laundry basket. The costume I had brought was girly and people would surely laugh.
"C'est dans mon sac," I said severely, and gave you the bag with my beach clothes in it. The door of the hut closed and you were gone for a long time.
Eventually I peep through the window and see you standing naked, the bag contents emptied on the floor. You have picked through my sarong and silk beach dress in the hope of finding the black bikini bottoms but there are only the frilly floral ones.
I call to you to say I am coming in. You hurriedly step into the bottoms and draw them up your legs. You have barely finished by the time I enter and I watch as you self-consciously adjust the fabric to cover yourself.