The closest we came to discussing it was at the Ladies’ Pond in Hampstead. I recall the texture of the day clearly. Trying to lick the Smarties off before the soft-serve melted as we crossed the road to the Heath. My mouth filled with the sickly mix of chocolate, strawberry, and caramel as we wandered along the paths through the trees. My fingers still sticky when we sat on the cement at the edge of the cold, broad pool.

Spontaneously, Sabine had suggested we go swimming. We were wearing lost property bathing suits that the lifeguard, charmed by her, had found us. For hygiene’s sake, we’d put them on inside out; they were too big and slightly damp. Sabine’s was tan with crisscross straps. Mine was pink with white dots and had a residual scent of coconut oil.

When the sun shone the afternoon felt almost summery, but it kept disappearing. As the cement flickered from cream to gray, I traced a crack with a long stick of grass. The water under my feet was clean but not clear; almost golden at the surface, though smoky mustard deeper down. The air was so quiet I could hear the crackle of a dragonfly’s wings.

Then Sabine said, “I leave every person I fuck.”

“You’ve never been left?”

“Not once.”

“You’re too proud, Sabine!”

She swung her pale muscled legs back and forth, toes skimming the water without splashing. “Do you ever imagine us having sex?”

“Sometimes,” I said. “Do you?”

“Sometimes.”

I flung the trembling stick of grass away.

“An Austrian director told me actors often want to do it with each other,” she said. “They want to do it badly. And it’s great for the film. It keeps the, what d’you call . . .”

“Tension?”

“No, electricity. It keeps the electricity between them strong. But sometimes, the actors get weak. They give in. And then”—she blew the air out between her lips—“pfff.”

“Pfff?” I said.

“If you watch, you can see the exact moment. This scene, this scene: exciting. Then, pfff.”

I had a deflated moment of my own. “You agree with him?”

She shrugged.

“You think fucking is weak?” I said.

“What if it is?”

“What are you, a nun?” I hugged my knees tight to my chest.

Her back straightened, eyes cut. “What if I like it weak? What if I like it dirty, fucked up? What if I like it pushed to where you don’t even exist—”

“I like that too.”

“But, Meggie, if we went there, you and I, we’d never come back. We’d skid off the piste, lose everything. We’d eat each other alive, cannibalize each other.”

I gazed at the silky gusset of my loaned costume. “After we were done, I’d dump you so as not to be like all the others you’ve left.”

She gave a hurt laugh.

Was this our moment that I’d ruined?