Once again she wears a white shirt. This time hers, not his. I didn’t know what to wear. In the end I pulled the crumpled shirt, his, from the bottom of my laundry basket. To smooth the creases I stood in the steam of the bathroom. The collar damp against my neck. She is too polite to say she recognises it. Are you excited? Yeh. Good, I think you’ll like it. The car is small, old. Red paint rusted above the tyres’ curves. A crack in the windscreen slowly growing larger. Inside it is spotless.

Her hand on the gearstick. No nail varnish, no bracelet. Earrings, gold studs. I notice a second hole, grown over. She touches her earlobe. Always on my lookout. Ah yes, from my younger days. When you were a painter? She laughs, avoids the question. Nothing is given away easily. She hands me a stout Ordnance Survey, a biro star, her biro star, drawn next to a particular square. OK, you need to read this, you’re the co-pilot. Course, have you been before? Yes, but he drove us, Mr S drove. I let the air hang. Anyway it’s there, you can see, where the river goes through the campsite. It is there, the thickened blue bend, a patch of criss-crossed green. I look again at her earlobe. She turns out of the driveway and onto the road. Goodness, what am I doing, the wrong way already. That sudden vulnerability. I want it to be me, to be my gaze, to be our gazes swapping in and out, one replacing the other. She takes the car up to the sports field. A large car park sits behind. The Girls wander about, holding hockey sticks, gumshields plump behind their lips. She waves to a few. Screeches the tyres in a fast circle. She waves again in the rear-view mirror. They call after her.

You’re so popular with them. Yes, only after a year of trying but never appearing to try. A minibus turns in beside us. The other team. She seems genuinely interested, craning her neck to see the uniforms, to guess the competing school. Did you want to stay and watch? No no. We drive away, past the pub, past the garage. I wind down the window. The tunnel whoosh. I lean out, my eyes watering, the hedgerow whipping close to my ear. We slow down at an enormous bridge. A long line of motorbikes is waiting to pull in. Ah, Devil’s Bridge, have you seen? No. How have you missed so much? She indicates, following the motorbikes. There is no room for another car so she leaves the hazards on, blocking somebody else in. Quick, hurry, before we get in trouble. In the middle of the bridge, the river wide and slow beneath, she shows me two round imprints sunk into the wall. The devil’s hands? The devil’s hands. So tiny. Not if you have hooves. She presses her knuckles into the dents. Stone worn smooth. Is it lucky? Probably not, probably the opposite.

I see now she is wearing men’s swimming shorts. A faded pink. Also guaranteed to be partly his, like the car, like the trip. What’s wrong? Nothing. Always nothing with you. Her tone is unexpected. A closeness we have not yet shared. She senses it too, shifting subject, putting her hands against the sky. Such a glorious day! A van sells bright-white ice creams. Bikers in their heavy leathers lean against the bridge, licking their wrists, catching the melt. Cones are tossed half eaten into the rubbish. Wasps pearling in and out of the bin’s mouth. Would you like one? Not yet, maybe later. I look too long at a group of young men, only in leather waistcoats, or shirtless entirely. Trouser buttons biting just below their belly buttons. Want a picture? Come on then take a picture pussy! one of the men calls to me. She is already by the car, lifting her head to see, unable to hear. Squinting through the glare she waves me over. I look back at the man who has already forgotten me, now shoving a friend with a similarly beautiful chest. His arms around his middle, then his ribs. Soft punches thrown into each shoulder. I feel the itch of skin beneath my binder. Inevitable. I notice things I want to steal.

I go back to her. How would he be, sitting in this passenger seat, watching her hand on a gearstick, watching her hands against the sky, watching her hands made into hooves. He would have a beautiful chest. He would be less astonished. Everything OK? Always. I change tune for her. She raises that eyebrow. Well then let’s get going. I hope there aren’t crowds like this everywhere. Don’t you worry, this is a secret spot. She taps the page open across my lap, finger just wide of her biro star. Well then, I say, parroting her catchphrase, I won’t tell. Oh I see, it’s like that. Familiarity again. This time easier.

