BEST PRACTICE

After the Greeks, we score a bedroom in the brick walk-up penthouse of Yugoslavs on a nearby headland. Through their thin balcony’s pot plants is a sweep of beaches, headlands, and a hazy city skyline. Their son’s three years above me at school and three inches taller, but talks way lower. I keep accidentally calling him Janko, even though he’s made it clear his parents let him legally become Peter ‘because Janko was too woggy’. (I still can’t believe he said ‘too woggy’. I definitely couldn’t have if I was a wog, though I’m sure it’s why I like him so much.) And now I wonder if Peter should be told that wearing an oversized tan leather jacket, with its huge thirsty-dog-tongue collars and cave-skills needlework, is like wearing Janko on a billboard. But I wouldn’t dream of it.

Ashley seems delighted with the provision of eiderdowns here. I’ve only ever slept under blankets before, and love the lightness and instant fluffy warmth of our new covers. ‘Continentals have used eiderdowns for ages,’ he declares, as if we are both now temporary Europeans who snore more glamorously beneath world’s best practice. But I bet Europeans don’t snore with a shiny new gun under the bed. That’s where Ashley keeps the pistol — sitting snug in its own shoulder holster — that came with his new job as a security officer at some local refinery.

Janko’s sister is my age, thirteen, and currently goes by the name of Candy. Big boned and curvy, she’d have been handy pitchforking hay around the farm Janko says his parents left behind. I’m betting she was a Dagmar or Drusilla before their visit to the names registry, but won’t spoil things by asking: she seems the type for an angry denial. Anyway, I’ve decided I’m a fan of this family for their open-mindedness on Christian names, even though the parents are a little standoffish around the unit. In fact, I suspect they have an entirely separate living quarters behind some locked door because I rarely see them in the kitchen.

Lying in bed tonight, Ashley’s chopping and changing stations on the Hitachi when I recognise the faintest slice of ‘Harrigan’, an old-time number we had to dance to at the Tallebudgera school camp. ‘Can you get that station back please?’ I gush. When he drags the song back in from the star-crackle, he quips, ‘That’s older than I am.’

Now there’s a knock on the door. When I answer it and Peter’s there inviting me to his room, I glance back at Ashley, who croaks, ‘Sure.’ I follow Peter up the hall to his room, where Candy leans against a wardrobe to my left. ‘Hi,’ cracks her hard palomino-tan face, the opening riff from ‘Pictures of Matchstick Men’ pinging from an unseen tranny. Just when I’m wondering what to say, Candy saves me the trouble by asking if I’d like her to take her shirt off.

Shirt’s hardly the word for a tight Bonds crewneck more like a slap of undercoat than anything ever folded in a drawer; the only reason I don’t break out in a rash of double-yeses is Janko. He’s standing a metre along from her, leather-swamped arms folded on his chest, and eyeing me slyly. I know Candy’s waiting for a reply, and she won’t wait all night after an offer like that. ‘It’s okay,’ chirps Janko, goofily dropping his arms and uncrossing his legs, apparently reading my mind. And because this is surely code for I’ll leave you two alone now, I no longer feel rushed to give Candy her instructions. But when he’s still there thirty seconds later, more relaxed than ever, I’m at a complete loss, and the word ‘no’ smothers all hope of seeing his sister’s chest tonight. At this point, there can be only one utterance more disappointing, and it leaves my lips: ‘I have to go because my dad’s strict about bed time.’ And soon I’m listening to Ashley saying, ‘That wasn’t long.’

‘Their parents are a bit funny about bed time.’