David Nicholls - One Day

Her face in the mirror seemed strange to her now, bare and exposed, as if she had just removed her spectacles for the last nine months. The lenses had a tendency to make her prone to random and alarming facial spasms, ratty blinks. They stuck to her finger and face like fish scales or, as now, slid beneath her eyelid, burying themselves deep in the back of her skull. After a rigorous bout of facial contortion and what felt like surgery, she managed to retrieve the shard, stepping out of the bathroom, red-eyed and blinking tearfully.

Dexter was sitting on the bed, his shirt unbuttoned. ‘Em? Are you crying?’

‘No. But it’s still early.’

They headed out in the oppressive lunch-time heat, finding their way towards the long crescent of white sand that stretched for a mile or so from the village, and it was time to unveil the swimming costumes. Emma had put a lot of thought, perhaps too much, into her swimsuit, settling finally for a plain black all-in-one from John Lewis that might have been branded The Edwardian. As she pulled her dress over her head, she wondered if Dexter thought she was in some way chickening-out by not wearing a bikini, as if a one-piece swimming costume belonged with spectacles, desert boots and bike helmets as somehow prudish, cautious, not quite feminine. Not that she cared, though she did wonder, as her dress passed over her head, if she had caught his eyes flickering in her direction. Either way, she was pleased to note that he had gone for the baggy shorts look. A week of lying next to Dexter in Speedos would be more uncomfortable than she could bear.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘but aren’t you the Girl from Ipanema?’

‘No, I’m her auntie.’ She sat and attempted to apply suntan lotion to her legs in a way that wouldn’t make her thighs wobble.

‘What is that stuff?’ he said.

‘Factor thirty.’

‘You might as well lie under a blanket.’

‘I don’t want to overdo it on the second day.’

‘It’s like house paint.’

‘I’m not used to the sun. Not like you, you globetrotter. You want some?’

‘I don’t agree with suntan lotion.’

‘Dexter, you are so hard .’

He smiled, and continued to watch her from behind his dark glasses, noting the way her raised arm lifted her breast beneath the black material of the swimming costume, the bulge of soft pale flesh about the elasticated neckline. There was something about the gesture too, the tilt of the head and the pulling back of her hair as she applied the lotion to her neck, and he felt the pleasant nausea that accompanied desire. Oh God, he thought, eight more days of this . Her swimming costume was scooped low at the back and she could do no more than dab ineffectually at the lowest point. ‘Want me to do your back?’ he said. Offering to apply sun cream was a corny old routine, beneath him really, and he thought it best to pass it off as medical concern. ‘You don’t want to burn.’

‘Go on then.’ Emma shuffled over and sat between his legs, her head resting forward on her knees. He began to apply the lotion, his face so close that she could feel his breath on her neck, while he could feel the heat reflecting off her skin, both of them working hard on the impression that this was everyday behaviour and in no way a clear contravention of Rules Two and Four, those prohibiting Flirtation and Physical Modesty.

‘Scooped quite low, isn’t it?’ he said, aware of his fingers at the base of her spine.

‘Good job I didn’t put it on backwards!’ she said and a silence followed while both of them thought oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God.

As a distraction she placed her hand on his ankle and yanked it towards her. ‘What’s this?’

‘My tattoo. From India.’ She rubbed it with her thumb as if trying to wipe it off. ‘It’s faded a bit. It’s a yin-and-yang,’ he explained.

‘Looks like a road sign.’

‘It means the perfect union of opposites.’

‘It means “end of national speed limit”. It means put some socks on.’

He laughed and placed his hands on her back, his thumbs aligned with the hollows of her shoulder blades. A moment passed. ‘There!’ he said, brightly. ‘That’s your undercoat. So. Let’s swim!’

And so the long, hot day crawled on. They swam and slept and read, and as the fiercest heat faded and the beach become more populated a problem became apparent. Dexter noticed it first.

‘Is it just me or—’

‘What?’

‘Is everyone on this beach completely naked?’

Emma looked up. ‘Oh yeah.’ She returned to her book. ‘Don’t ogle , Dexter.’

‘I’m not ogling, I’m observing. I’m a qualified anthropologist, remember?’

‘Low third, wasn’t it?’

‘High two-two. Look, there’s our friends.’

‘What friends?’

‘From the ferry. Over there. Having a barbecue.’ Twenty metres away the man crouched pale and naked over a smoky aluminium tray as if for warmth, while the woman stood on tip-toes and waved, two triangles of white, one of black. Dexter waved back cheerily: ‘You’ve got no cloooothes oooon!’

Emma averted her eyes. ‘You see, I couldn’t do that.’

‘What?’

‘Barbecue naked.’

‘Em, you’re so conventional.’

‘That’s not conventional, it’s basic health and safety. It’s food hygiene.’

‘I’d barbecue naked.’

‘And that’s the difference between us, Dex, you’re so dark, so complicated.’

‘Maybe we should go and say hi.’

‘No!’

‘Just have a chat.’

‘With a chicken drumstick in one hand and his knob in the other? No thanks. Besides, isn’t it a breach of nudist etiquette or something?’

‘What?’

‘Talking to someone naked and us not being naked.’

‘I don’t know, is it?’

‘Just concentrate on your book, will you?’ She turned to face the tree-line, but over the years she had reached a level of familiarity with Dexter where it had become possible to hear an idea enter his mind, like a stone thrown into mud, and sure enough:

‘So what do you think?’

‘What?’

‘Should we?’

‘What?’

‘Take all our clothes off?’

‘No, we should not take all our clothes off!’

‘Everyone else has!’

‘That’s no reason! And what about Rule Four?’

‘Not a rule, a guideline.’

‘No, a rule.’

‘So? We can bend it.’

‘If you bend it, it’s not a rule.’

Sulkily he flopped back down on the sand. ‘Just seems a bit rude, that’s all.’

‘Fine, you go ahead, I’ll try to tear my eyes away.’

‘No point if it’s just me,’ he mumbled petulantly.

She lay her back down once again. ‘Dexter, why on earth are you so desperate for me to take my clothes off?’

‘I just thought we might be more relaxed, with our clothes off.’

‘Unbelievable, just unbelievable—’

‘You don’t think you’d be more relaxed?’

‘NO!’

‘Why not?’

‘It doesn’t matter why not! Besides, I don’t think your girlfriend would be very pleased.’

‘Ingrid wouldn’t care. She’s very open-minded, Ingrid. She’d have had her top off at WH Smiths in the airport—’

‘Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, Dex—’

‘You don’t disappoint me—’

‘But there’s a difference—’

‘What difference?’

‘Well Ingrid used to be a model for one thing—’

‘So? You could be a model.’

Emma laughed sharply. ‘Oh, Dexter, do you really think so?’

‘For catalogues or something. You’ve got a lovely figure.’

‘“A lovely figure”, God help me—’

‘All I’m saying is completely objectively, you’re a very attractive woman—’