Nine Perfect Strangers

For heaven’s sake, thought Frances. The serial killer.

The mechanisms of the pool gate had bamboozled her for about five minutes but, naturally, he had no problem at all. He lifted the little black knobby thing with one meaty hand and kicked the gate hard with the ball of his foot.

Frances had already had to endure Flustered Glasses powering up and down the pool creating a wake like a speedboat. Now him.

The serial killer dropped his bath towel on a deckchair (you were meant to use the stripy blue-and-white towels from reception, but rules didn’t apply to him), walked straight to the edge of the pool and, without even bothering to put in his toe to check the temperature, dived straight in. Frances did a sedate breaststroke in the other direction.

Now she was stuck in the pool because she didn’t want to get out in front of him. She would have thought she was too old to worry about her body being observed and judged in a swimsuit, but apparently this neurosis began at twelve years old and never ended.

The problem was that she wanted to convey strength in all her future interactions with this man, and her soft white body, especially when compared to Masha’s Amazonian example, damn her, didn’t convey anything much except fifty-two years of good living and a weakness for Lindt chocolate balls. The serial killer would no doubt be the type to rank every woman based on his own personal ‘Would I fuck her?’ score.

She remembered her first-ever boyfriend of over thirty years ago, who told her he preferred smaller breasts than hers while his hands were on her breasts, as if she’d find this interesting, as if women’s body parts were dishes on a menu and men were the goddamned diners.

This is what she said to that first boyfriend: ‘Sorry.’

This was her first boyfriend’s benevolent reply: ‘That’s okay.’

She couldn’t blame her upbringing for her pathetic behaviour. When Frances was eight years old, a man patted her mother’s bottom as he walked past them on a suburban street. ‘Nice arse,’ he said in a friendly tone. Frances remembered thinking, Oh, that’s kind of him. And then she’d watched in shock as her five-foot-nothing mother chased the man to the corner and swung a heavy handbag full of hardback library books at the back of his head.

Right. Enough was enough. She would get out of the pool, at her own pace. She would not rush to grab up her towel to throw over her body.

Wait.

She didn’t want to get out of the pool! She was here first. Why should she get out just because he was here? She would enjoy her swim and then she would get out.

She dived down and swam along the pebbly bottom of the pool, enjoying the dappled light and relishing the ache in her legs from the hike that morning. Yes, this was so lovely and relaxing and she was fine. Her back felt quite good – after her second massage with Jan – and she was definitely a little transformed already. Then, apropos of absolutely nothing, the words of the review slithered snakelike into her mind: Misogynistic airport trash that leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

Frances thought of how Zoe had said she would read Nathaniel’s Kiss just to be nice. The last thing that sad beautiful child needed to read was misogynistic trash. Had Frances accidentally been writing misogynistic trash for the last thirty years? She came to the surface with an undignified gasp for air that sounded like a sob.

The serial killer stood at the opposite side of the pool, breathing hard, his back against the tiles, his arms resting on the paving. He stared straight at her with something like . . . fear.

For God’s sake, she thought. I may not be twenty years old, but is my body really so unattractive it actually scares you?

‘Um,’ he said out loud. He grimaced. He actually grimaced. That’s how disgusting he found her.

‘What?’ said Frances. She squared her shoulders and thought of her mother swinging her handbag like a discus thrower. ‘We’re not meant to be talking.’

‘Um . . . you’re . . .’ He touched under his nose.

Did he mean, ‘You smell’?

She did not smell!

Frances put her fingers to her nose. ‘Oh!’

Her nose was bleeding. She’d never had a nosebleed in her life. That review had given her an actual nosebleed.

‘Thank you,’ she said coldly. Both times she’d interacted with this man she had been at a terrible and most mortifying disadvantage.

She tipped her head back and dog paddled towards the steps.

‘Head forward,’ said the serial killer.

‘You’re meant to put your head back,’ snapped Frances. She waded up the stairs, trying to stop her swimsuit from riding up with one hand while attempting to stem the flow of blood with the other. Great clots of blood slid from her nose into her cupped hand. It was disgusting. Unbelievable. Like she’d been shot. She was not good with blood. Not really very good with anything remotely medical. It was one of the reasons why having babies had never appealed to her. She looked up at the blue sky and a wave of nausea hit her.

‘I think I’m going to faint,’ she said.

‘No, you’re not,’ he said.