Nicola Barker - Five Miles from Outer Hope

I snigger. ‘Nope. Labia. A fleshy area.’

‘And this ? Urgh!’

He inhales sharply and his face almost quivers with horror.

‘Oh dear,’ I ho-hum, ‘it’s just some low-fat fruit yoghurt. A piece of peach I must’ve accidentally spat out while I was drawing. Sorry.’

I pull the offending item off with my nail, and then blow it away. ‘There. Gone.’

La Roux pushes his chair back. ‘I think,’ he mutters, ‘I’ve seen enough to be going on with. Perhaps you should put them away again. For the time being, anyway…’

‘But I haven’t even shown you the special urinary duct yet,’ I protest indignantly.

La Roux stands. ‘Come on ,’ he taunts, grabbing a bat and waving it. ‘I suddenly feel like the time has come for The Great La Roux to thrash you senseless at ping-pong.’

I put away the pictures, without any further objections. Then I grab my bat, we play the game and I beat him, three times over in quick succession. 21–1, 21–4, 21–3. Which in my book is pretty bloody categorically.

4. My Disgusting Crochet Knickers

(Now we’re really getting somewhere.)

It’s a good while later (after eight, approximately) and following an extended bout of early evening snacking. (The menu? Rice cakes, walnuts in vinegar, dried pears and tinned figs in their natural juices.) Big trots casually outside on to the balcony to savour the large, pink sun a-setting over the sea with that bastard brown-nose La Roux close in tow. More crochet fun is plainly in the offing.

After doing a couple of circuits (for some inexplicable reason, La Roux has a tiny, white, clay pipe with him — the kind they unearth in tedious archaeological excavations — and while he walks he chews on it like a vacuous South African amalgam of Sherlock Holmes and Popeye), they sit down together, either side of a wicker table, with three rolls of wool, a book Big’s reading about the Hay Diet, and a flickering oil lamp burning between them.

Big is completing Nebraska (pale mauve) while La Roux is receiving cursory instructions on how to make a clumsy, circular doily. It’s all horribly intense and muscular and arts and craftsy, as I’m sure you can imagine.

I’m serving tea, as it happens. Rosehip. I bring it out on a tray. I shove the balls of wool aside, to make room for it (they both cluck like old women, in tandem, then continue what they’re doing, without even thanking me).

I turn to go. I walk five steps away, then pause, and spin, and face them again. Although Big — from where I’m now carefully stationed — has his back to me, La Roux, on the other hand, has a perfect view of my fine girl-giant figure over his compadre’s tiny needle-working shoulder.

I place my knees together, lift my skirt, adjust my knickers, and wait patiently for La Roux’s attention. A full four minutes pass (it seems that initially he’s much too deeply embroiled in the wonders of crochet to notice my silent attendance), then Big reaches out his hand for a sip of his tea.

He takes a mouthful, pulls a face, puts his cup down, tips in a little honey, stirs, offers a kindly word of wisdom to La Roux. (‘I think if you hold the needle less tightly the stitches will loosen up accordingly. It’s all just a question of flow , I find, with crochet.’ Jeepers . And people think Chairman Mao was fussy?)

La Roux glances up at him, nods, looks down again. Chews on his pipe some. Freezes. His hands become slightly clumsy. He takes a deep breath, and then, finally, shoulders up and blinking, he peeks my way again.

My way? I’ve gone . I’ve vamoosed. I’ve scarpered. Fast as a rat, I’ve scuttled inside and have hidden, sniggering, behind the curtains.

La Roux scowls, disconcertedly. Did he really just imagine a scary six-foot girl giant, her teeth full of fig pips, grinning savagely in the dark and scary shadows of the oil-lamp’s flickering? Did he? The very devil in a voluminous pair of badly soiled, baggy, crochet knickers. Standing, larger than life, only five short steps behind her temperamental, tea-sipping father (a short-fused bugger at the best of times)? Did he?

Big glances up again and notices La Roux’s eyes wandering around anxiously in the shadows behind him. ‘La Roux, what are you thinking ?’ he suddenly stutters. ‘You’ve dropped a stitch there, can’t you see?’ He gets up, shows him how to rectify the problem, returns to his chair and sits down again. ‘And don’t forget to drink up your tea,’ he reminds him, several minutes later, in a most sweet and cordial and gentlemanly manner.

5. La Roux gets The Collywobbles

You know how it is with a military operation. It can’t run too smoothly. There have to be undercurrents, back-washes and eddies. To keep things uneasy.

Before bed La Roux corners me in the kitchen and whispers, ‘I think I’ve suddenly lost interest in this whole genital situation.’

I gasp and look suitably devastated. ‘La Roux. No . You’ve got to be kidding. I mean, after all the effort I’ve put into it?’

He shrugs. ‘It’s just too damn risky.’

I frown. ‘Sorry? Risky? What do you mean?’

He grimaces. ‘You know . The little dumb-scene, earlier, behind Big, at tea.’

I continue frowning. ‘I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.’

He sighs impatiently. ‘The figgy teeth. The huge crochet panties.’

‘ Panties? ’ I echo. ‘ Huge? Don’t be ridiculous. Figgy teeth? I never eat figs. Ask anybody. Ask Patch.’

Patch trundles conveniently into view at exactly this moment, Feely in tow.

‘Patch,’ La Roux enquires, just as I’ve suggested, ‘does Medve here eat figs ever?’

Patch looks at La Roux as if she thinks he’s crazy. ‘Figs? Never . They give her eczema. She’s horribly, horribly, horribly allergic.’

I give her a warning glance (talk about a fat and shifty Sarah Bernhardt in the making), then yank La Roux into the laundry room, slam the door behind him, and lift up my skirt most gingerly , modestly showing him only the most inoffensive corner of my freshly changed undergarments.

Cheesecloth. Petite. With birds and roses. The kind of things you could blow your nose on and then throw away. Flimsy as a weak alibi.

‘Oh,’ La Roux frowns, then looks a little closer, ‘that’s a nasty bruise you’ve got there, on your thigh…’

‘Well, next time you happen to feel like taking a peek at it,’ I tell him, haughtily dropping my hem and flouncing doorwards, ‘you’d better ask me very nicely, you rude and ungrateful South African sissy .’

As I march resolutely through the kitchen — chin up, hips twitching — fat Patch, still lounging against the work surfaces, stands straight, salutes, and then winks at me lewdly, like a too-eager busboy after a big tip.

‘It’s always in that brief and blissful moment when you feel you’re at your most unassailable that you actually have the worst to fear …’

I was taught this motto in Malay Brownies, and it so often proved invaluable to me throughout the seventies — all those tricky pyjama parties and risky pre-teen-girl-tiffs: ‘You’re my best friend!’, ‘No I’m not! She is! And you’re ugly!’ — that you’d honestly think, at this apposite juncture, it would be absolutely foremost in my mental processes.

But it isn’t (Perhaps I’ve got above myself, temporarily. Truth to tell, I’m seriously considering borrowing the life story of Che Guevara from the local library to give me a taste of something really meaty in terms of conflict philosophy. You know , to try and get familiar with some of the more filthy aspects of war-making, the likes of which Baden Powell never dreamed of even in his most frenzied, strong-brown-booted pseudo-authoritarian fantasies).