My older sisters approached the abseiling part of the adventure with similar ease. Emerald, giving a goofy grin, just stepped backwards over the cliff edge, descending the vertical drop in jerking fits and spurts, guffawing merrily on route. Amber stood back to observe the other abseilers for a while, before nimbly rappelling earthwards with the smooth motions of a Mission Impossible agent.

I could hear them calling to me from the forest floor. Emboldened by my unexpected zip-lining success, I let the instructor belt me up, stood with my back to the drop, leant slowly back and gingerly inched a foot over the ridge. I might have made it unscathed, too – except that, in my apprehension, I dropped my goddamned gloves.

‘Anyway,’ I told the doctor now, ‘abseiling turned out to be the most nerve-racking event of my life that didn’t involve a gynaecologist.’ Or coming to your wretched surgery, for that matter, I mentally added. ‘Nobody warned me to pack adult Pampers. Hence the panic. Hence the fact that I dropped my gloves. Hence the rope burn.’

The doctor looked at me with grizzled amusement.

‘Vanuatu’s so fascinating, isn’t it?’ he finally said, getting up from his desk to examine my lacerated hands. ‘Over a hundred distinct languages are spoken in a country with a population no greater than that of a large Aussie town. Virtually every group of villages has its own lingo. Colonialism exacerbated the islanders’ difficulty in understanding one another, since Vanuatu was ruled jointly by the UK and France. That’s why Bislama, a pidgin form of English, became their national language. And it’s quite straightforward, really. A womb is a “basket blong pikinini”. Flippers are “dakdak sus”, or duck shoes. A tumour is “rabis mit”, meaning rubbish meat,’ he decoded. ‘A bathroom is a “rum blong swim”. A bra is a ‘bag blong titi.’ And ‘bagarap’ means buggered up, which you’ve clearly done.’

‘And what’s a rude, supercilious, self-important doctor in Bislama? A “pain blong backside”, possibly?’

‘I seem to recall from your last appointment that you’ve already got one of those. And now, rope burn.’ As the doctor cleaned the wounds on my palms with disinfectant, he gave another annoying little chuckle. ‘Abseiling without gloves. I can cure a lot of things, but there’s no cure for idiocy, you know.’

‘Yeah, well, you must think I’m an idiot if you thought I’d fall for what you said about the “cubs” keeping score. Seems to me you only diss the young studs in a pathetic effort to increase your own chances with women, which are limbo-low, by the way,’ I pointed out in a frosty tone.

‘Are you kidding?’ The doctor grinned. ‘These dumbarse “cubs” are having a fantastic effect on my self-esteem. Male airheads are the most efficient way of making a bloke in his late forties look fascinating and super-intelligent,’ he said, eyes twinkling.