The Texan oilman was big and rectangular like an oak wardrobe. He had an enormous square chin and a bald spot bigger than Dad’s. He was wearing a bright, candy-stripe suit, which made him look like an oversized stick of rock.

      He stood up when they came into the café and in a huge booming voice said: “Hey! Over here! Over here! Can you see me?”

      “We can’t really miss you in that suit,” said Dad.

      “Mighty pleased to meet you all,” said the man as they sat down. “Hiram’s my name, hire ’em and fire ’em, that’s mah game.”

      He said that very loudly and very proudly.

      “Sorry?” said Dad.

      “What ah mean is, ah say I hire people, and then if they get uppity, ah fire them, just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Now what do you think of that?”

      “What do you mean by ‘uppity’?” asked Dad, scanning the plastic menu.

      “Like asking too many questions,” said Hiram looking at Dad, then breaking into a huge grin which showed his enormous, bright white teeth, “that’s uppity. Like that one you just asked. You would now be fired! Yes, sir.”

      Tiffannee giggled.

      “Take no notice of the big lunk,” she said, “he’s all talk, he’s a total pussycat really.”

      “Ah confess ah’m as nervous as a fire-eater on an oil rig, that’s for sure,” said Hiram, “I mean, meeting you folks and all, I want to make a good impression on mah new family.”

      By now, customers in the café were turning round to see what the noise was. One elderly woman with blue hair tutted and her husband briefly looked up from his meat pie and said, “It’s all right, dear, I think he’s American.”

      He said the word American in a kind of whisper, as if he was naming an embarrassing medical problem, like a bumrash that might be catching.

      “Oooh, that explains it,” said the blue-haired old lady, “poor thing. I suppose they have to shout because their country is so big. Hard to hear each other, maybe.”

      Nat felt herself growing more and more uncomfortable as Hiram told them how EVERYTHING was bigger, faster and better in Texas than anywhere in the world, especially “little old England”.

      Tiffannee gave him peck after peck on the cheek – aaargh thought Nat, public display of affection urgh.

      “Isn’t he AMAZING?” whispered Tiffannee to Nat eventually. “Isn’t he just the bee’s knees and the cat’s pyjamas rolled into one?”

      “He certainly thinks so,” muttered Darius. Nat hid a giggle.

      The waitress came over with a bacon sandwich for Hiram, who looked at it, and seemed confused. “Excuse me, miss,” he said loudly to the waitress, who was young and spotty and bored.

      “Yeah, what?” she said.

      “What do you… ah, say, what do you call this?”

      “I call it a bacon sandwich. What do you call it, fish and chips?” said the waitress, who didn’t care for being shouted at.

      Hiram raised his voice over the café’s steamy coffee machine to about the level of a jumbo jet engine and said: “Then may ah POLITELY ask, where is the bacon?”

      The waitress lifted a bit of bread. “There,” she said, “it’s the stuff between this bit of bread and this bit of bread.”

      She walked off to get his coffee.

      I hope you haven’t ordered a frothy coffee, thought Nat, it might be a bit frothier than you would like.

      “One flob-accinno coming up,” said Darius, guessing what Nat was thinking.

      “In Texas, when we ask for a bacon sandwich we get half a pig between two loaves!” yelled Mr Wartburger III. Everyone in the cafe was now looking at them. Nat moved her chair away and looked at a picture on the wall, trying to pretend he was nothing to do with her.

      “Everything’s bigger in Texas,” said Darius.

      “That’s right,” said Hiram.

      “Like the cars.”

      “Massive, yup.”

      “And houses.”

      “Huge, you got it.”

      “And people’s heads.”

      “Definitely,” said Hiram, “They’re very big.”

      “And their mouths?”

      “That’s right, we got great big mouths, and they’re bigger than anyone else’s mouths, and don’t you forget it, sonny boy.”

      By now the whole café was laughing.

      Hiram stopped and frowned.

      “Hey…” he said, glaring at Darius, but Darius had put on his best blank expression, the one Nat knew he used when he was pretending not to understand something in maths because he couldn’t be bothered to do it.

      And then… Hiram threw back his head and burst into the loudest – and most embarrassing – laugh Nat had ever heard. “Ha ha ha. That’s good, that’s real good, you got me,” he said crying tears of laughter and shaking his head.

      Afterwards, they walked around town, with Tiffannee pointing out some of her