Five Miles from Outer Hope. Nicola Barker

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      Patch jumps from her deep reverie. ‘What?’ she almost pants.

      ‘Tobago,’ Feely answers curtly.

      ‘And then what? Swordplay? Pillaging? Piracy?’

      He turns and gives me a serious look. ‘You’re making too much of things,’ he says gently. ‘It’s only imaginary.’

      (Who the hell made this child so snotty?)

      Patch sniggers and Feely steers onward, rather smugly.

      After a canny minute’s silence (as if in quiet tribute to Feely’s considerable skills as navigator and helmsman), I clear my throat, then let the little shit have it. ‘This isn’t Tobago, you dunce,’ I pronounce firmly. ‘It’s Newfoundland. What the heck is up with your geography?’

      ‘Geography?’ He echoes, blinking repeatedly. I have entered his world.

      ‘It’s Newfoundland!’ I repeat, then gasp, as if only now fully comprehending the shimmering blue-green vista which unfolds right before me.

      Feely shakes his head. He’s seeing orange skies and sandy shores and parrots in flocks and pine trees. ‘It’s Tobago.’

      ‘Nope.’

      ‘It’s Tobago.’

      ‘Nope.’

      ‘It’s Tobago.’

      ‘Whatever you say.’

      He pauses. He turns.

      ‘It’s Tobago!’

      I smile pityingly, ‘Of course it is, Feely.’

      He jumps from the box, his face stricken. ‘It’s Tobago!’

      ‘Whatever you think, little man.’

      (Little man is, of course, the final blow.)

      He runs off, screaming.

      Proud at having done my sisterly duty, I kick the box aside, grab the wheel and steer Patch and me straight into the heart of the tropics.

      ‘Ah, Tobago!’ I croon.

      (Ever seen it? Me neither.)

      Patch has sat down, meanwhile, on a bench beneath a port-hole and is gnawing at her thumbnail. She clearly has much on her twelve-year-old mind.

      I glance over. ‘You look exceptionally porcine,’ I inform her.

      ‘I hate you,’ she answers cheerfully. She doesn’t exactly know what porcine means. But she’s probably in the area. She’s a bright kid. Reads far more than is properly healthy.

      ‘You hate my hormones, not me,’ I enlighten her, ‘and in one year’s time, you too will be a monster.’

      ‘Balls.’

      I let go of the wheel and slither over.

      ‘So tell me all about the new man,’ I whisper. ‘The interloper.’

      She shrugs. She’s not having any of it.

      ‘Jack says when he arrived this morning Big was spitting fucking tacks. I quote directly.’

      Patch wriggles her toes. ‘I don’t know about that,’ she says, then pauses, ‘but I do know…’ (The child wants my tall teen approval so desperately) ‘… that he’s bedding down way up on the top floor. And when Big showed him a room, he double-checked the cupboard space, but insisted there wasn’t sufficient reach, so strode next door and claimed the neighbouring suite instead. The big one at the end with the hole in the roof.’

      I’m impressed. ‘The man is saucy.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Has he much baggage?’

      ‘Psychologically, perhaps – I mean he’s a white South African – but literally, none. A tiny suitcase and a very small guitar.’

      (This chubby pup is facetious beyond belief.) ‘Was he wearing the balaclava?’

      ‘Initially.’

      ‘Any reason given as to why?’

      ‘None.’

      I mull a while. ‘And did he mention his name?’

      Patch shrugs, ‘I didn’t catch it. Something stupid. French-sounding. Double-barrelled.’

      ‘How curious.’

      ‘Yup.’

      ‘You have served me well,’ I wave my arm regally, ‘and now you may go to find and comfort Feely.’

      Patch wipes her nose on the hem of her kaftan (it’s hayfever season), pulls herself to her feet, then trundles away. She pauses, though, for an instant, in the doorway.

      ‘He stole the book Mo sent us,’ she informs me, ‘and I want it back. Will you ask him?’

      Too obvious, you’re thinking? Obvious? Me?

      Forty-five seconds, thirty stairs, two landings, one long, leaky hallway later, I lift my fist and rap on his door. The paint is peeling. It’s aquamarine. Through the cracks filter the mysterious sounds of scratching and heaving. Some heavy breathing. Metallic jangling.

      I knock again. After two whole seconds the door is wrenched open and The Balaclavaed One beholds me. He is panting like a Dobermann trapped in a summer car.

      ‘Now what?’

      (How welcoming.)

      ‘I heard you scratching.’

      ‘So?’

      ‘Like some old hen.’

      He pauses for a moment, as if deep in thought, then rips his balaclava off. ‘I love the way,’ he announces passionately (his eyebrows all skewwhiff, his hair on end with static electricity), ‘I love the way you think hens have wings for arms, but when you watch them – I mean, properly – they actually have arms for legs.’

      My face remains blank.

      ‘I love that,’ he sighs, ‘dearly.’

      He rubs his two hands on his face, repeatedly, like he’s scrubbing at it, and makes a gurgling noise through his mouth meanwhile, like he’s standing under a waterfall. After a shortish duration he stops what he’s doing and stares at me.

      ‘Do you have to quack to get through doors?’

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