Nicola Barker - Five Miles from Outer Hope

My lower lip — I mutely observe in the bathroom mirror — is fatter than a Christmas-week turkey and redder and moister than a half-pint jug of cranberry jelly.

La Roux (very sensibly) lies low until way after eleven, when I eventually catch a glimpse of him outside on the balcony, struggling to make his creepy peace with Feely (This man’s an emotional juggler . If he’s out of favour in one place he’s bound to be energetically ingratiating himself in another).

After the awful Shiro Chan drama I’m astonished the loose-bladdered little one will even look at him again, let alone actively welcome his clumsy advances. But look he will, and welcome he does (which I guess speaks volumes about the natural, heedless folly of Human Nature; or maybe it’s just my small brother the masochist voluntarily offering his other cheek in the secret anticipation of yet a further slapping).

Everything falls into place, though, when I finally discover how it is that La Roux’s aiming to re-enter the Leaking Sprout’s good graces. Not with Pomfret cakes or gentle kisses or games of Snap or Snakes and Ladders. No. He earns his forgiveness by dint of teaching him the complex and much-vaunted technique of burp-speaking (i.e. to speak coherent sentences in the guise of an extended belch).

This is, without doubt, just the kind of knack any well-adjusted whippersnapper might happily offer up his milk teeth for. Where, after all — I overhear La Roux asking rhetorically — is any real man without such a talent when participating in a riotous rugby club dinner, a bachelor party or a five-hour-long car journey?

Where? He wants to know where ? Whatever happened to lighting farts, or hiring strippers or experimenting with depilatory cream or inhaling a reliably noxious cocktail of correction fluid, nail polish and paint thinners? (Is it just me or is the world really changing far too fast this half of the century?)

The secret to burp-speaking effectively — it turns out — lies in creating a syncopated rhythm of breathing and swallowing. It takes some doing. Although you wouldn’t know it, to watch La Roux in action (demonstrating, experimenting, encouraging, enjoying), since he does it all so naturally ; to the extent that I’m honestly starting to doubt whether English truly is his first language.

Indeed, to see this ginger gentleman valiantly burping is to observe true indigestive craftsmanship at it’s absolute zenith. He can even recite the Twenty-third Psalm in belches with no artificial breaks or pauses. And he makes it look effortless .

Downstairs in the kitchen, meanwhile, poor Patch has been thrown into a sudden confusion by the unexplained disappearance of her carefully pre-prepared lunch menu (spicy Moroccan Curry Balls, to you).

The oil smokes mournfully in the pan as she stares fixedly into the well-pilfered refrigerator and mutters, ‘I’m certain I made twelve of those pesky things. Now there’s only seven left, and two of those look partially regurgitated.’

(They actually say Agatha Christie was a regular visitor to these parts in the 1930s, and frankly, on the basis of what I’ve witnessed today, is it really any wonder? I mean, talk about a scintillating culinary-based art-deco murder-mystery in the making.)

Lunch is at one, formally, by which time La Roux has developed a rather attractive shiner (brown on its edges, blue-grey at its centre), and lucky for me the whole family gets to witness it in all its cinematic luminosity because today we just so happen to be picnicking on the tennis court, upon a blanket, with the searing midday sun blazing obligingly down and generously picking out each and every vicious Technicolor detail from this showy-looking but insignificant small-scale ocular injury.

After a painful five minutes on the concrete I dash inside again and fetch myself a cushion; this small foam square is found exceedingly welcome in my nether regions (ah, some brief respite at long last for my too-too-tender undercarriage).

La Roux and I are still barely speaking. Hitherto nobody (but nobody) has dared to mention our dramatic pot-pourri of physical maladies (excepting Feely who, at one point, looks from me to the South African and then back again — the kid puts two and two together so effortlessly that I must be teaching him something properly — his eyes as round as picnic plates, and delightedly whispers, ‘ Wow! Big’s really going to kill you this time, sister.’)

Kill me? This time?! I give La Roux another furtive once over. In the harsh light, and without his balaclava, his hair looks dramatically moth-infested (Patch certainly did a dandy job there). Ringworm? Now it’s finally settling down again it’s starting to look as if someone spiteful’s been yanking out handfuls of it.

He has a graze on his cheek (with an oddly well-delineated bite mark at its centre), a second on his knuckle, and — worst of all — he appears to have chipped his main front tooth rather badly: just a small pointed spike remains where once there was a tombstone (To tell the absolute truth, I had no idea I’d succeeded in wounding him so categorically. Perhaps I’m really much more of a bruiser than I’ve ever previously given myself credit for?).

And my battle-scars? Well there’s my extensively bruised bottom (and that’s hardly up for inspection), a tetchy shoulder injury, and my swollen lip, which has quietened down considerably (in the swelling department) over the past six hours.

Naturally both La Roux and I have studiously avoided countenancing Big since returning home from our bumpy voyage, but as luck would have it, the Little Man has lain deliciously a-slumbering in his cot ’til noon.

And (doubly lucky), as he bouncily approaches us across the hard green concrete court, he seems to physically exude the healthy benefits of his lengthy span of pillow-punching. You might even say his lunch-time disposition is decidedly jaunty .

He turns up humming, a melon under his arm, sits down, grabs a knife, smiles at everybody (his expression full of a strangely airy and open geniality), then proceeds to hack up the honeydew and proffer it in chunks to the assembled masses. He says nothing — not anything — even when Feely thanks him for his dripping segment in ill-formed burp-language.

Unfortunately, La Roux has recently developed an odd new tick to compliment his other, more visible, multi-coloured ailments. And it’s suitably maddening. Each and every time he uses his hands (which is quite a bit when he’s eating), he neurotically presses the individual pads of his eight fingers down — in order — on to his two thumbs as if testing them for something. He’s been doing it all morning.

On the seventh or eighth occasion he does this during lunch, Patch can apparently stand the suspense no longer. ‘La Roux,’ she says, ‘could I ask you a question?’

La Roux wipes some melon juice from his chin, then immediately does this finger thing again.

‘Of course you may.’

‘What’s that weird thing you keep doing with your fingers there?’

The entire assembled company turns, as one, to look at him. ‘My tips are numb,’ he explains (free air whistling through the gap in his tooth as he’s speaking).

‘Oh. Okay.’ Patch seems perfectly satisfied with this answer, but unfortunately not everyone in the party is as easily fobbed-off as she. Big in particular.

At long last, on the back of this deeply inconclusive sally from my nosey sister, he is finally spurred into his own casual enquiry. ‘How did that happen, then?’ he asks gently.