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kidding?”
    Gabi gave them
the finger.
    “Behave
yourself, Gabi,” Martine told her. “And sit down nicely.”
    The evening
progressed. As Gabi had warned, any perceived transgression called
for a forfeit to be paid. One woman had to sing a rude drinking
song as a result of using what Martine chose to call foul language.
Everybody joined in the chorus. Another had to drink from the wrong
side of her glass, as a punishment for spilling wine on the table.
She ended up with yet more wine down her front, of course.
    “My blouse is
soaked and I’ll catch cold!” she declared. Without further comment,
she unfastened it and took it off.
    “Typical of
Barbara,” Gabi’s friend Nathalie snorted. “Any excuse to show off
her expensive boobs!”
    Barbara stuck
out her tongue at her. “Just because you’re flat-chested,
Nath!”
    “Flat-chested?
Me? Let’s get an opinion on that!” Nathalie said, unbuttoning her
own blouse. She had no bra under it. She stood and thrust out her
chest. “So? My firm little boobs, or Barbara’s big bazookas?” she
demanded.
    Opinion was
split. Clearly, this group enjoyed letting their hair down, Gaëlle
realized, also noting that it was all very good humoured.
    At eleven
o’clock, Gabi pulled Gaëlle to one side. “I have to go soon,” she
said. “I’m off to Brussels on the bike in the morning. Nath will
give you a lift. It’s already arranged.”
    “You should
have said. I could have taken a taxi.”
    “No way. Nath
is happy to take you.”
    Gaëlle turned
to Nathalie. “Sure?” she asked.
    “No
problem.”
    Gabi said her
goodbyes and left, waving to Gaëlle and miming a telephone
call.

Chapter
Five
     
     
    A little later,
Barbara came over to Gaëlle. “Want to come swimming?”
    “A swim? At
this hour? In the Rhine, I suppose?”
    “Of course
not.” Barbara laughed. “In my pool. Nath usually comes.”
    “I suppose I
should too, then,” Gaëlle conceded.
    Although
Barbara had put her wine-stained blouse back on, she didn’t bother
to fasten it when she strolled out into the car park and got into a
big BMW. A woman called Odile joined her. Nathalie, with Gaëlle as
her passenger, followed them, as the little convoy of two cars
drove to a house in one of the wealthy suburbs, and parked in a
garage that Gaëlle reflected was about the size of her own
apartment.
    Once inside,
Barbara led them down a spiral staircase.
    “It’s huge,”
Gaëlle exclaimed, looking at the swimming pool that came into
view.
    “Twenty
metres,” Barbara said proudly. “No point in divorcing a rich pig of
a husband if you don’t get to enjoy what he had to hand over!”
    There were
little cubicles beside the pool, and Gaëlle went into one of them.
As she stripped she recalled the last time she had swum naked in a
pool. It had been with Jérôme, two years previously. They’d been on
their way to Vilnius, and had stopped for a day in Lübeck, in
northern Germany. She’d noticed that the pool there was having a
non-textile evening, and had suggested that they try it out. It had
been one of the least sexy occasions of nudity in Gaëlle’s life.
They’d had to wear swimming caps that were the colour and texture
of condoms, and Jérôme had picked up a fungus that had taken
several treatments to remove. Gaëlle realised that she was able to
think of Jérôme without tears, now. She was making progress. She
still missed him desperately, but he was a warm presence in her
head now, rather than an open wound in her heart.
    While her mind
was wandering, Gaëlle had stripped naked, rather conscious of her
pubic hair, which had regrown over the months of neglect. However,
as she started to open her cubicle door, Odile walked past, still
wearing her knickers. Gaëlle quickly put hers back on and came out
into the pool area.
    The others were
already in the water. Unthinkingly, Gaëlle dived in, then had to
grab hastily for her knickers and haul them back up from round her
knees. She swam a few