Free Five Miles From Outer Hope by Nicola Barker

between us. We have voices like chainsaws. In gloriously cacophonous union we’re sufficiently discordant to unhinge a raven (except, that is, for Barge, who sang like a nightingale prior to becoming tragically tone-deaf aged nine after firing off a cap gun inside his ear to forestall a riotous stint in some degraded, robe-wearing atoll-based version of the Vienna Boy’s Choir. The clever nipper).
    At half past eight we all assemble in the Palm Court – a glorified greenhouse which adjoins my sleeping quarters. Big thinks the large glass surround will make the acoustics spectacular. La Roux duly arrives (a little later than the rest of us, swathed in a dusty red velvet curtain garnered from one of the upstairs toilets, resembling a half-cocked thrift-shop Roman emperor), his small guitar ensconced snugly under his plush-draped arm.
    As chief musician, he immediately takes possession of the best (if also the most arse-clenchingly uncomfortable – the man’s all show ) high-backed bamboo chair available. The rest of us cluster around him, balanced precariously on ill-maintained, mouldy-cushioned garden furniture.
    Feely naturally has his bean-bag with him, but refuses to sit upon it. Instead he crouches suspiciously on the parquet and clutches it to his chest as if living in a constant state of dread that La Roux will suddenly and arbitrarily snatch it from him, hurl it to the floor and conduct some agonizing experiment upon it.
    La Roux makes a meal out of tuning up his instrument (a skinny bare knee and a tantalizing flash of thigh just visible from beneath his crude acres of velvet) while the rest of us debate which songs we’ll be singing.
    Big – for reasons which will probably always remain a mystery to any person of taste or intelligence – is rather keen to wrap his tonsils around Cliff Richard’s ‘Living Doll’, Patch has set her heart on Kate Bush’s ‘Babooshka’, Feely demands Chas and Dave’s ‘Rabbit’. I suggest ‘The Art of Parties’ by Japan just to show how highbrow I am. But no one – least of all the guitar-player – seems to appreciate how clever I’m being.
    In the end a compromise is reached when Patch suggests this year’s Eurovision smash: Bucks Fizz’s ‘Making Your Mind Up’ (sweet Jesus, how unifying ), and even though I hold out against it with ugly oodles of teen-determination, the majority still somehow maintains its sway (Yeah, so fuck Euro-democracy).
    La Roux, on being asked whether he’d be all right to strum this tune, modestly acknowledges that he can play ‘by ear only’. We are all suitably impressed – to the extent that Big asks him, just once, to adjust his curtains after they gape even further to reveal a slightly off-putting pair of capacious white y-fronts, and even then in a voice you might almost call indulgent .
    We illustrate our sing-a-long expertise by clapping out an approximate beat to start off with (two minutes are wasted deciding the appropriate tempo) then I duly deputize myself to count us all in. One, two, three, FOUR . And we’re off.
    Patch is immediately on her feet doing the requisite Euro-band hand movements. Feely – still clutching his bean-bag like it’s his dancing partner – is performing a marvellously seductive baby wiggle. Big is all smiles. It’s a party .
    But it doesn’t last. Barely a single verse is completed before everything descends inexorably into chaos. La Roux is banging out an unbearably noxious racket on his guitar (which while small in stature is still large on volume). He would appear to possess no musical talent whatsoever .
    Big is the first to really discern it (the man actively relishes disappointment). ‘I thought’, he says stiffly, ‘you said you could play that thing.’
    La Roux stops his horrible strumming. He thinks hard for a while, then he shakes his head, slowly. ‘Uh…’ he pauses, as if deeply confused by our plain irritation. ‘Uh, no,’ he smiles, ‘I don’t think I ever said I