Author's note: Although events follow on from "Three in a Tent Made for Two" this is a stand-alone story.
*****
Greg and Tim were sniggering like school kids at the open sash window. They were tearing off sheets from the notepad headed Hoppingmaid Holiday Flats, folding them over and over till they were tight packets and throwing them down obliquely into the back yard next door.
'So immature,' I said, wearily. We were in the bedroom and I was sitting in the hard utilitarian chair, leafing through What's On in Palstow. Not much, I'd concluded. I made a note of the address of the gym. That afternoon, even the beach under the beating sun had proved a disappointment. One or two girls had looked promising but the odd bit of flirting had fizzled out and maybe Tim, Greg and I are a touch intimidating en masse and it takes a special kind of girl to handle the three of us.
'Dam—nearly,' Tim said. I got up and went to join them.
The flats occupied an address in a Georgian terrace otherwise taken up by private residences. Ours was on the third floor, the bedroom window almost directly above the dividing wall between the flats' back yard and the narrow rear garden to the right. Immediately on the other side of the wall, the girl lay on her front on a sun lounger opened out flat; her head was turned away from us and resting on the backs of her hands. In her brief black bikini she was tanning nicely in the hot sun. Little packets of paper surrounded her.
'Must be asleep,' Greg said. 'Two or three of our missiles have made contact as you can see. If she'd just look lively, roll over had let us see what her front looks like then our work would be done—for now at least.'
'You could go around on some pretext, knock on the door and say "hello",' I said, feeling waspish. Pathetic that we were reduced to this after that scorching time with the girl up in the Lake District.
'That'd be too easy,' Greg said. He wrote his mobile phone number onto another sheet and folded it to the size of a postage stamp. He nudged me, 'Hey Alex, she's stirring.'
Greg threw with a sharp flick of his wrist and the packet sailed out and then plummeted. Down, down, straight into the crack between her peachy and satisfyingly large arse cheeks, missing the cris-crossing of black strings.
'Bullseye,' Tim said, grudging in his admiration.
'Yes, my aim was true,' Greg said, staring down intently.
Reaching back, her fingers delicately took hold of the packet. Flipping onto her side, a formidable rack swung into view supported in small black cups. We all audibly caught our breaths. A strong, fine-boned face; hoop earrings, a gold necklace—finely wrought. Leaning on one elbow she flicked back a long strand of raven black hair and opened out the packet and was on the point of checking out the windows above when a voice rumbled and something bulked into view.
We backed away from the window, vistas of possibility withering in our expressions. I edged forward again and cautiously peered over the windowsill.
He was like an old-school Russian weightlifter with his massive torso set on his comparatively under-developed legs. There was rather too much jewellery in the form of a necklace of thumbnail-sized gold links, a thick wrist band and signet rings on his fingers. Dark blue tattoos covered his massive biceps. His head was large and shaved to baldness.
She was on her front again while he rubbed sun tan lotion into her shoulders.
I said, 'What's she going to do with your little billet doux, Greg, I wonder?'
He looked a little pale.
'A guy like that could tear us limb from limb,' Tim said helpfully.
'Fit though, isn't she,' I said.
When the man entered the gym later that afternoon, we thought the game was up until it became clear the place was where he got himself to the size he was. We didn't linger.
The next day we were in the Sandy View Cafe when Greg's phone rang. He listened, his expression flickering between wariness and excitement. 'Sorry,' he said after a moment. 'We were a bit bored.'
We? I mouthed. More words into Greg's ear. He hissed an aside at us, 'Says I'm a good shot.' He spoke into the phone, 'Oh, we're just travelling.' Questioning inflections in the squeaks from the phone. 'Oh, we've been all over.' After more listening he said, 'Sandy View Cafe,' followed by 'Yes, we can wait . . . bye then.'
'Yes we can,' he said, with a downward pull of his clenched fist, his lower teeth bared.
She was fashionably late by five minutes. 'Statuesque' summed her up. Her black hair was abundant, shiny as crude oil. Necklace and bracelets looked good on her—and she knew where to stop, unlike her husband. She wore a wide-brimmed hat, sunglasses, tight, knee-length jeans, a cheesecloth top.
