Nicola Barker - Five Miles from Outer Hope

He starts wading. The water is cool but it’s wonderfully inviting.

(And yes, there’s a method to my madness: because of the steep rock walls all around us, if Patch is to clearly witness this tantalizing saga unfolding from the privacy of an upstairs window, I will need to be standing slightly higher than the water level.

‘The old bandstand’, she explained to me earlier, over the kitchen table, ‘will be like an ancient stage on which you’ll re-enact your masterful revenge like some kind of exquisitely formal, pre-Oedipal Greek drama.’ She seems to simply love this idea.)

There are reasons — which for the sake of modesty I can’t go into here — why my wade over is not as easy and trouble-free as it might be. But thankfully nothing too disruptive or disastrous happens on the way.

La Roux chatters amiably the whole time (ignoring my distractedness) about how cold the sea is off the Cape coast because of the Antarctic current, and how stormy it can be, and how treacherous, and how fine I look in my bikini (Is he mad? Or blind? Or just too easily pleased to be human ?).

At one point he even thinks he feels something slippery under his big toe, but then he realizes it’s just a stray piece of seaweed.

We reach the rock basically intact. I take my time pulling myself on to it (La Roux chuckles uncontrollably when he espies my bikini bottoms — heavy with water — slipping off my rump, but I rectify this situation immediately). Then I politely give La Roux a hand.

He’s in his element. I silently observe how what little remained of his cheek-bite make-up has now been all-but washed away (and this, if anything, strengthens my resolve).

‘If ’twere done, Medve,’ I counsel myself quietly, ‘’tis best ’twere done quickly…’ So while La Roux stands — his hands on his hips in a saucy manner like he thinks he’s Sir Edmund Hillary or somebody — looking like a soggy but anaemic ginger stick-insect, I turn my back on him, give a little yell, then start yanking frantically at my bikini knickers.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asks, almost instantly panicked.

I hop about a bit, on one foot, and then on the other. ‘What’s wrong ?’ he repeats, anxiously surveying my little war-dance. I don’t answer him directly. I just pant maniacally and prance around.

‘What’s happening ?’ he bellows, taking an apprehensive step closer.

‘I think… I think ,’ I finally stutter, ‘I think there’s something horrible up inside my knickers.’

And that, dear friends, is when I do it. I yank them down to knee-level, I turn around, I bend over, I insert my hand into the approximate, intimate parameters of my vaginal area, and then, from its soggy and protesting confines, I remove a five inch, red-coloured, jelly-textured, thirty-seven-scraggy-legged centipede.

La Roux is not a happy-chappie. He gives a yell, and then a scream (I kind of hoped he’d fall backwards, into the water, but instead he slips over and lands flat on his coccyx).

I turn, I whoop, I chuck that rubber fucker into the air, I yell, ‘You thought you’d got one over on me, you little shit , but I knew about the capped tooth and the make-up and everything !’

La Roux doesn’t utter a single word back at me. He just shakes his head, gingerly fingers the waistband of his swimmers and breathes deeply. He’s plainly considering vomiting as an option.

I glance up, grinning, towards the Chaplin Suite, and do my utmost to squint in through the window. The sun’s reflecting quite strongly, so at first I can’t see anything, but eventually I’m able to distinguish… not Patch.

Not only Patch, I mean, but four faces. Staring down at me. Big and Patch and Poodle and little Feely (presumably balanced on a chair). And Patch’s fat face is puce with the gloating satisfaction of her low-down and dirty scheming little victory.

I guess, as I stand there, that I’m pretty much up shit creek without a paddle. And, frankly — I suddenly start thinking — panties might actually be a rather useful addition down here.

The bitch is back but with an Eton Crop — it’s a hairstyle, stupid — and tits like torpedoes (I know it’s not a particularly original assessment, but under the difficult circumstances of her sudden return, how fucking snappy do you expect me to be?).

And I fear I’ve really gone and outdone myself this time. There’s no shrugging it off or wriggling out of it; I’m in Double Trouble with a capital D. T.

‘It’s been a long while coming, Medve,’ Big announces ominously, when he finally catches up with me (my hair’s still wet. I’ve not even changed yet), ‘but your day of reckoning is finally here.’

He’s not angry or anything, just disappointed (oh God, how I hate it when parents pull this manoeuvre). He says I’ve confused and confounded him, that he thought I knew better , and where, oh where , he wonders, in cacophonous conclusion, is my natural-born dignity ?

‘Well it’s certainly not hidden inside her vagina,’ Poodle intervenes, bitchily, from her roost in the far corner, ‘because we’ve all had a pretty good look up there today.’

‘Oh shit !’ I gasp back at her, in phoney-teen-retaliatory amazement. ‘Perhaps it might’ve taken some brief refuge in the gaping chasm where your sense of humour ’s meant to be.’

(She doesn’t like this. Nor does he.)

‘Learn some manners,’ Big snaps.

‘But where the fuck from ?’ I ask indignantly.

Oh dear. Three weeks of washing-up duty suddenly lie ahead of me.

Poodle. Back again — with no fair warning, either — and the sudden proud possessor of these two huge breasts which nobody’s allowed to mention under pain of decapitation. But even little Feely seems hypnotized by them. (And he’s never been a breast man. He was fed by bottle, all the way.)

The same applies to Mr La Roux, who, when he finally meets Poodle face to face (he’s been keeping out of harm’s way for as long as is decently feasible) acts about as green as a debutante at her coming-out party. He blushes and floor-watches and almost bloody curtseys . Well that’s sodding men for you. Slam-dunked by beauty.

Unfortunately, Poodle seems to have it in for him from the very beginning. The first thing she says after they exchange greetings (and, in fairness, she does actually direct this snide comment towards me) is, ‘If I find out who taught Feely that pathetic burping habit I’m going to stitch up their rectum and then feed them molasses.’

(My older sister means business. She’s hard as enamel.)

The next thing she says is, ‘What the fuck is that smell in here? ’, and after sniffing the air like a beautiful bloodhound barks. ‘It’s tea tree oil! I’d recognize its rotten, antiseptic scent anywhere. ’

(Ah, so this solves that mystery.)

La Roux and I — as part of my Draconian Punishment Regimen — have now been formally forbidden from spending time together. We are not to be trusted alone under any circumstances, and the only words we are permitted to utter must either be completely uncontentious or absolutely necessary (like ‘Fire! ’, or ‘Pass the ketchup’, or ‘I think Feely’s hyperventilating’, which he does after supper. Too much burping, apparently).

Naturally I corner Patch in the kitchen later that same evening and quietly prepare to kick her head in. But — believe it or not — La Roux (who has ears like a whippet) comes storming on in at an inopportune moment and literally, physically drags me off her.