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‘Hello,’ said the girl.

‘Sorry about the ball. It shot off my foot.’

‘Doesn’t matter.’

André hesitated a moment. He bounced the ball once. ‘Do you want an ice cream?’ he asked, as if she were his sister.

‘That would be nice.’

There was something about that voice. It was rather sing-song, and it was warm. It was a voice that massaged your soul. André pointed to the four of us. ‘Come and join us. That dark-brown guy was just going to get ice creams.’

The goddess got lithely to her feet, picked up her book, her bag, and her towel, and came toward us.

She had blond, shoulder-length hair, which framed her face in long locks. Her eyes were blue—not hard, Germanic blue, but the blue you see on houses on the Greek islands. Her skin was golden silk.

‘David, your turn.’ André said it again with a boldness that I could not remember having noticed before.

David got up and gave the girl a look that suggested he probably wasn’t gay after all. She smiled at him, and a wave of jealousy went through me. I should have gone to get the ice creams.