Chapter 5

We walked down to the beach, a deserted cove that would later fill with holiday makers. I looked left and right – nobody – and stripped off and ran to the sea calling the dog. Johnny ran in with me, delighted to have more play than he was used to from two old people. We splashed and jumped and swam and then I turned to come out before I froze to death. Fiona was standing by my clothes. It was clear she had no intention of turning her back or walking away a little. I stood, cupped my balls and walked towards her. At the small pile, I clearly had to uncup to be able to pick up shorts (I decided to leave off smelly, stained pants). “So ... you are wearing a different pair to last night. I saw your Donald Duck pants [how embarrassing – they seemed funny when I bought them] by the rucksack. I TOLD YOU!”

“Fiona! Fiona! Stop. You have the wrong end of this particular stick. Honest.

Yes, I did – well I played with your sister, I’m not going into details. It isn’t your business. NO! It isn’t! And then she wanted to ‘play’ with me. She even offered ... you know ... but I’d promised her I wouldn’t. I changed my pants for these because ... look don’t tell her! Because the ones I was wearing were my only clean pair and I didn’t want to wear smelly pants all day today. These have been used ... and turned inside out. Pleeeasse don’t tell Erica, she’d be disgusted and it would ruin her first time doing that with a boy”

“Nah, that’s not true. There was Daniel at the Youth Club.”

“No, he was a wash out apparently. Couldn’t kiss and then nearly got caught with her hand down his trousers. Look I’ve told you far too much. Nothing irreversible happened, okay?”

“Okay. I was pretty sure you could be trusted, else I would have stood at the door with a rolling pin all night.”

“And curlers?”

“If that turns you on. Come on, Terri is making scrambled egg, we’d better get back before the house burns down”

“Terri is lovely, truly. She has a lovely nature, but it’s hard to believe she shares genes with you”

“I know. It’s hard for her sometimes. Toni and Erica and I have much higher IQs. That’s just a fact, we got tested.”

“Good job she looks like a goddess then, isn’t it?”

“Don’t say that to her! She hates people suggesting she can use her looks because she has no brains. I don’t mean she has no brains. She just thinks that”

“I’ll be careful what I say”

We were back and I went up to wash the salt off and dress properly. I noticed that someone (Fiona? Erica?) had diplomatically put my ‘clean’-ish pants in my bag rather than leaving them displayed on the floor.

After breakfast, I opted to spend an hour looking at the washing machine before we went in. I pulled it out from its place and, as always, behind was a disgusting mess of dust, fluff, escaped peas, one bottle top, a fifty pence coin; all merged together by a dousing of water. I cleaned up first.

Then I started to look at the problem. Like a good plumber, I saw the problem immediately, and opted not to let on yet. I’d get no kudos for fixing an obvious problem. I took the back off. It did need a clean anyway. I took out some filters which were meant to wash clean with every cycle, but had slowly gummed up with soap and hair. After an hour, the girls said they needed to go visiting, and would that be okay? They could ring for a taxi.

“No, give me five minutes to wash up. See this? The inlet pipe had split. Probably never been changed since it was installed. Maybe the filters gumming up caused back pressure and that caused it to split. It was only when it was switched on, with the vibration and stuff, that the water escaped. Then, once it was leaking, it was before the washing machine valves, so it just kept leaking. We’ll get a new one and it should be right as rain”

Terri kissed me on my smeared cheek “You are a godsend Dave. Gramps will be so happy it’s fixed. They’d have had to call a plumber to pull the machine out even” I felt a bit guilty about the dissemblement, but then the trouble with finding the trouble immediately is that women and girls (and quite a few men) often say ‘okay’ and then look like you’re stupid if you take things apart even more. And those filters did need cleaning.

We still didn’t know if the car was insured; we were all ignoring that in our own way. Toni said to me “If the police stop us, I’ll say I told you it was insured for anybody – it might be after all – you shouldn’t take the rap for being a good Samaritan should you?”

“Interesting take on the story: the Samaritan takes the man to a hostel to be looked after, and then gets into trouble with the law as a result” I said.

“You are just the kind of listener Jesus didn’t need ‘but master, wasn’t the Samaritan an illegal immigrant? Surely he should have been thrown out of the country? And why did the farmer throw seed on stony ground anyway?’” She laughed. “This is a cool car, have you noticed how everybody looks as we go past? Nobody looks at our Viva. I feel like giving a regal wave.”

“You three alright in the back?”

“Yes, bags me in the front going home!”