face was what Vida wanted to say, but instead a very neutral “Are you here to bathe?” filled the air between them.
“No.” Camilla shook her head for emphasis and worked her hands together. Her petticoat covered the length of her legs, same as yesterday, and the purple bodice cinched the narrow of her waist. “I was looking for you.”
Vida made circles with her arms through the greenish water. There was more light and warmth in the sky now, but she was still a little cold and wanted to climb onto the dry rocks. Yet she felt shy of Camilla suddenly. “Why?” she asked.
“Don’t you want to get out?” Camilla asked.
“Yes.”
Camilla offered her hand, and with surprising strength assisted Vida in clambering onto the rocks at the edge of the pool.
“Thank you,” Vida said, when Camilla didn’t seem likely to say anything, and all the stillness and low murmur of nature was contributing to a rather awkward creeping feeling that jittered Vida’s toes.
“Isn’t that funny,” Camilla replied. “I was here to thank you.”
Vida watched Camilla suspiciously. “Thank me?”
“Well, yes. You might have made me talk about Fitzhugh, when we were on the peak, and you didn’t. You’ve been so kind and accepting of our . . . unusual history. I like that we both cared for him. Anyway, then you brought us food, real food!”
Vida smiled. A swell of pride came over her. “And here I thought you were here to shame me.”
“Why would you ever think . . . ?”
“Last night, when I was coming back along the beach, I saw you, in the woods.”
“Oh.” Camilla laughed nervously. “Yes, I must have looked ghoulish there amongst the trees. I was there because you went off. I was terribly worried about you, swimming out in the current. I wanted to make sure you were all right. I guess I still want to make sure you’re all right.”
“Of course.” Vida laughed too, and tried to lift the knot of her hair from the itching skin at the back of her neck. “I thought you were going to spread rumors about me.”
Camilla’s expression flashed with understanding. “I see what you thought. You . . . and Sal. No. No, no. I didn’t think that you—well, you couldn’t. In a hundred years I wouldn’t think . . .” Her face was flushed red as beetroot, and Vida almost felt bad for her. She was so embarrassed she seemed to be having trouble finishing a sentence. “What I mean to say is, girls like us, we are trained too well. Trained to please others with our manners and appearance. It would go against everything to do something that didn’t serve our husbands and fathers and brothers, to do something that might actually please us.”
Vida’s response was so quick it was a kind of instinct: “You don’t think I’d even be capable of a scandal? I don’t mean to be rude, but you were.”
“Yes. I suppose that’s true. This would be different though. I can’t say why exactly.” Camilla lifted her chin and assessed her interlocutor. “Oh, what does it matter? We are here, they may never find us, do what pleases you.”
Now Vida blushed at the implication of Camilla’s words. She felt confused, and wanted to be light, free of weighty thoughts. “Would you do something for me?”
“Anything.”
Vida lifted her clothes and took out the pocketknife that she had held on to since yesterday. “Would you cut my hair?”
“Oh no. I couldn’t. Your hair? What if . . . what if . . .”
“You said yourself they may never find us. But it is a certainty that I will never get the knots out.”
After a moment of hesitation, Camilla crouched behind Vida and pulled back the mess of hair. “Are you sure?”
No, Vida was not remotely sure. Her head swarmed with doubt. Her hair had been one of her best features, or so she had always believed, and its elaborate arrangement had been one of the main tricks she’d employed to distract from the inadequacies of her face. The weight of it seemed the thing that tethered her to the Earth. Without it she might float away, she might be hideous, she might not even be herself.
“I don’t have to,” Camilla said, as though she could hear the blood pumping in Vida’s ears.
“Oh do it, just do it!” Vida almost screamed.
Then she felt the knife sawing through her braid. There was no going back now; she would never again have that particular skein of glossy