“You look like you could use an ice cream.”

I turn my head in the direction of the voice, and notice a petite woman wearing a strapless yellow dress peppered with red polka dots. I squint in her direction, and her smiling face drifts into view.

“Sorry. Spent all of my money.”

I turn away from her little stall and contemplate the mass of shopping bags in front of me. I’m sure all this stuff’s going to sink the little bamboo boat I arrived in.

A few seconds later, I hear her voice again.

“That’s OK. It’s on the roof.”

What the hell is this woman’s deal? Why is she still talking to me? What is she even speaking about? I stand up and head over to her stall beneath some coconut trees.

“Listen, lady, I just got conned out of half my money, and I don’t—”

She’s not even looking at me as she pours cream onto the steel surface in front of her. The woman grabs two flat metal spatulas and starts spreading the cream across the frosty metal plate. Her well-practised hand grabs a fistful of fresh strawberries, blackberries, and chocolate chips, and tosses them into the cream mixture. Then, with the skill I’ve only seen in Japanese chefs, she swiftly slices and dices the berries until juice covers the plate, her spatulas transforming into knives before my eyes. Then her movements slow again as she starts folding the mashed berries into the solid cream, her delicate wrists doing a dance I’ve only ever seen on a TikTok reel.

The whole thing is utterly mesmerising.

The woman spreads the hardened ice cream across the entire metal plate. Then, using a single spatula and all her strength, she scrapes the ice cream into six neat little rolls that she packs into a small tub. She drizzles a healthy serving of chocolate sauce all over it.

I look from the tub to the ice-cream maker who smiles shyly and tucks her long black hair behind her ear. I have never seen anything so beautiful, and I’m not just talking about the dessert she’s holding out to me.

“It’s lovely,” I say, “but I have no more money.” I pat my empty pockets.

She continues to shove the tub in my direction. Does she not understand English?

“On the roof!” she insists, smiling. “No money needed.”

It slowly begins to seep in. When I realise what she means, I start laughing at myself.

“On the house? Do you mean it is free?”

The woman starts nodding. Her tanned cheeks are a similar shade to the berries in my ice cream.

“Yes! Free!”

I take the ice cream from her, and our fingers brush for the briefest second. She’s waiting for me to try a scoop, her eyes big and expectant.

“Delicious!” I tell her, dabbing at the corner of my mouth.

It’s the best ice cream I’ve ever had, but I wonder if I should tell her that. If she’s one of the good salespeople in Bali, she’ll probably try to sell me the whole cart if I praise her too much.

The woman glances at her pink wristwatch, then closes her cooler. As the late afternoon casts longer shadows, the bodies in the market square slow down. A momentary hush descends as the day vendors pack up their stuff, making way for the evening street-food stalls that will serve the fresh wave of tourists.

We start talking and she explains to me that she’s been working this ice-cream stall for years, trying to earn enough money to get out of Bali and follow her dream of becoming a singer.

“You can sing?” I ask, greedily shoving another scoop of ice cream into my mouth.

“I try my best,” she says.

She meets my eye briefly, as if she’s afraid that I’ll judge her. Someone pushes her cart out of the way, and a small man walks over and hands her a microphone.

She speaks into the mic, uttering something I don’t understand. The shoppers all look up and, with one accord, move towards her, pulling up chairs and silencing their screaming kids as they gather round.

Then the ice-cream lady begins to sing.

Wearing battered flip-flops, and a dress my six-year-old niece wouldn’t be caught dead in, she hypnotises the entire square using only one instrument — the voice she was born with.

At some point I close my eyes and drift, falling helplessly under her spell, allowing her foreign words to transport me to a place far away from everything I fear, from everything I’ve been trying to escape by coming here.

When I eventually look up, she’s bending down, her face a few inches away from mine. There’s nothing but concern in her eyes.

“Are you OK?” she asks, in the same songbird voice.

Only then do I realise my cheeks are wet. I try to brush away my tears, but she stands up and hugs me. My initial impulse to push her away vanishes as she hums against my ear.

When we break apart, she asks me if I enjoyed her performance. There are no words I can think up that would do justice to her talent.

I shake my head, and stare down at her toes that are each painted a different neon colour. How old was this woman, anyway? I have a thousand questions for her…and to my surprise, the first one isn’t, “Will you come back to my place?”

“I like this,” she says, pointing at her cheeks. I don’t follow. Then she points at mine. “What do you call this?” she insists, gesturing towards my face.

I don’t understand, until she bends over and runs her finger along the fold in my cheek.

“What do you call it?”

She’s stroking my face now, her touch so soft and gentle — she’s like a child who hasn’t learnt how to hurt others yet.

“What?” I don’t even know what we’re talking about any more.

“Here!” She places a hand on either side of my face and her thumbs start feeling my cheeks, right where my dimples are.

“Oh!” I laugh. “They’re dimples.”

It’s been so long since I’ve smiled that I nearly forgot about them.

Tell us: What do you think of the characters so far? What do you make of this mysterious woman?