When I first saw her I thought nothing of her age. She seemed older in the morning light. Maybe twenty, not sixteen going on seventeen. The way she carried herself in that giddy, confident way, without any worry. No trace of the affected jaded stance so many young people slip on like clothes every morning. Her movements whispered a carefree existence that consisted of late nights of dancing and late morning scrambles to get to a class.

She impressed me with the confidence when she asked me to sign her book. The way she offered me her pen, the cap chewed, as if she were giving me something more precious then a ball point pen. I took it hesitantly, afraid of being stung by her electric fingertips, and signed my name in a loose scrawl. Later, I realised I had left my hand phone number at the bottom of the page. Something so unthinkable yet done so unconsciously. The smile that lingered on her face as she half turned, book in one hand like a prize, stirred me in a way I had not been in a long time.

I knew of course from the beginning how inappropriate this was supposed to be. She was my only daughter's friend. Though how such a thing could happen escaped me. My daughter with her baggy t-shirts and shapeless jeans who still watched cartoons. Who read my work only because she felt obligated, could have a friend so grown up, sophisticated and...beautiful. I was flattered to have her attention, her admiration, the pretty way she smiled at me and said thank you.

I remembered giving her my number only when she did call. She said she was in Bangsar, would I like to join her? So I went, surprising myself and her, with my easy compliance. I did not put up any front that this meeting was platonic. I was old enough to be her father after all. When I saw her waiting for me I was struck again by how adult she looked. She wore a white dress with flowering blossoms that matched the bright bleeding heart red faux flower pinned in her hair. She could have been a displaced Polynesian goddess with her long hair shimmering in the breeze, her skin catching the sun in just the right way.

I was surprised again when we talked. She had plenty to say and she delighted me with her easy breezy light as air way of talking about politics and sex. The two things that seemed to come up in the two hours that we sat there while she drank a Long Island and I chain smoked. She eyed my cigarettes and when I offered her one she accepted and I liked the sexy way she handled it, the way her mouth closed about it. I lit it for her and she closed her eyes and told me she hadn't smoked in so long.

Everything about her was so sexy, so delicately titillating. After some length we arranged to meet again at my house. I did not need to tell her that my daughter would be with her mother that week, she already knew, being her friend. With a toss of her pretty head she left me with a full ash tray and traces of a flowery scent that may have been my imagination or her perfume. I am still unsure if it was some hallucination that she smelled that sweet and fresh, like freshly crushed wildflowers.

At our next meeting she made no pretence about what was to happen. She knew what could only happen and left nothing to ambiguity. It was not as crude as you might think it to be. It was merely her natural honesty. She was dressed in jeans and a silk camisole edged with lace that told me what she expected. Of course it happened. I made no effort to stop it from happening. After what happened you would hardly think me a gentleman but I am and that is why I don't kiss and tell. All I will say is that she was as wonderful as I expected her to be.

Later on I asked her if it were her first time. She merely smiled and asked what I thought. I left her answer which was a question unanswered, I didn't know what to think The way she had moved and felt told me that this was nothing new to her. However there was one moment when she had looked me in the eyes afterwards. It was one of those moments which you do not realise you have had till after it has passed. We were lying in bed, the late afternoon sun bathing her skin and giving it that unearthly glow, our cigarette smoke formed halos and crowns about us as we smoked. She had smiled at me in a coy way as if realising for the first time that she was lying naked in bed with me. In that one moment I understood that all her innocence had been offered to me.

We continued in this way, afternoon rendezvous and evening tea at trendy little cafes for three months. I enjoyed her company and she, I'd like to think, enjoyed mine. She was not a trophy as you might think. I told no one about it at all. It was my own delicious little secret. A delicate piece of crystal that I intended to keep hidden for fear that its purity became tainted. She borrowed my books and I bought her new ones. She wrote me poetry, some of it good but most of it amateurish and maddeningly bad. I kept the ones I liked in a book of my own poems. The way she signed her name, the sensuous curve of the C at the beginning, gave me a thrill to look at it. Her little notes, inky pen on recycled paper, smelled of patchouli.

I still have them. They are like souvenirs from a country that I enjoyed very much but would not want to stay in for long. It became a strain by the fourth month. She had delusions that were dangerous. She wanted to go out more in public. She wanted to take it out of the house and my bedroom. It was on one such occasion, she was doing up her halter neck on the edge of my bed as I lounged about and smoked, that I ended it. She suggested we go out. It wasn’t so much the idea of going out but more the place she wanted to go to. She wanted a cheeseburger. I told her I wouldn’t go to McDonald’s. For all her sophistication that moment made it all too clear that I could not continue to see her. She was still a child in many ways. It was uncomfortably too much like seeing my own daughter whom I hardly saw, knew or talked to about anything.

I remembered the crestfallen way she looked at me when I told her that this would be the last time. I expected tears or at least an angry tirade that would result in broken furniture or damaged property of some kind. Instead she smiled sadly at me and said goodbye before kissing me on the forehead and leaving without looking back. I admired her class and thought of it as not a mistake but an experience, one I would not repeat or at least not for some time. It had been pleasurable after all.

I didn’t see her again for another three years. Apparently she had a falling out with my daughter. I don’t blame her; it must have been hard to continue being friends with my daughter. When I saw her again she was fashionably beautiful, that is to say she was about twenty pounds lighter and any hint of wave had been dried out of her hair at the salon to produce pin straight gloss that gleamed like a waterfall. She looked beautiful but not in the way that I had liked. It was generic beauty. She saw me but did not acknowledge me. I had been her secret too, but a dirty one; from the way she looked at me I could tell.

When I went home that day I opened the book where I had kept her poems. The scent seemed stronger then it had been if that is possible. And the curve of her C in the signature still sent a thrill through me. And still I remember that moment when she had lost all cockiness and offered me her innocence in that smile that first time. I wonder if she ever found it again, from the way she looked at me after so long, I doubt it.