Five Miles From Outer Hope by Nicola Barker

seems unusually feathered-up and wispy (I guess the sun must’ve dried it), but the rest of him hasn’t remained quite so unaffected by his earlier misadventure.
    My rapid glances detect traces of damp around his armpits and ( a-hem ) his fly. He has his favourite twig with him, however, caught and held between his bony knees.
    ‘So what happened to your back?’ Big asks, casually, picking up a spoon and dipping it into his dhal. We all look up. La Roux blinks. ‘ My back?’ he asks, as if certain Big must be making conversation with another, far more significant individual.
    ‘Well, nobody else at this table, so far as I’ve noticed,’ Big observes drily, ‘has an extra-large, weed-green footprint on their sweater.’
    He leans out on the bench and stares – just for effect – at the un-printed backs of Patch and Feely.
    ‘Nope. No bigfoots there.’
    La Roux twists his head to try and peer over his own shoulder. Then he stops trying and takes a large and evasive mouthful of beetroot. ‘I can only imagine’, he speaks with crimson-lipped muffledness, ‘that I must’ve been kicked unexpectedly.’
    ‘And why, I wonder, might anyone have felt the urge to do that ?’ Big asks (the tone of his voice strongly implying that there could be few activities in the whole world he himself might relish more).
    La Roux shrugs and then shoots a mean sideways glance at me. ‘I’m afraid I have no plain answers, sir.’
    Patch nudges Feely, who is staring across the table at La Roux, his small mouth held open in a swoop of drooping wonderment. Big grunts and commences eating. His mood is patently still wholesale stinky .
    I clear my throat and stab a hunk of celery on to the end of my fork. ‘La Roux here was only telling me the other day how much he admires hens,’ I say.
    ‘My,’ Big mutters, ‘how absolutely fascinating. ’
    Patch sniggers. I kick her under the table. She winces.
    ‘I couldn’t help wondering, La Roux,’ she then suddenly pipes up (like the shrillest kind of cheap penny whistle), ‘how it feels to be part of a white supremacist minority?’
    La Roux stops chewing and frowns for a minute. ‘Believe it or not,’ he answers, after a short, slightly painful duration, ‘I had absolutely no inkling that was the set up here. But I’m certain…’ he smiles widely, ‘that I’ll get in to the swing of things once I’m fully adjusted.’
    He takes another mouthful, looks up at the ceiling and chews on it piously. Patch emits a small, trumped growl, while under the table I feel that moist ginger victor push his bony knee even harder against mine. I try and shift sideways, but to no avail.
    Feely, meanwhile, has begun staring again. This time Big notices. ‘It’s rude to stare, Feely,’ he barks. ‘I suggest you get on with eating.’
    Feely dutifully picks up a spoon, scoops a mouthful of spinach onto it, pops it between his lips, knocks it back like a bitter pill and swallows it whole. The spinach goes two gentle rounds with his troublesome tonsils then picks a real fight with his unwelcoming oesophagus. The result? He starts choking.
    Patch – the girl’s on constant standby for this kind of drama – slaps his back with the flat of her hand. Hard . And that bastard Four Year Old promptly coughs up this unobliging green nugget straight down and out and on to the table.
    Urgh.
    ‘How many times’, Big asks, his voice suddenly sharp-bladed as a Stanley , ‘are you expected to chew your food before swallowing?’
    I open my mouth to answer but Big silences me. ‘Not you, Medve. I’m asking Feely.’
    Feely scratches his nose, rolls his eyes and doesn’t utter a word, let alone a number .
    ‘How many times, Feely?’
    ‘Uh,’ Feely stares at the recently expelled blob of spinach. ‘Three hundred and fifty times,’ he guesses.
    ‘Thirty-six times,’ Big says, ‘is what dieticians generally recommend.’
    He reaches out his hand, plucks the gobbet of spinach from the table-top,