Sheep, fields, sheep. Slow pace of stone walls. Today the blue has heft, has a building heat. I didn’t know you could have weather like this here, I didn’t know. With one hand on the wheel she takes a pair of sunglasses from the door. Yes of course, honestly what do you think of us. Us. She never mentions a different home to this one. Wild flowers begin as we climb higher. The car struggles on the hill bends. Up, up, up. Tall weeds, but maybe not weeds, with starred white flowers. I am not concentrating on the map. Here! Ah, OK. She reverses down the narrow lane. A sign for the campsite appears. She pulls into a passing place. I’m sure this counts as parking. From the boot she hands me a bag. Lunch! She puts on a green backpack, worn, straps frayed. Without worry she jumps up onto the low wall, spinning over her legs, landing safely on the other side. I follow, slower, more careful with my skin, not wanting a scrape, or nick.

Each movement she makes is positive, whole. This is a body at peace. She thinks of nobody else. Are we trespassing? Only sort of. To our right a few tents have been set up. In the distance is a line of caravans and an office. I see the tall not-weeds with white flowers up close. Don’t touch, don’t touch those. Hogweed, it will burn. I worry now, walking even slower, the space between us lengthening. We drop along a bank, following another wall, moving through a spot where the stones have been displaced. Downhill she marches towards a thin wood. Her calves are arrows through the grass.

In the broken shade she puts things in her mouth and calls out their names. Lovage, water mint. More, there’s more, but she’s too far ahead for me to hear. I round a corner and find her bent over a patch of pink faces, petals uptight. She frowns. This, I can’t remember what it’s called. Like the roses, the information is recently learned. There have been other books, other garish covers. This is one way of belonging. I understand. She struggles, combing through the images she’s stored, books stacked somewhere in that grand house. No, I can’t remember, how disappointing. A plane rips overhead. Seconds later an apocalyptic boom sounds off the rocks. We are in the middle of a valley. As if a glacier had only just finished moving through. She places her hands over her ears. There’s another one. Sure enough another dot appears, expanding. Not a plane but a jet. Something harder, faster. The military prefer these secret corners of English countryside. The sound is dragged behind. I don’t bring my hands to my ears. She watches. How can you stand it? I don’t know, I don’t mind.

We come out of the trees and stagger further down. The slope is steeper now. A sound of water increases. She crouches, picks a clover and bites behind its head. She doesn’t offer, or ask, me to do the same. Instead the flavour is announced. Sweet, something like honey. Wonderful! she confirms. Her personalities catch, like loose thread on a branch. The old-fashioned headmaster’s wife and this person, setting her teeth to a stem’s nape. Stood tall in her pink shorts.

Almost there. Scree is loose under my feet. Water appears. A clear river. Heather makes soft mounds. She whips through the bracken. Points to a distant fell and suggests climbing it, not today, but one day. I am hopeful. We drop down onto a track. There is nothing but the rhythm of our shoes on the dusty surface. Birdsong. Breath, focused in the heat. I want to ask her how she, how they, found this place, but the quiet is too lovely. Familiarity, a new familiarity, this time bodily. Little clutches of fabric. The swipe of our thighs.

This is it! At first I can’t see anything, only slabs of grey stone. She moves towards a copse of only five or six trees. Slender, silver bark. Green leaves. I watch her first, standing at an edge, peering down, pleased. It needed to be as good as she remembered. Without waiting for me she removes her white shirt. Each button a piece of my own spine, undone. Her swimming costume is an athlete’s. Black, streamlined. I am surprised by her strength. She adjusts the fit, a finger slid underneath the short straps, then the place where the suit meets her hips. Catches me watching her, I blush. She calls to me. My anxiety has its own heartbeat. Desperate for the cool across my sticky face. I wear a sleeveless T-shirt, the binder hidden underneath. Underpants, too, the T-shirt’s hem past my hips, stopping mid-thigh. You’ll go in wearing that? Yeh, no costume, didn’t bring one with me, never thought it would be warm enough to swim. Little did you know. She accepts my lie. My costume balled up in my underwear drawer. I no longer know how to wear it. I reach her at the edge. She has waited for my reaction. Below is a large waterfall. A pool eroded beneath it. Bigger than I imagined, enough to spend time swimming to either side. Jewelled surface. A fish, brown trout she explains, is visible deep on the stony bed. It’s beautiful. It is. She clambers down and dives. Muscle, water. Her back is a swimmer’s back. All arch and grace.

