At our next session Ana told me she’d got a part-time gig selling burgers at the local Chicken Licken. The money sucked, she said, and her hands smelled of grease. Always, no matter how much she scrubbed when she got home.

So she said. I didn’t notice any taint of grease. But I was proud of her for getting the job, and pleased she wanted to do better. So I spent most of an hour telling her she was good. She didn’t tell me any sexual problems, that session. I told myself I was relieved about that. 

That weekend an occasional girlfriend, Delilah, took me to a party. I’ll write something about Delilah one day, because we once had this conversation on my bed. Delilah: Where’s your whip? I’ve heard you’ve got whips? Me: They’re, um, at the laundry. So I should tell you how that turned out.

Right now, though, the point is that Delilah took me to a party. We weren’t exactly together, in the sense that I’d escort her there, but not necessarily escort her home again. If she scored, then I’d be on my own. The party was in a big old house in the unfashionable suburbs. I knew some of the people from university, but it wasn’t my usual crowd.

Delilah got into a discussion with a boy in the kitchen, who carried a huge bamboo parrot on his shoulder and was prettier than me. So I pushed off, with a couple of beers, and went to inspect the dancing. 

The yard behind the house was flame-lit, kerosene torches against the night, and lots of block-rocking beats. At the time I felt bleeding block-rocking bloody beats were a good thing.

There was a girl spinning among the crowd, with a head of shiny-black curly hair bobbing faster than the music, and an arse that wouldn’t keep still for a nanosecond. 

She saw me and screamed. Then she charged, her steering a little inaccurate but friendly, and I found myself with an armful of Ana. 

And so on. I wasn’t as shaken by Ana’s story about her “troubling lesbian experience” as I had been by the long description of herself masturbating she’d given me the previous week. The masturbation story gave me little to do, or think about, as a probation officer with a duty of care. I just had the erotic images, and apparently the need to tell her that it’s okay to masturbate. 

But with the lesbian story I could believe she had issues to work through. She’d said so. I knew that Ana’s was a conservative family. I also knew that Samoan attitude to sex could be more liberal than the mainstream in some ways, but much more conservative in most. Girl on girl play wasn’t sweet, or cute. It could be a big deal. Not in a good way.

Several of the women I’d slept with had done something sexual with another girl. If they hadn’t, they wouldn’t have been surprised at themselves if they did. The right girl, plus some wine or half a joint was all it’d take.

Ana’s story seemed to me to be a description of a reasonably skilled, and perfectly fair, girl-to-girl seduction. But Ana would have been brought up to think it was wrong. She could be genuinely concerned about her experience. She’d said she was, and I had no reason not to believe her. I thought I didn’t. 

The other reason I believed Ana’s story was that it was short. She didn’t go into the detailed erotica of her description of herself masturbating. If she had given me another story like that, I might have realised earlier that Ana was winding me up.

Anyway, I was concerned to tell her she was perfectly okay, that she could have sex with girls if she liked it. She could have sex with women for ever and ever,and that was a fine life, but she could have sex with boys, or boys and girls: whatever she liked. She hadn’t defined herself. She could do what she liked that night, and it didn’t have to be what she did another night.

When I said these things Ana thought she’d missed. Her story had hit the probation officer, not the young guy who fancied her and, amusingly, wasn’t going to do anything about it. 

As for her story, I later guessed that it was something that had happened to her sister. Ana probably hadn’t had sex with another girl when she was eighteen, though she might have later. But I hadn’t been as immune to Ana’s sister’s story as Ana thought. For several nights I was haunted by thoughts of Ana and, between her knees, another girl who looked exactly like Ana. They held each other, they kissed, they writhed together. I slept badly.

The following week Ana had no story for me. 

“And she kissed me. But it wasn’t, you know, a friendly kiss. It was a sex kiss. I didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t right, because I’m not like that, not,” she looked down, seeking agreement and confirmation from the lap of her summer dress, “a lesbian. 

“But she told me to relax and lie back. And I know I shouldn’t, it’s not natural what she wanted, but I wanted it too.

“And then she put her hands up on my breasts, and her head between my legs. And kissed me, you know where.”

I said, “Yes.” I did know where. 

Ana was faintly disappointed by the end of the session. My difficulty hadn’t been talking with a pretty girl about masturbation: that was easy. But I’d never talked about sexual pleasures with a client, especially not a client I desired, where every word was a danger to my peace of mind, and body. I found it all too easy to think about Ana and sexual pleasures.  

But eventually our hour was up. Ana was my last client for the evening session, so I gave her extra time. But eventually, the other probation officers finished and it was time to close the interview rooms. Ana was smiling when it was time for her to go home, but I’d managed to get through that hour and a half having offered only sensible, eminently positive and probably responsible advice and encouragement.

She’d hoped I’d be more shaken. 

She’d succeeded better than she’d known. She had seeded some images in my mind, Ana naked, alone and naked, in her bed. Her hand sliding along the inner thighs she’d been showing me. Then those thigh muscles and her buttocks taut, and naked, while she writhed. Did I mention she was naked? 

I thought about her, when I was home and alone myself. Alone and longing. I spoke her name that night.