She’s dancing, and each one of her movements seems calculated to make the shadows play over her curves, to caress her, hiding her bosom before suddenly revealing it, concealing a pair of nipples before illuminating them, like two black-gloved hands settling on each of her breasts, pressing them, lifting them, crushing them. Playing with them to make the night aroused.

Nicolas gets up.

So is that how it works? Seduction. A whirlwind, dizziness, a pompom waving in the air? Is it the same after the first spin on the merry-go-round?

‘Too late,’ the Italian girl’s voice simpers.

The lacy bikini top goes flying and collapses in the wet sand like a jelly-fish.

Hurry up, my little Nicolas. My great idiot of a brother is taking an age, pulling off his shirt and then folding it up at his feet. Unless his studied slowness is also part of the dance.

I’ll never be able to … the guy, I’d just go straight over and eat him up!

‘Seconda possibilità?’

And by the same stroke of magic, another tiny piece of transparent lace is dangling from Maria-Chjara’s fingertips. She stands there for a moment, up to her belly in water displaying her trophy, then she takes a couple of steps forward until her parted thighs form a bridge just above the water, licked gently by the waves and the foam.

Nicolas has abandoned all patience. His underpants are hauled off with his trousers. As soon as I catch a glimpse of my brother’s bum, forgive me for dumping you here, my nocturnal reader, but I’ve got to close my eyes.

By the time I open them again, Nicolas and Maria-Chjara are invisible, and I can just hear laughter in the water, playing, advancing and retreating. As soon as the laughter stops, I promise myself that I will block my ears, sew up my eyelids or, since it might be easier, just leave.

And that’s what I should do, I know.

Too late! Maria-Chjara comes out first. Naked. Impossibly beautiful, as I will never be, as hardly any other girl will ever be. So beautiful as to be cursed by all the other girls in the galaxy.

She goes on laughing, slightly hysterically; it sounds as false as the notes from Nico’s guitar, and makes her a bit less sexy, I think, but having said that, she’s still got the edge on the rest of the field.

She picks up her bikini top, her bottom, her white linen shirt two metres further away.

Hurry up, my Nico, she’s going to slip through your fingers!

Little by little I’m starting to understand the game. Thank you, Chjara.

She’s already dressed as Nicolas leaves the water, his nakedness slightly shameful. Time for him to put a foot, a thigh, into his jeans, like a heron standing on one leg. Maria-Chjara kisses him for a long time, then runs away.