So naught percent passion, then, naught percent fire, naught percent tossing pebbles at the wall, but he can at least take comfort from his evident personal control, his lifestyle sacrifices and restraints. He still has public political principles, of course, but he has been able to persuade himself that fighting for these principles on the street, as he tried to do when he was younger and has only affected to do more recently, is far too facile, especially given his safe distance from the problems themselves. How hard is it to wear a badge? Or sign a sheet? Or send a check? It’s living by his private principles that’s hard. Yet he cannot help but reply, “Why ever not?” when she drains her glass, stands up, says, “Gluggedy-glug,” half roguish child and half stage drunk, and asks, “Another one?” And he cannot help but stare at her back and legs as she walks toward the rear door of the pub and judge how physically attractive she must be for men, well, kids, of her own age. She’s fiercely lovely on the eye, he thinks — stocky, strong-featured, and theatrical — and her voice is teenage-husky, sore-throated and seductive. She smells of something smoky, woody, something freshly sawn, not food or soap, not perfume either, he decides, but toothpaste probably. Eucalyptus toothpaste, yes. She smells of trees. And adolescence. She also smells of fire and nicotine. Apart from the beret, a vivid scarf and gloves, and her thick loganberry tights, she is wearing only black. Black coat, black top, a scalloped black skirt, black hiking boots. She is arresting, certainly. And just a little mad.

Leonard spreads across the bench while she is at the bar. He beats a rhythm on his own old knees, ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum. He’s wildly happy for a change. Yes, do it, do it, do it now. Can he be a little tipsy, even, after just one “regular” glass? Perhaps it is the nicotine that has made him feel so light-headed and defenseless. He cannot stop himself from smiling with satisfaction and some arousal, possibly, when she returns from the bar with packets of bacon snacks — he’s not eaten bacon for at least ten years — and more drinks.

Leonard actually is not generally attracted to younger women, not sexually. He likes them as an uncle should, admiring youth but not desiring it. He has been the least menacing of stepfathers. He and Francine have not seen or spoken to their absent Celandine for very nearly eighteen months. But when they did speak, when they lived together, she trusted him like flesh and blood, even though she was never able to call him Dad (or Leonard, come to that). She called him Unk, for Uncle, a fitting title for a stepfather, both fond and distancing. Especially fitting, given Leonard’s sister’s suicide and his lost nephew. So he’s tempted — when he and Maxie’s daughter finally exchange names — to tell her that he is called Unk, to keep himself unspecified. He has never been keen on his own name. Leonard — it sounds so undramatic and timid. It is, as a disagreeable and far too clever former girlfriend once commented, sending Leonard to a dictionary, “a pavid name.” And Len or even Lennie sounds too breezy and too immature, though no less unremarkable. But nonetheless, he accurately names himself in full, identifies the unidentified for her, provides his information, perhaps because he wonders if she might possibly have heard his name before, from her mother or from his recordings. He has been shortlisted for a Mercury, after all, he’s played with all the dinosaurs, and his sound track for Cup Half Full went platinum and still keeps him relatively wealthy. It finances his current sabbatical. But no, she clearly does not recognize his name.

Her name, she says, is Lucy, not Lucy Lermon / Lermontov but Lucy Emmerson, her mother’s family name. “Why would I have my father’s name?” she says. Again, another child who won’t say Dad. “I’m the ‘estranged British relative,’ remember?”

“How long were you estranged?”

“Since forever. Year Zero, actually. I was only about six months old when they kicked Mum out.”

Leonard has his fingers crossed. “You never knew your father, then?”

“Not physically. By reputation, yes. The Texan headbanger. The handsome lunatic. Until about two months ago, when he turned up at home with the big paternal doorstep scene — though Mum was never going to let him in. He beat her up. Did you know that? — all he’s ever meant to me is one phone call — yeah, that’s the lot — when I was about six. And he sent a couple of birthday cards, well, three maximum, and a photograph. Big hair.”

“Your hair.” Old-fashioned Russian hair, he thinks.

“I hate my hair. I think I’m going to get a badger cut. That long.” She makes a tiny gap between a finger and her thumb.

“No, don’t do that,” he says, remembering Maxie doing something similar an age ago.

Leonard has a print of the Gruber’s photograph in his wallet. For the police. Had he ever spoken to the police. He unfolds it now for Lucy. “He’s hardly changed,” she says. “My God! That’s quite a meal.” She folds the photograph and hands it back. “That’s him. The hair. That was the giveaway on last night’s news. He’s far too vain about his hair to wear a hat. How clever’s that?”

“That’s what you told the police?”

“I told the police as little as I could. His name, that’s all. Well, I didn’t spell his name quite right. I didn’t want to stitch him up entirely. Girl Judas, understand? It’s up to them, the police, what happens now. It’s up to us as well, I guess. It’s up to us a bit.”

“It is a bit, I guess.” Leonard doesn’t like to add, Not me.

“We must do something, like you said. I’ve got a genius idea. I mean, we can’t just leave it there. You know, just say, ‘That man’s my father,’ give his name, then split and run. That’s gutless, isn’t it? We have to think of what to do, like something more than just … well, just betraying him.”

“Like what? There’s nothing I can do. I haven’t seen your father in almost twenty years. Before you were even born. He never liked me, actually. So.”

“No, but then … this is an opportunity, our meeting up like this. Mum won’t do anything. You’re right. She’s such a sofa socialist. You nailed her there. But suddenly there’s you. That’s kismet, isn’t it? It’s like we’ve got no choice. You said you’re ready, didn’t you? You can’t have come down here just to stand and watch. We’re sort of comrades now. So if anybody dies and we’ve not even tried, we’ll not forgive ourselves. Will you forgive yourself if someone dies? Will you forgive yourself even if it’s only my newly discovered father who gets shot up by the police?”

Most probably, he thinks. He says, “I couldn’t live with that. But then we mustn’t overdramatize. This isn’t television—”

“Yes, it is.”

It must be the lunchtime wine that traps him, makes him drift beyond himself, because when she says, “We’re sort of comrades now,” reclaiming that sweet, outdated term, Leonard feels it could be true. He has to swallow a half sob, he is so gratified and touched. Caught out, as well. It’s a winning remark, naive and generous and undeserved. She thinks he’s better than he is. He’s Comrade Leonard now. For the moment, more than anything he does not want to let her down, not while she’s here. “Okay, then, you’re the chief. Let’s hear your genius idea.”

“I can trust you, can’t I?”

“All the way.”

“You’re on my side?”

“I’m listening,” he says, a little guardedly. “Go on.”

She shakes her head. “I can’t. You first. You talk.”

“Just talk?”

“I want to know the story. I don’t get anything about you lot, my mum, my father, Mr. Lemon and his gun. You firebrand sofa-hating activists.”

Leonard laughs out loud at this. If only it were true. “No pasarán,” he says, raising his right fist, enchanted by any description that includes him among the activists.