Stephanie sits down first. She's wearing a full length emerald green sari with a red scarf thrown across one shoulder. It's close to forty degrees but she's smiling.
'Hello, my name is Stephanie. What is yours?'
We introduce ourselves and pause, allowing her time to launch into her sales pitch. But it doesn't come.
'You very beautiful milky white skin. Where from?'
Her own deep tan is desirable to my eyes but in India it tells a different story; a story of poverty. Though she's dripping in jewellery and her sari is exquisite, neither speak louder than the darkness of her skin. She's happy to cover it up.
'Be careful. If you stay out here long, you be like me.'
Her smile tells a story too; one of kindness. It extends beyond her grin to the creases in either corner of her dark eyes. I realise then just how dark those eyes are, the pupils entirely indistinguishable from the surrounding irises. She's beautiful but she looks weary.
'You're mother and daughter? I have two sons, aged six and nine.'
Stephanie goes on to explain that the boys are at school back home in Hampi. She spends eight months of every year away from them whilst working in Goa.
'It's how I afford them education. I want for them education.'
Her face lights up as she speaks of her children, the hope for their future overcoming her heartache of the separation in the present day.
'You're married?'
I realise the question is aimed at me and laugh. No, no, I'm not married. I'm twenty-five, twenty-six in a few days.
'Twenty-six?! You look baby!'
I cringe realising my mistake. She thought I was younger.
'I'm twenty-six. Next month I'm starting twenty-seven.'
I feel my eyes widen but the words don't come. Instead I stare back at hers, urging those two black holes to swallow me up.
She's twenty-six. I'd thought her to be at least thirty-six and wouldn't have been surprised at forty. Her tired eyes carry the weight of a much older woman.
My silence is broken by the arrival of another girl who kneels down beside us with a shy smile.
'This is Surita. She's not married neither. She's nineteen.'
Surita looks embarrassed as she shakes our hand. Moments ago I'd have assumed she was Stephanie's daughter.
'I was married at sixteen. So young, too young. It is good for Surita not to be married.'
Surita noticeably relaxes and chimes in with the conversation. Her English is perfect.
'Many girls are married at sixteen, most by eighteen. My parents want me married now but I want first to study more. And I want a good man to marry. Not lazy man like Stephanie's. I tell them.'
I'm pleased that she seems to have some say in her future, yet sad that it's even a consideration.
'My husband very lazy,' Stephanie agrees. 'Not like me. He does no work, he does no care. No for me, no for my sons. But that's how it is. For some, good. For some, bad.'
As the sun sets and the girls retreat to their 'little mosquito shop', it's Stephanie who holds my thoughts. How can we, two girls of the same age on the same beach watching the same sunset, live such entirely different lives?
It seems so wildly unfair and yet I realise that no part of Stephanie's speech resembled a complaint; her tone was that of acceptance, for the way things are and her inability to change it.
It's that which hurt my heart the most.
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