A long moment passed, and Catherine stilled. “Jules?”
Shit.Catherine thrust her feet down to reach the bottom, but she still couldn’t see any sign of her. “Jules?” Panic made her voice hitch as she called out, louder this time, with frantic eyes scanning the surface until Jules emerged with a whoosh, her hair slicked back and cheeks flushed. “Wow, that was—” Jules finished her sentence with a triumphant whoop and swiped the water from her face.
Catherine clutched her chest and drew a long breath into her lungs. “Oh my God, I thought —”
Jules swam over with a confident stroke, and Catherine realised it was the cold she’d feared, not the water.
“Were you worried I was going to haunt you?” Her lip curled into a half-smile, and she gave Catherine a little splash.
“No. I just wasn’t expecting you to put your head under.”
“You’ve just got to take the plunge sometimes, haven’t you?… All or nothing,” Jules said with a look so intense Catherine almost forgot her own name.
So much for that bravado.
“It’s not too cold for you?” Catherine asked, treading water and trying to defy the heat rising within her again.
“No, it’s lovely. You were right; once you get over the initial shock, you realise it’s exactly what you needed.”
Are we still talking about the lake?she wanted to ask,but Jules had drifted so close she could feel the warmth of her; so close she could see the droplets clinging to her lashes. Surrounded by nature, her eyes looked more green than hazel, and her gaze flitted down to Catherine’s lips.
“I don’t want to make things awkward between us,” Jules began, “but I?—”
A loud rustling and the low hum of voices stole the moment. They whipped around to see a small huddle of women dressed like they were on safari, not a woodland hike. The squat woman at the front of the group held out her arms when she spotted them. She turned and said something to the others, who hung back chatting between themselves as the squat woman lurched towards the shoreline and stood with her hands on her hips.
“Ladies! I hope we’re not disturbing anything.” She held up her right hand and splayed her fingers into a Vulcan salute. “We come in peace.” A large carabiner loaded with keys swung from her belt loop.
“The name’s Parker. I’m the group lead for the West Warwickshire Women’s Wild Swim Chapter, or as we like to call ourselves, ‘The Blue Tits’.” She splayed her hands at her chest and her face rumpled in laughter. “We’ve hiked over eight kilometres to get here. Most of us are from Leek Wootton, apart from Glenda, she lives in Dorridge, but that’s a…” She continued on, but Catherine’s attention drifted to the women behind Parker, who were now sat on the ground tugging off hiking boots and stuffing them with their socks.
“They’re not coming in here with us, are they?” Jules muttered out of the side of her mouth.
“It looks a bit that way,” Catherine whispered back, disappointment dropping like a stone in her stomach, as the women continued to strip down to their underwear —God, no! —stripoutof their underwear. Catherine’s eyes doubled in size, as she tried to look anywhere but at the unholy amount of flesh revealing itself in front of them, lumps and bumps in every size.
The water rippled as Jules convulsed with barely restrained laughter.
“What do we do?”
Jules’s eyes glinted with mischief. “Do you speak any other languages?”
“Sorry, what?”
“Never mind. Just stay quiet, I’ve got this,” Jules winked before calling out across the lake.
“Guten Tag,” she said with an enthusiastic wave. “Ich verstehe nicht. Was haben Sie gesagt?”
“What are you doing?” Catherine hissed.
Parker stepped back, hands dropping from her waist. “Oh, you’re German? Or was that Dutch?”
Jules yelled back, “Können Sie das ein bisschen langsamer wiederholen, bitte? Oder sprechen Sie Deutsch?”
“Er, sorry I don’t, er…” Parker turned to the other women, arms flapping as, presumably, she tried to establish whether there was a German speaker amongst them. In the meantime, one of the women, maybe Glenda of Dorridge, let out a roar as she ran splashing into the lake with reckless abandon.
“C’mon, girls,” bellowed Maybe-Glenda, and the others followed like a full-frontal flash mob.
Clearly conceding her quest to communicate, Parker shrugged and stripped off her own clothes to join her shrieking sisters.
Jules gave Catherine a shrug. “I’d hoped it might scare them off, but nope.”
