I don’t care. As usual I sit apart from the others, a bit further along the beach, on the edge of the shade cast by the pine trees, my knees and buttocks tucked under my big T-shirt. From my position I can see the whole of the beach, I can make out all the different shades of blue in the water, which becomes ridiculously transparent when you dive into it; the incredible flashes of turquoise among the deep blue of the clumps of posidonia. Not to mention the whole ecosystem of human beings to observe.

If I look towards the Revellata headland, I can still see the ruins of the Roc e Mare marina that was blown up three days ago. Still no news of the investigation into the explosion. I even tried grilling Aurélia, the policeman’s daughter, but to no avail! Besides, she still annoys me, wandering about the beach looking so superior, fully dressed just like me. I hate the fact that people might think we look like each other. That I have anything in common with this girl who stalks the sand as if she were on duty, as if the whole beach belonged to her, as if there were a time limit on the towels and she was in charge, checking the little kids filled in the holes made by their sandcastles before they left the beach, spying on everyone with her falcon eyes. Before reporting everything to her father.

I’m not like her, please tell me I’m not! I’m the opposite of Aurélia, you agree, don’t you?

I don’t judge people.

I don’t condemn.

I just analyse, I learn. I document the pleasures that are still forbidden to me.

I store them up, in theory at least. For later on. When I’m grown up.

Opposite me, Maria-Chjara has turned over her caramel-coloured skin on her orange towel and is blindly stretching a hand out towards Hermann, as if she didn’t know who was lying next to her on the beach, and didn’t care. In her hand there is a tube of sun-cream. Not one word, not a look. Only a gesture, an explicit gesture of undoing the zip on the back of her bathing costume and pressing her big breasts against the towel, hiding her nipples in the cloth. Just like Maman, who’s a little way off with her friends from the campsite. Parents on one side, teenagers on the other; that’s the law of the beach.

Mama Palma always brings her big bag, her bottle of water, her big book that she never leaves without; she must have got to page twelve, I checked, and the bookmark hasn’t moved in a week.