For a moment I can’t move. She doesn’t hurry me. Treads water, calm. I grip the edge with my toes. Promise myself I’ll jump at the count of five. But only manage on ten, hopping forward, I can’t make the same shape as her. Rush of rock at my back. Relief of vanishing beneath the bright surface. T-shirt ballooning around me. I open my mouth to drink, to taste the cold. Reappear to her face a few feet from mine. She smiles. There you are. We haul up to the waterfall. A large, flat rock partially submerged, able to be clambered onto. Matching flex of our forearms, she admires my brawn, I pretend not to hear. We sit side by side underneath. She draws up her legs. The crease at her knee. Here she does not know, does not mind, what she gives away. Water hammering our heads, necks. Without warning she slips back in, completes a few lengths at speed. Front crawl. I float. If I could choose a different chest I would choose this water. If I could choose a different body I would choose this water. I say the last line aloud, river slipping on my tongue. What? She swims towards me. Slowly. Breaststroke now. What did you say? Nothing. But of course, nothing. She rolls her eyes. I roll mine back.

I’ll buy us ice creams on the way home. Don’t worry, your company is plenty. The line is well used, has been said to other people, she is sociable, she entertains. I want it for myself. It would be nice to be plenty. To be plenty the way she says it, the key change between the e and n. We eat. Olives, artichokes from the posh supermarket. She laughs when I call it that. Hummus, smoky crackers. Two kiwi fruit and two matching teaspoons. She pulls an artichoke heart from the jar and eats it whole. We swim again, rinsing the oil from the corners of our mouths, from our fingers. Afterwards we arrange our towels on the rocks and lie still. Birdsong. Insects, the river’s full throat. A weightlessness arrives. I doze, waking up to her backpack zipping and unzipping. My God, the time. What? The time, it’s past five. Her watch left in the front pocket. Is there a rush? She sits next to me, cramping the left side of her body into mine. It is the most we have ever touched. I feel it, I feel the moment she realises, a tightening of her torso. Too late to move away we are left in this encounter, unprepared. We inhale, we are drawn closer together. I try to control my breath.

After seconds, maybe ten, she stands and stretches. Now I’m all dried off I want to go back in. The temperature has not changed. If anything, a particular warmth now rises from the ground, the rocks. Even the trees radiate. Do it! No, no, really I should be getting back. He needs his dinner? It is an unfair thing for me to say. She is gracious, letting it go, sticking to the facts. Yes actually, we have people coming over. What people, I don’t ask. I picture it instead. Him, her, a second him, a second her. Something sophisticated, fish, a whole fish. A whole fish and its special matching cutlery.

Here, come here, check me for ticks. Ticks? Yes, ticks! I approach her back. She reaches around an arm, her arm, sharp elbow skywards, and stretches her fingers, indicating an area to be investigated. There’s nothing. I look closely. Are you sure? A few moles. Those shoulder blades previously in flight through the water. She raises both arms. Shoulder blades in flight again. And here? She twists side to side. I am surprised by the dark hair of her armpits. Her smell. Nothing, there’s nothing. Good. The shirt is pulled back over her head. It is over. Now you. I turn, reluctantly. Her hands pause. May I? Yes. She uses her fingers, reaching inside my T-shirt without lifting it, feeling along the curves of my armpits, double-checking the moles. The touch is practical, careful. I know she will look at herself again in the mirror, after her shower, making sure I did not mistake a freckle, did not mistake a well-known moment of skin, and leave behind a determined nymph, those tiny legs, those tiny heads. She swaps a forefinger for a thumb, sweeping it down my sides. I didn’t understand I was supposed to use my hands. Now there will never be a second chance.

Photograph © Alice Zoo