Ross O'Carroll-Kelly

‘Buenos Aires turned out to be one of those places where they’ve never learned actual English’

SO BUENOS AIRES was bigger than I expected – it was actually, like, humongous? – and it also turned out to be one of those places where they’ve never learned actual English. They basically do their own thing, language-wise. The plan was to try to find Erika and persuade her to come to Barbados to see our old man marry her old dear. Except – aport from the occasional voice message to say she’s still alive – no one’s heard a word from her since she left Fionn on his Tobler at the altar last November. Which was something I predicted, you possibly remember. I was the one who said that when Jesus Taradella – an old flame of hers from her equestrian days – showed up a couple of weeks before the wedding, there was no way it was ever going ahead.

But I knew it would make my old man’s day if his only daughter was there to see him get hitched to the love of his basic life.

So I rocked up in Orgentina with no actual plan, just this idea in my head to check out the kind of places I’d expect to find my sister. Expensive deportment stores, mainly. What was it the goys christened her at the height of the whole Celtic Tiger thing? Shop and Awe – that was it.

And that’s how I’ve pretty much pictured her since she split – swanning around Orgentina’s equivalent of BTs, spending Jesus’s moo on threads.

Three days I ended up walking around the shops. A couple of times I thought I saw her – once, disappearing into a changing room with a red Roland Mouret sheath dress, except when I whipped back the curtain, it turned out not to be her? And the security staff were very much of the opinion that I should leave the shop immediately.

I’d just about given up the ghost, roysh, when I was walking past this, like, coffee shop, just off the main drag, on the way back to the Sheraton and I saw her – what are the actual chances? – just sitting in the window, lost in thought, nursing a cup of what turned out to be green tea.

“You were always a cappuccino girl!” That was my opening line. It actually sounded a lot cooler in my head. She looked at me like I was a wet dog at a white wedding.

She was like, “Get away from me! Now!”

I just blanked her and sat on the chair opposite. She looked well. And I don’t mean that in, like, a weird way? I’m actually saying it as her brother. She had a great tan and she was wearing a fitted black shirt that really showed off her norks.

She was all, “I don’t actually believe this!”

I was there, “Well, you’d better stort believing it! How’s what’s-his-name? Still going strong, is it?”

“Just shut up. What the hell are you doing here?”

“Okay, if you must know, I came to find you.

“Why?”

“Well, mainly for the old man’s sake.”

She looked suddenly, I don’t know, concerned? “Is he okay?”

“Health-wise, yeah. But his hort is basically broken.”