So she did it again and when I came up she said, “I love the hoi’s, because I’m able to see how batty you’ve become each year. You’re getting worse you know. Worse and worse and worse. I expect in another year or two you’ll be simply raving mad. Bonkers! Really stark staring.”

I just kept pushing and wished again that the Banini would hurry up and pull the boats out of the water so it would look like I had finished my work but he didn’t so I said, “There I think that’ll do it.”

I swam in to the shore while Jennifer clambered over the boats and was standing on the beach waiting when I walked up the sandy bank from the water. While I took off my wet T-shirt and shorts (but of course kept on my swimming trunks, which were underneath my shorts), Jennifer stood there tapping the side of her head and saying, “Poor dear, are the bells ringing very loudly in our wee little head today?” Then she laughed and what was worse she got the Banini to laugh at me too because my clothes were wet, which was dumb because his shirt and cut-off dungarees were soaked too. So why was he laughing at me? Jennifer picked up my wet clothes and wrung them out and said, “Let Mummy look after the poor lost child.” She hung them over an oar to dry out in the sun.

I said, “Do you want to go snorkeling?”

“Not if you bring that beastly thing with you.”

She meant my spear gun. So I said I’d leave it with the Banini and we would just go look at the fish not kill them. And Jennifer said, “I should hope not, you bloodthirsty boy!” By this time I had had enough of her banter so I dove at her legs and tackled her. She fell back on the sand and I made her eat a little of it. While I had her down and was wrestling to keep her under me so she couldn’t get away, by accident I put my hand on her chest and suddenly I realized it wasn’t Jennifer’s old chest anymore, but that she had “developed” the way Rachael had. I pulled my hand away because it had been on her new breast. It was soft where her chest had always been hard before.

I pretended I hadn’t felt anything and I wrestled even harder with her to prove it. I was careful where I put my hands after that. I decided that as soon as I was done making her eat a little more sand I’d get off her as quick as I could and never tackle her again because her body was like a mine field now.