Her breathing, which had been shallow for a while now, got faster as she heard the seal on the door to the guest house release as he pushed the handle down. She pretended to look at her book but really she was watching him. He didn’t look at her once. He was wearing the jeans she imagined he would be wearing, and a crisp, fitted, white T-shirt, the short sleeves folded over a couple of times, exposing the tops of his arms. He went straight to the shed and pulled out the lawnmower. She watched him pulling on the cord to start it, the muscles in his slender arms tightening as he gripped the metal pull at the end of the wire. She forgot to turn the pages of her book. The sun burned her thighs, but she didn’t want to move lest she alerted him to her presence. He leaned against the handle of the mower as he walked, and his shoulders bulged a little at the back. It was so warm and already the centre of his shirt was slightly darker where he was sweating. He continued to mow the lawn and she continue to ignore her book.

‘What you reading?’ he called out to her over the sound of the lawnmower. She was startled by the sudden interaction.

She had to check the cover as she couldn’t even remember; she hadn’t looked at the pages for quite some time.

‘Slaughterhouse Five.’

‘Is that homework?’

He thought of her as a child, as though she couldn’t be reading a book like this of her own volition. As though she would have to be forced to read such a text. She felt a little angry that he couldn’t see past her age.

‘No, I just heard it was good.’

He smiled but there was something false about it, she didn’t believe it. There was something sad about him, something broken. She couldn’t put her finger on it until she realised – his eyes stayed flat even though his grin spread wide.

He stopped the lawn-mower and sat on the lounger next to her. Her body tensed at the proximity. He leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees. His face was shaded but he still had that squint as he looked at her. She pulled her sunglasses off.

‘Are you OK today? After the other night?’

‘Did you hear what happened?’

‘Hear what?’

She lowered her voice and leaned forward. ‘The man from that night, my teacher, he committed suicide. He jumped off the cliff. I went to the beach with my friend earlier but everyone is talking about it and so I decided to come home and hang out here. The police came and spoke to me about it this morning,’ she said, trying to see if he reacted at all to the news. His face remained unchanged. Maybe she was wrong about what she had seen.