“Why a bikini?”

“Because this afternoon you and I are going to spend a few hours up in the swimming pool on the roof of your hotel.”

“There’s a swimming pool on the roof?”

“Yep.”

“We can go hang out up there, but I really don’t want—”

“Me to see you in a bikini because of your arm,” I said, finishing the sentence for her. “Too late, I’ve seen it. Now, I’ve just emailed you the address of a small boutique place that I like. I know the owner, so drop my name and he’ll look after you.” I shoved about £200 into her hand. “That should cover it, but if not, just tell him I’ll pay the rest later.”

“£200,” Michelle exclaimed, after counting it. “I’ve never spent more than $40 on a swimming costume. What sort of bikini do you want me to buy for that much?”

“Preferably a small one.”

Michelle stared at the money looking uncertain, but at least she hadn’t rejected the idea out of hand.

“What will we tell Maisie?” she asked.

“I hate to break it to you, but Maisie barely notices us anyway. As long as you’re here to pick her up she won’t mind.”

“Okay,” she said finally. “Okay. I’ll go there now. What time do I meet you up by the pool?”

“One o’clock.”

When Michelle walked away I breathed a sigh of relief. I knew I had to act confident and sure of myself, but I’d been expecting Michelle to make no end of excuses. It was happening. Today was the day. This had to work. If I couldn’t break down Michelle’s barriers today, then I didn’t think I ever would.

-*-

I slipped a few quid to the appropriate hotel staff to make sure Michelle and I would not be disturbed in the pool. They arranged to close the pool and only let Michelle through. I resisted the urge to get flowers or do anything overly romantic. Wild gestures were easy, and besides that they stood a good chance of scaring Michelle off completely.

I relaxed in the pool at the deep end and kept an eye on the entrance for Michelle to arrive. The rooftop pool was contained within a glass conservatory which was just as well because there weren’t many days in London that were nice enough to use an outdoor pool.

The water was unnaturally warm. Personally, I preferred to jump into a cold pool. It woke me up and reinvigorated me instantly, but that might just be me. My club made me take ice baths after games sometimes, so a cold pool didn’t bother me much.

This one was nearly warm, but if I was going to be in a pool with a beautiful woman, warm was better than cold. Michelle should be in no doubt about my size, but I didn’t want cold water making my little fella, well, little.

I leaned over to grab my phone from the side of the pool and checked the time. Michelle was running fifteen minutes late. That wasn’t like her. She would be nervous about coming up here, but when she left this morning she looked determined to make it work.

There was a timer on the wall for marking lap times, so I waited until the hand hit the top and then ducked my head under water. My physio always remarked on my lung capacity, which was the second highest at the club. The lung capacity made me fitter than most other players which was a large factor in my ability to score late drop goals.

Near the end of games, when the opposition was starting to tire, there were usually opportunities to sneak in a drop goal, but most kickers were just as tired as everyone else. Not me. I felt as fresh at the beginning of games as I did at the end. I never missed the late kicks.

Except that one time. But that was different. It just so happened to be the biggest kick I’ve ever taken in my life, and I missed it.

The water blurred my vision, but I managed to see the red hand creep back around past the top of the timer. That meant I’d been under for one minute. Two minutes was attainable, but it depended on all sorts of factors, like how much sleep I’d had and what I’d eaten for breakfast.

My body began to float towards the surface in an instinctive battle to reach oxygen. I moved my arms in an effort to send my body back down, but that exuded energy and burned up what little oxygen I had left.

I took another look at the timer. Damn, thirty more seconds to go. I pushed myself down to the bottom again, eating up a few more seconds. I closed my eyes to avoid the temptation to look at the timer, and pictured Michelle the way she looked last night in my living room. She’d been stunning, burn mark or not. Her chest practically pulsed with each breath she took. Shit. Don’t think about breathing right now. Her stomach. Her flat, smooth stomach had moved almost imperceptibly with each… Shit.

I opened my eyes and looked up at the timer as it moved past the two-minute mark. My legs went down and made contact with the bottom of the pool, before pushing my body up through the surface where I took a huge gasp of air the second my mouth was out of the water.

My lungs filled with air and then emptied, before filling with air again. I wiped the water from my eyes and regained my focus as the blood rushed back to my brain. No sooner had the blood reached my brain then it went somewhere else.

Standing next to the pool in a yellow bikini was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She stood with her right arm angled slightly away from me; the result of a self-conscious habit, developed over years of being paranoid about her appearance.

“I thought you were playing hide-and-seek there for a minute,” Michelle said, looking down on me with a smile I could stare at for days. “Is the water cold?”

“Not at all,” I said. “Jump in.”

Michelle braced herself, clearly still expecting the water to be cold, and then jumped in. She screamed in imagined shock as she hit the water, but quickly relaxed.

“Okay, it’s not that bad,” she said. “What do you think of the swimsuit?”

“Put your hands between my legs and you’ll find out,” I joked.

Michelle splashed me with the water in a way that was cute, despite being somewhat pointless. Was there anything this woman could do that I wouldn’t find adorable?

“Why are we here anyway?” Michelle asked. “This wasn’t what I had in mind for our next meeting.”

“Would you rather have gone for dinner?”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Me neither. And to be honest, I wanted to look at your body. I got a glimpse the other night and now I want to see more.”

“You saw my arm.”

“Yes, I did.”

“And I suppose you have questions?”

“Not really,” I said. “I know exactly what happened and why you covered it up?”

“You’re such a know-it-all sometimes,” she teased. “Go on then, tell me what you think happened.”

“Well, I already know about that night. The only new information I now have is that you were hit by the acid as well. You kept it a secret because it just reminded you that you got off lightly compared to Maisie. You think you failed to protect her.”

“It’s pretty clear I did fail to protect her.”

“You protected her from some of it,” I said. “I’ve read the police report of that night.”

“Isn’t that supposed to be private?”

“Yeah, but Hodgson let me look at it. There’s not a lot in it; neither you nor Maisie knew much information about the attack so there was little to tell the police. Anyway, it says you were walking with Maisie on your left. The attackers came out from the left hand side and threw the acid. You have a burn mark on your right arm. The only way you would have got that is if you turned to your left and grabbed Maisie. You tried to put your body in the way, didn’t you? You had a split second to react and in that time you threw yourself between the acid and your little sister.”

Michelle was silent for a few seconds and I realized I might have gotten a little carried away. I’d recounted the facts like an excited detective who’d figured out a murder mystery. This was a real-life attack that still resonated with Michelle and Maisie, yet I’d been an insensitive arsehole about it as usual.