Nicola Barker - Five Miles from Outer Hope

‘Michael’, I stutter, reddening, ‘will be fifteen this year. He collects military medals and has a slow eye. He’s a revolting child but a real addition to the family.’

For some reason La Roux seems temporarily awestruck. ‘Do you think…’ he stutters ‘… she might’ve actually named him after me?’ And his eyes start welling. (Michael? Is he serious?! So is that where it came from?)

‘And you, Medve?’ he mumbles finally.

So I tell him how I trained to be a solicitor, because of stupid Jack Henry, and how I hated myself for hating him when he betrayed us all so badly, and how I married a Grand Larcenist called Jordan while I was practising in America. And how it lasted for six months and then we wanted to kill each other (He likes this bit especially. He’s still a little shit, when it finally comes down to it).

And then I tell him how Big is living in Acapulco, with his second wife who’s a dietician. How he still lives on soya and has a beard to his breastbone. And how Mo married Bob Ranger in the end, but they were never really very happy, but how the Probe might finally be becoming a viable proposition, fifteen years later (God, who would have thought it?), and how she’s writing a definitive text about the coil which is due for publication next February (but only in non-Catholic countries).

‘The coil?’ La Roux asks, dumbly.

‘A form of contraception popular in the seventies,’ I tell him.

‘Oh.’

And then the conversation fizzles out, and to avoid resorting to talking about the weather and how he’s losing his hair a little, and how his sideburns are preposterous, I make a fuss about settling the bill and how much better I feel already with the pin in my lobe and all the rest of that crap. Then his three-thirty appointment arrives, a woman with a limp like a Grand National faller. And then it’s time I was going. And I say goodbye. And I leave him. And it’s over. It’s all finally over . And I walk down the street, swinging my arms and congratulating myself on what a good plan it was to see him, and how well it went and everything. How glad I was I didn’t mention that it was Patch who turned him in, not Poodle. How glad I was I didn’t still blame him for making me hate my bigger sister and how she went and died so inconsiderately without me ever getting around to forgiving her. Or her forgiving me.

I walk into the station. I feed my ticket into the machine and retrieve it when it spits it out again. I walk down onto the platform. I push my hand into my bag and pull out some notes on a case I’m thinking about taking. A man who killed a neighbour’s cockerel because it woke him every morning at three a.m.

I’ve learned something, I keep telling myself (but I don’t know what it is, and I don’t know if I care). I tap my foot. I inspect my watch. The platform fills up, gradually. The station master makes an announcement that there’s five more minutes until the train arrives. Because someone went under at Mile End. Again. Poor fucker.

I look down at my notes. I think I’m really concentrating. Then there’s some kind of commotion at the end of the platform. I keep on reading. The cockerel was called Jasper and it lived in a kennel.

The yelling continues. It’s something indecipherable. I notice that I’m frowning because suddenly I’m not concentrating. The voice is getting louder still.

‘The girl penis!’ it’s shouting. ‘Do you remember? The girl penis! It changed my fucking life. I forgot to tell you. I needed to tell you.’

He stands, out of breath, next to me on the platform. And every-body’s frowning because he’s a South African.

‘I just wanted to tell you,’ he gasps, ‘about the girl penis and how it changed everything. It was a revelation.’

He collapses on to a bench, his skinny legs sticking out at all angles. ‘And I’ve got something,’ he pants cheerily, ‘that I wanted to show you.’

He pulls it out of his pocket. His face is glistening. I sit down next to him, cautiously. He opens his hand and shows me. A small, red, plastic centipede, browning with age.

‘My God, you kept it?’

He nods. ‘Fished it up from the bottom of the cove. Took me almost two hours.’

He shrugs apologetically, as if he doesn’t want me to make too much of it. ‘I’m such a hoarder, I’d hoard my own arse if it wasn’t already attached to me.’

He leans away and inspects my profile. ‘You know, I’ve missed that chin,’ he says, ‘and I’m glad you’ve remained as implausibly tall as ever.’

Then he takes a deep breath and slaps his knees and makes as if he’s readying himself to leave again. ‘I’ve got someone waiting,’ he confides, ‘back at the surgery with one of the worst arthritic heels I’ve ever yet had the privilege of encountering.’ (The thought seems to excite him enormously.)

‘My train’s just coming, anyway,’ I tell him, pointing aimlessly towards the tunnel. ‘And I’ve got work to do.’

He raises an imperious ginger eyebrow. I show him the case notes. ‘I’m thinking of defending some guy who murdered a cockerel called Jason which lived in a kennel and crowed every morning at three a.m.’

La Roux scowls.

‘Oh fuck,’ I say. ‘You love hens. I forgot. Sorry.’

I put the papers away as he stands up and distractedly unfastens his white overall and reveals one of the most offensive tie-dye sweaters I’ve ever yet laid eyes upon (in all of my hideously multifarious hippie incarnations).

‘Well, Medve,’ he smiles ingratiatingly, ‘I certainly hope you’re well on your way to giving up that demon weed.’

He holds out his hand as if he wants to shake mine. I do the same. We shake. We let go again.

‘If you must know, I don’t actually smoke,’ I mutter.

‘That’s good then,’ he mutters back, ‘because I’m not really an acupuncturist.’ He shrugs. ‘I trained as a tailor.’

‘You’re kidding me?’

‘Of course I am, stupid,’ and then he starts chuckling in that maddeningly flat, South African way I well remember from years ago. ‘My Lord,’ he sniggers, ‘I could always play you like a fiddle.’

In fact, he finds the whole thing so amusing he even slaps his bony thigh. I peek in his mouth as he’s laughing. He’s still got terrible teeth, I tell myself, just as bad as I remember. And he still stinks of tea tree. And his skin is still awful. And as if things weren’t bad enough already, he seems to have started wearing the worst kind of thick, yellow, plastic-soled, all-animal-product-free shoes with huge silver buckles.

I bet, I think to myself, he’s become a vegetarian, and that he makes the whole world suffer for it. And, you know, it kind of makes me like him even better. But I tell myself it doesn’t.

He leans against the wall and we’re both quiet for a while. I’m waiting for something, but I don’t know what. Then I hear the train coming from deep down in the tunnel. I push my heels together and I pick up my bag, and I firm my resolve. It’s time I was going.

‘Still play a mean game of ping-pong?’ La Roux asks casually, over the increasing racket. But soon the roar is too loud for me to say anything, and my stupid hair blows everywhere, and the brakes squeak, and the doors swish open. And everybody clambers off. And then everybody else clambers on again.

And still, still — for some utterly inexplicable reason — I’m sitting on the bench and he’s leaning against the wall. And the doors shut. And the train leaves. And the seconds slowly tick by in a glorious infinity as we both quietly wait and idly wonder what my final answer will be.