“How are things going?” I ask.

“Good. Everything good.”

“But what about the arguments? You seem to have a lot of arguments.” I keep my voice neutral, friendly.

“Who telling you?”

“Valentina, it’s obvious to anybody.” I don’t want to betray Stanislav, and I don’t want to land my father in it.

“You father is no easy man,” she says.

“I know.” I know that I couldn’t put up with my father day in day out as she does. I begin to regret my letter to the Home Office.

“All time he making trouble for me.”

“But Valentina, you worked in an old people’s home. You know old people can be difficult.”

What did she expect? A refined elderly gentleman who would shower gifts on her, and pass away quietly one night? Not my tough cantankerous stubborn old father.

“You father more difficult. Trouble with cough cough cough. Trouble with nerves. Trouble with bath. Trouble with pi-pi.” As she turns towards me, the moonlight catches her handsome Slavic profile, the high cheekbones, the curved mouth. “And all time, you know, kiss kiss, touching here, here here…” Her gloved hands caress her breasts, thighs, knees through the thick coat. (My father does that?) I feel like gagging, but I keep my voice steady.

“Be kind to him. That’s all.”

“I kind,” she says. “As my own father. You no worry.”

She slips on the ice and grips my arm tighter. I feel her warm sensuous bulk rest briefly against me and smell the strong sugary perfume, my Christmas gift, which she has sprayed on to her neck and throat. This woman who has taken the place of my mother.

My father is excited. The inspector from the Immigration Service has come to call. Soon Valentina’s immigration status will be confirmed and their love will be sealed for ever. Without the fear of deportation hanging over them, the cloud of misunderstanding will lift and it will once more be as when they were first in love. Maybe even better. Maybe they will start a new family. Poor Valentina has been so anxious and this has sometimes made her irritable, but soon their troubles will be at an end.

The inspector is a middle-aged woman with flat lace-up shoes and parted hair. She carries a brown briefcase, and refuses my father’s offer of tea. He shows her around.

“This is my room. This is Valentina’s room. This is Stanis-lav’s room. You see, plenty room for everybody.”

The inspector makes notes of where everyone lives.

“And this is my table. You see, I prefer to eat by myself. Stanislav and Valentina eat in the kitchen. I cook for myself-look, Toshiba apples. Cooked by Toshiba microwave. Full of vitamins. You like to try?”

The inspector refuses politely, and makes more notes.

“And will I be able to meet Mrs Mayevska? When does she come back from work?”

“She is always coining at different time. Sometimes early, sometimes late. Better you telephone first.”

The inspector makes another note, then she puts her notebook away in her brown briefcase and shakes my father’s hand. He watches her small turquoise Fiat disappear around a bend in the road, and telephones me with the news.

A fortnight later Valentina gets a letter from the Home Office. Her application for leave to stay in Britain has been refused. The inspector has found no evidence of a genuine marriage. She flies into a rage at my father.

“You foolish idiot man. You giving all wrong answer. Why you no show her you love-letter poem? Why you no show her wedding picture?”

“Why should I show her a poem? She did not ask to see poem, she asked to see bedroom.”

“Hah! She see you no good man to go into woman bedroom.”

“You no good woman shut husband out of bedroom.”

“What you want in bedroom, eh? Thphoo! You squishy squashy. You flippy floppy. Squishy squashy flippy floppy!” she taunts. She puts her face close to his, and her voice gets louder and louder. “Squishy squashy! Flippy floppy!”

“Stop! Stop!” my father cries. “Go! Go! Go away! Go back to Ukraina!”

“Squishy squashy flippy floppy!”

He pushes her away. She pushes him back. She is bigger than he is. He stumbles, and bangs his arm against the corner of the dresser. A livid bruise rises.

“Look what you done!”

“Now you go crying to daughter! Help, help, Nadia Verochka! Wife beating me! Hah hah! Husband should beat wife!”

Maybe he would beat her if he could, but he cannot. For the first time, he realises how helpless he is. His heart fills with despair. Next day, when she is at work, he telephones me and tells me what happened. His words come stumbling, limping out, as though just speaking it aloud hurts. I express concern, but I feel smug. Wasn’t I was right about the official view of penetration?

“You see, this matter of erectile dysfunction, Nadia. Sometimes it happens to the male.”

“It doesn’t matter, Pappa. She shouldn’t mock you like that.” Stupid man, I think. What did he expect?

“Don’t tell Vera.”

“Pappa, we may need Vera’s help.”

I had thought this story was going to be a knockabout farce, but now I see it is developing into a knockabout tragedy. He hasn’t told me before because she listens when he talks on the telephone. And because he doesn’t want Vera to know.

I resist the temptation to say ‘I told you so, stupid man’. But I telephone Vera, and she says it for me.

“But really I blame you, Nadezhda,” she adds. “You stopped him going into sheltered housing. None of this would have happened if he had gone into sheltered housing.”

“Nobody could have predicted it…”

“Nadia, I predicted it.” Her voice rings with Big Sis triumph.

“OK, so you’re so clever. How are we going to get him out of it?” I pull a mocking face that she can’t see on the phone.

“There are two possibilities,” says Vera. “Divorce or deportation. The first is expensive and uncertain. The second is also uncertain but at least Pappa doesn’t have to pay for it.”

“Can’t we go for both?”

“How you’ve changed, Nadia. What’s happened to all your feminist ideas?”

“Don’t be so spiteful, Vera. We should be allies, but you just can’t bring yourself to be civil to me, can you? I can understand why Pappa never tells you anything.”

“Yes, well he’s another idiot. Mother and I were the practical people in the family.”

See how she claims Mother’s legacy? It’s not just the cupboard full of tins and jars, nor the gold locket, nor even the money in the savings account she’s after: no, it’s the inheritance of character, of nature, that we fight over.

“We never were a very practical family.”

“What is the word you social workers use? A dysfunctional family. Maybe we should apply for a grant from the council.”

Despite getting off to a shaky start, we manage to agree a division of labour. Vera, as the family expert on divorce, will contact solicitors, while I will find out the law relating to immigration and deportation. It feels uncomfortable at first to step out of my soft-soled liberal shoes into the stilettos of Mrs Flog-‘em-and-send-‘em-home of Tunbridge Wells, but after a while the new shoes mould to my feet. I discover that Valentina has the right to appeal, and then if she is refused she has the right to appeal again to a tribunal. And she is also entitled to legal aid. She is obviously going to be here for some time.

“Maybe we should write to the Daily Mail.” I am expanding into my role.

“Good idea,” says Vera.

On the divorce front, my sister has a cunning plan. A contested divorce is going to be complex and expensive, she has discovered, so she hits on the idea of annulment-the no-consummation-therefore-no-marriage angle so popular with European royalty in the sixteenth century.

“You see the marriage never really existed so there is no need for a divorce,” she explains to the wet-behind-the-ears trainee solicitor in the Peterborough practice. He has not come across this before, but he promises to look it up. He mumbles and stammers as he tries to get the details of the non-consummation from my sister over the phone.