When she comes out of the bathroom, the red material striking against her dark skin, I try not to stare at her long legs and flat stomach. I try not to make comparisons with my wide hips and big, flabby tits, but it is obvious that my swimming costume looks much better on her than it ever did on me.

“You look great in that. You should keep it.”

She looks down at herself. “Thanks, but I don’t have any reason to need a swimming costume unless I’m here.”

“Then keep it here. Wear it whenever you want.”

She smiles, happy.

“Come on then, let’s go.”

“Don’t we need towels?”

“There’s towels in the pool house.”

We run out into the cold garden in bare feet, feel the wet grass squelch under our toes, ignoring the numbing chill of it. She doesn’t seem to mind being in just a costume. She gallops across the grass in front of me, while I follow along clutching the dressing gown to me.

The humidity of the pool house smothers us as I throw open the doors. The glass roof is blinding with the sun bouncing off it and throwing shapes onto the water. I drop my gown onto one of the loungers lined up facing the water. Tracey hurls herself into the water, squealing. I laugh and follow her, flinging my body into the deep end, feeling it engulf me, pull me down momentarily before I bob back up. She splashes me as I break the surface and I cough, the chlorine coating my lips, then splash her back before kicking with my feet and propelling forward.

She swims with long strokes next to me, her arms like pistons. “Race you to the end.” She is off and I hesitate before swimming after her. I can’t catch her, her long legs and muscular arms giving her an advantage.

I am panting when we reach the end, but she seems unaffected. I pull myself onto one of the wide steps in the shallow end. “God, I am so unfit. How are you not out of breath?”

“I work on a dairy farm when I’m not at school. It keeps me fit.” She flexes her arm and I can see the toned bicep.

“You have amazing arms.”

“Lifting bales will do that. My parents need all the help they can get with the farm and looking after my brother. They can’t afford to hire someone else to help right now, so we make do with the few workers we have and do the rest ourselves.”

I run my fingers through the water.

“But if I had this at the bottom of my garden, I’d be swimming every day!”

I shrug. “I guess I don’t because it’s not much fun on your own.”