‘Are you joking?’ Her face was crimson, her skin wet, alive. Her rainbow leggings were … fuck, the colours were merging. Her top, green with a spangly golden pineapple. Her fucking hair …

I pulled on another T-shirt, my hoodie, my jacket, the cape I’d bought at an op-shop – red with a white collar – tightened the neck cord, double-knotted. A scarf, I could take that too, wrap it above the hot pants, a wooly cummerbund.

‘A kiss before we go?’ she said.

We stood at the Esky, my legs trembling, kissed – eternal secrets, Biddy …

She forged ahead through rapidly darkening skies, me trailing – don’t lose me, Biddy – dodging tent pegs, guy ropes, recycling bags, the ground swirling, grass eddying, nodding at the drunk and deformed, just roaming in the –

Sarah sneezing. ‘How you going in there, darling? Is there anything Mummy can do?’

‘It’s stuck,’ Oliver said. ‘Wait … I think it’s coming.’

Biddy and me, off our tits, eight rows from the stage in a simmering mass of hipsters waving flags and dancing, waiting for … Wait. Who was even headlining? They’d be on soon, anyway.

‘Fuck, I really need a piss,’ I said, knotting the cord on my cape. But the nearest toilet block was back up the hill, the pathways were overrun.

Biddy, emptying her water bottle. ‘Use this, beauty.’

‘No thanks.’

‘Why not?’

I … Fuck, I …

I stood behind her, set my cape around her shoulders, got as close to her as I could, inhaled her colostrum scent, closed my eyes, saw my mother’s face briefly, saw Biddy as a mother. Held what felt like the rim of the plastic bottle while she gripped the edges of the cape to her chest. Got my hand inside my hotpants, my pecker out, kudos to me, looked around casually to make sure no one was onto me.

The last thing I wanted was to piss all over Biddy’s back, down her leggings, all over my hands and legs. I adjusted the bottle until it felt like the centre of my penis was in the middle of the rim, that the rim itself was positioned equidistantly around the head, that I was in effect creating a vacuum between rim and gland.

‘Shall I sing you a song?’ Sarah said. ‘We could do Mummy’s version of “Coming Round the Mountain”.’

‘Two, two …’ A man on the stage, hitting a drum. ‘Two. Two.’

Leaning my head against Biddy’s shoulders, willing … Come on, watery byproduct of metabolism, you can come out now, it’s safe. But was it? My chopper had no way of knowing.

‘She’ll be rushing from the fountain when she runs, yeah boy! She’ll be …’

Biddy’s head turning. ‘How’s it going, beauty? I think they’re about to come on.’