‘Ladeeezzz, thank you.’ The entertainment officer brought proceedings to a close and began tallying up the judges’ scores. The male contestants, eager for the crown, stood in a long line – flexed, nostril-flaring, feisty, caressing their undulating abs with sunscreen SPF 50-lust. The appreciative female audience members were purring like canary-filled cats. Eyeing those taut, brown buns in such skimpy bathers had women preparing to leave their partners pronto and have a love child.

As the virile Viking was crowned Neptune, King of the Sea and awarded his prize by Brent, I tried to tell myself that there were worse things than lying to my sisters – like, I dunno, clubbing a baby seal to death. Purchasing weapons-grade plutonium from a Russian mercenary. Or, even more damning – voting for Bolsonaro, Boris, ScoMo or Trump. I’d made my sisters abandon their lives for three weeks under false pretences – three weeks during which they could feed me to the fishes at any time once they discovered the truth. Who wouldn’t want to postpone that pain?

Yes, I felt a knot of remorse in my tummy, but it passed momentarily, like acid reflux. As I was already bound for hell, I added, ‘Oh, and I don’t want to be treated like a patient or have cancer define me. So, will you please stop crying, Amber? You seem to be welded to that box of Kleenex. And no more medical questions, either, Emerald. I just want to enjoy time with my sisters. Let’s make a pact not to talk about it till we get home. Okay?’

That reprieve would allow me a little guilt-free time to enjoy some sisterly solidarity. I knew the amount of arse-kissing I would eventually have to do would require the purchase of lip balm in bulk. But, for now, I wouldn’t think about my lie, my job, my mother, my empty nest and least of all my cheating, duplicitous drongo of a husband. That was my real objective. No, I wouldn’t give Harry a second thought for the rest of the trip.

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