I deliberately look down at my book.

I was wrong, in fact.

Valmont isn’t my brother! Valmont is Maria-Chjara.

The libertine seducer, in the eighteenth-century novel, couldn’t be a woman, times were different. But nowadays, of course she could! The girls you respect, the girls you admire, are the ones who take things for granted, who are confident, who do what they want with their bodies and their hearts, who do what they want with guys.

I’m a long way off being like that!

Maria-Chjara is a virgin. That’s the rumour doing the rounds. In tents, on the beach, in the girls’ showers and the boys’ toilets. It’s almost as if she’d shouted it through a loud-hailer, or pinned it up on the campsite notice board.

I’m a virgin … and I don’t plan on staying one.

Maria-Chjara has taken a vow of non-chastity.

She’s practically announced it, like a bowls competition, a ping-pong tournament or bingo night. She’s going to get herself a man. For the first time. Just one! Before the end of the summer.

Ever since then, Maria-Chjara has been strolling about in a thong, her breasts in the air, going to get her scoop of pistachio ice cream, her sandwich, her copy of Jeune et Jolie. Valerie Kaprisky in Year of the Jelly-Fish, if that gives you some idea.

And now here she is, coming back with her Coke.

Three steps forward, slowing down, head thrown back, a sip, forward again, curves to the fore, a twist of the waist, a sway of the hips, casually letting a few drops spill, wiping her sugary skin with the back of her hand.

Walking on.

All the men lying at her feet, the Papas’ spades freezing above their sandcastles, bottles of ice-cold beer pressed against swimming trunks, volleyballs rolling about with no one running after them. Estefan, Magnus, Filip, all thunderstruck!

It’s filthy.

But I can’t help admiring her …

Being jealous of her …

Hating her.

Hating the way men’s eyes stare at her chest, which defies the laws of gravity.

I’m screwed, even though I have a theory about that whole thing. You want to know what it is? Anyway, I’m not asking your opinion, I’m just letting off steam by telling you this. Going out with a girl who has small breasts, a girl you want to spend the rest of your life with, I mean, a girl like me, for example, is a long-term investment. A thirty-year guarantee. A choice you aren’t going to regret after decades as a couple. Big breasts, on the other hand, will inevitably disappoint, they will sag. It’s obvious, isn’t it? It’s a mathematical, physical law! Consequently, even if that little hand grenade Maria-Chjara is ahead of me at the moment, I’ll catch up with her eventually, at my own rhythm, a quiet trot.

You just have to be patient.