“Would it be possible to telephone my mother?” I asked.

“Of course, dear.”

She passed me the phone.

“Mother?”

“Irina? Is that you?”

At once she started on about being lonely, and wanting me to come home.

I said, “Mamma, I’m planning to stay here a bit longer. And I’m sorry about what I said last time. I love you.”

I’d been dreading saying it, because I thought it would make me cry like a baby, but as soon as I said it I felt better.

“My little girl. I miss you so much.”

“Mamma, I’m not a little girl. I’m nineteen. And I miss you too.”

There was a silence. Then Mother said, “Did you know your Aunty Vera is expecting another baby? At her age!” She put on a scandalised voice. Aunty Vera is a source of much gossip in our family. “And a nice couple have moved into that empty flat downstairs. They have a son a bit older than you. Very nice-looking.”

“Mamma, don’t start getting ideas.”

And we both laughed, and suddenly everything between us was normal and easy again.

Just as I put the phone down, the door opened and a boy walked in, about my age, wearing jeans cut off in that raggedy fashion below the knees, and a black T-shirt with a skull on it. His hair was a koshmar-long and twisted in thin rats’ tails all over his head-and there were some wispy bits of beard on his chin. Definitely not my type.

“Hi, Ma!” he said.

Then he looked at Emanuel, and their faces broke out in big smiles, and they hugged each other and shook hands in a peculiar thumb-twisting way, and hugged again. Mrs McKenzie started to sniffle. Andriy and I looked at each other and grinned, and he squeezed my knee under the table. Then the cat came in and hissed at the dog, and the dog chased the cat around the kitchen, and Andriy shouted at the dog and he knocked the flower vase over, the water went everywhere, so he started mopping it with a towel and Mrs McKenzie cried out “It’s destiny!” still dabbing at her eyes.

Then the door opened again and a man came in, and he said, “Good Lord. What on earth is going on here?”

And the amazing thing is, he looked just like Mr Brown in my school textbook. But where was the bowler hat?

“Darling…” Maria McKenzie’s voice is so low and seductive that Andriy feels a distinct tremor in his manly parts, though she is speaking not to him but to the man who has just come in and is now slumped down on the sofa. “Darling, let me get you a drink. Whisky? Double? On ice? Darling, these are some friends of Toby’s. Emanuel here is from Limbe, in Malawi. Do you remember when Toby did his gap year in Malawi? Well, Emanuel is one of the friends he made. And now he’s come all the way over here to visit us. Isn’t that wonderful? And this is Irina, and Andriy. They’re from Ukraine but they’ve been staying in Kent. And Emanuel has brought them along because they’d like to meet a typical English family.”

“Well, they’ve come to the wrong place, haven’t they?” The man takes a quick gulp of his whisky. “And what about the dog. What’s the dog’s name?”

“Sir, the dog’s name is Dog.” Andriy wishes he had thought of something more intelligent, but the man chuckles.

“Excellent. Excellent name for a dog. Cross breed, is it?” His voice is deep and booming, like a foghorn.

“Sir, we know nothing of origin of this dog. It arrived mysteriously in night.”

“Hm. That’s interesting. Dog, come here. Let me look at you.”

Obediently, Dog walks across and sits down at the man’s feet, returning his gaze in a way that is both friendly and courteous. Andriy’s heart swells momentarily with pride.

“Labrador collie, I’d say, with a bit of German shepherd in there too. Excellent cross. Best dogs you can get.”

“Yes, he is very excellent dog.” Though he has heard of the Angliski love of animals, still it seems strange that this man seems more interested in the dog than in any of the people in the room. “He is hunting also, and brings all type of creature for us. Many rabbit and pigeon.”

Dog is glorying in the attention, wagging his tail, turning his head and lifting up his paw. The man takes the paw in his very clean businessman hand and shakes it.

“How do you do.” Just like Mr Brown! “Hm. Not a young dog. You say he arrived in the middle of the night?”

“Yes. When we are camping in wood. We think he is long time running, because feet is bleeding and he has scratchings on body.”

“Fascinating. And he hasn’t left you since?”

“No. He is all time with us.”

“Hm. Remarkable creatures, dogs. Faithful to the end. Maybe he was kidnapped. Dog-napped. Kent, did you say? Yes, they still go in for a bit of dog fighting down there. Sadly, in this day and age. They catch pet dogs and throw them to the fighters. Get their aggression up. Barbaric, really. Miners. Should be shot.”

Andriy doesn’t like the turn this conversation is taking. The man’s left eye has started to twitch, and he is gulping the whisky. Dog reaches forward and rests his chin soothingly on the man’s knee. The man seems to relax.

“Once, I had a dog. When I was a boy. Buster.” He leans down and scratches Dog’s ears. His voice is thick with emotion and whisky. “Can’t you take me with you, young man? When you go camping? Down in Kent? Hunting in the woods, with the dog? I’m quite handy with a shotgun, you know. Hares. Rabbits. Pigeons. I can skin a rabbit. I’ve still got my Swiss army knife. Fetching wood. Making the fire. Damp matches. Smoke everywhere. Kettle boiling. Tea in enamel mugs. Baked beans. Burnt toast. The whole lot.” He looks up at Andriy, his eyes watery and sad. “I wouldn’t get in the way.”

“Sir, of course you can come with us. But unfortunately we are just coming from Kent, and we are on our way to Sheffield.”

The man drains his whisky glass and groans.

“Supper ready soon, is it, Maria? I’ll go and get changed.”

As soon as his father has left the room, Toby lets out a sigh of relief.

“That stuff about the prison, Emanuel. It’s better if he doesn’t know.”

“He does not know?” asks Emanuel.

“Sweetheart,” says Maria McKenzie to Emanuel in that low seductive voice, “Toby’s father is quite old-fashioned in some respects, although he is a very kind and loving father. Isn’t he, Toby? But I think it would be fair to say that he has had some difficulty coming to terms with some aspects of Toby’s personality.”

“Yeah, Ma, he’s so straight you could stick him in the ground and grow weed up him.”

“Toby, your father is a very good man, and he works very hard for us. And if I had known you would get yourself into trouble in this way, I would never have let you go to Malawi for a year, I would have sent you to my family in Renfrewshire.”

“Yeah, yeah, Ma. Is that the end of the sermon?”

“And if your father finds out, Toby,” Maria continues, in her sexy Let’s Talk English voice, “he will blame me for encouraging you to go. Because I was the one who said it would broaden your mind and help you to understand the developing world, and your father was quite against it, because he said there was quite enough under-development round here without going to Zomba, especially in Croydon.”

Andriy is beginning to have some doubts about this family. The woman means well, and she does bear some resemblance to Mrs Brown, with her tiny waist and insatiable tea-drinking, but her ideas about food are bizarre. And what is the significance of the purple toenails? Of course it is well known that married women are sexually voracious, but to make love to a woman under her husband’s roof would be asking for trouble, even though the man is drinking too much whisky and talking strangely and setting a poor example to his wife. And this boy Toby-he speaks to his parents with disrespect, and Andriy wonders whether he will be a suitable mentor for Emanuel, who is young and impressionable and showing an interest in the wrong kind of sex.