They bring a bottle of vodka and a box of Ferrero Rocher chocolates for Jessie. She thanks them with an exuberant performance of ‘Bali Ha’i’, again.

The three university students from Rotterdam scuttle over: Toos, Wieneke and Anja, who want a bit of Turkish, and get it most nights at the Turkish Delights Disco on the main beach. They bring roll-ups, hangovers, caustic wine and girly gossip.

The highlight of my week is going to the bazaar in Fethiye. I’ve become rather proficient at haggling. While Jessie is brought a stool, mint çay in a miniature glass and invariably an offer of marriage by some balding market trader, I wander between sacks of beans, nuts, barley and the most dazzling array of spices known to man, exercising my favourite Turkish words: Çok pahali – very expensive.

The Cow Lady, who won’t give her name, submerged in layers and scarves, tends cows in the grazing ground up the road. She says to Jessie, ‘You güzel’, and nods at me to concur. I was reading Bleak House from my Complete Works of Dickens one afternoon when she picked it up, weighed it in her hand and decided with much gravity, ‘This, good book.’ She brings the exoticism of having a real peasant in our midst, as well as a sack of oranges, which she dumps at Jessie’s feet.

My nemesis-in-waiting is Sunita from Tooting Bec. She’s on her way to India, where she wants to find her roots, and arrived a month ago intending to stay a weekend – the longest one in history. She recites poems by someone called Audre Lorde to Jessie, who milks it. Sunita has pitched her tent directly opposite our cabin and gives me the evil eye. When I complain, I’m brushed off with ‘She’s harmless. A nice kid. Don’t be such a spoilsport.’

Sunita brings a half-drunk bottle of raki, slurred speech and a hopeless crush.

The Court sits in a semicircle around the throne. They are enraptured by anecdotes about army bases in Germany, Rod’s little scam, Nancy Pants in working men’s clubs, the time Matilda was flooded out to sea in Spain, with Jessie clinging on to the roof rack.

Osman, a restaurant owner from Ankara, has a mop of curly black hair and wears shorts and yellow Wellington boots. He brings a red rose for Jessie between his teeth and she sings ‘Summertime’ for him. Summertime and the living is excruciating. Fish are drooling and my lover’s on her high horse. I should know the words inside out by now.

I have a bottle of raki myself, which I’m quickly depleting. It’s secreted under my chair.