I have sent Mrs Divorce Expert a copy of the solicitor’s letter, and she has sent Mrs Flog-‘em-and-send-‘em-home a newspaper cutting. It tells the story of a man from the Congo who has lived in the UK for fifteen years, who is now to be deported because he entered the country illegally all those years ago, even though he has established a life for himself, built up a business, become a figure in the local community. The local church has mounted a campaign on his behalf.

“I think the tide is turning,” says Vera. “People are waking up at last.”

I have come to quite the opposite conclusion-people are falling asleep over this issue, not waking up. The remote voices in Lunar House are asleep. The blue-chip voices in far-flung consulates are asleep. The trio on the immigration panel in Nottingham are asleep-they are just going through the motions like sleepwalkers. Nothing will happen.

“Vera, all this stuff about deportation, and these high-profile cases with campaigns and letters to newspapers-it’s just to create an illusion of activity. In reality, in most cases-nothing happens. Nothing at all. It’s just a charade.”

“Of course that is what I would expect you to say, Nadezhda. Your sympathies have always been quite clear.”

“It’s not a matter of sympathies, Vera. Listen to what I’m saying. Our mistake has been to think that they would remove her. But they won’t. We have to remove her.”

Wearing the stilettos of Mrs Flog-‘em-and-send-‘em-home has altered the way I walk. I used to be liberal about immigration-I suppose I just thought it was all right for people to live where they wanted. But now I imagine hordes of Valentinas barging their way through customs, at Ramsgate, at Felixstowe, at Dover, at Newhaven-pouring off the boats, purposeful, single-minded, mad.

“But you always take her side.”

“Not any more.”

“I suppose it’s because you’re a social worker, you can’t help it.”

“I’m not a social worker, Vera.”

“Not a social worker?” There is silence. The phone crackles. “Well what are you?”

“I’m a lecturer.”

“So-a lecturer! What do you lecture about?”

“Sociology.”

“Well that’s it-that’s what I mean.”

“Sociology’s not the same thing as social work.”

“No? Well what is it?”

“It’s about society-different forces and groups in society and why they behave as they do.”

There is a pause. She clears her throat.

“But that’s fascinating!”

“Well, yes. I think so.”

Another pause. I can hear Vera lighting a cigarette on the other end of the line.

“So why is Valentina behaving as she is?”

“Because she’s desperate.”

“Ah, yes. Desperate.” She draws a deep breath, sucking in smoke.

“Remember when we were desperate, Vera?”

The hostel. The refugee centre. The single bed we shared. The terraced house with the toilet in the back yard and the squares of torn newspaper.

“But how desperate must one be to become a criminal? Or to prostitute oneself?”

“Women have always gone to extremes for their children. I would do the same for Anna. I’m sure I would. Wouldn’t you do the same for Alice or Lexy? Wouldn’t Mother have done the same for us, Vera? If we were desperate? If there was no other way?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Nadia.”

I lie in bed in the small hours thinking about the man from the Congo. I imagine the knock on the door in the night, the heart jumping against the rib-cage, the predator and prey looking into each other’s eyes. Gotcha! I imagine the friends and neighbours gathered on the pavement, the Zadchuks waving hankies which they press to their eyes. I imagine the cup of coffee, still warm, left on the table in the haste of departure, which goes cold, then gathers a skin of mould and then finally dries into a brown crust.

Mike does not like Mrs Flog-‘em-and-send-‘em-home. She is not the woman he married.

“Deportation’s a cruel nasty way of dealing with people. It’s not the solution to anything.”

“I know. I know. But…”

Next morning I telephone the number at the top of the letter Valentina got from the Immigration Advisory Service. They give me a number at East Midlands Airport. Amazingly, I get through to the woman with the brown briefcase and blue Fiat who visited the house after their marriage. She is surprised to hear from me, but she remembers my father straightaway.

“I had a gut feeling something wasn’t right,” she says. “Your Dad seemed so, well…”

“I know.”

She sounds nice-much nicer than my father’s description of her.

“It wasn’t just the bedrooms-it was the fact that they didn’t seem to do anything together.”

“But what will happen now? How will it end?”

“That I can’t tell you.”

I learn that the deportation, if there is to be one, will be carried out not by the Immigration Service but by the local police, instructed by the Home Office. Every region has police officers who are located within local police stations but who specialise in immigration matters.

“It’s been interesting talking to you,” she says. “We visit people, and we file these reports, and then they disappear into thin air. We don’t often find out what happens.”

“Well, nothing’s happened yet.”

I phone the central police station in Peterborough, and ask to speak to the specialist immigration officer. They refer me on to Spalding. The officer whose name they have given me is not on duty. I phone again next day. I was expecting a man, but Chris Tideswell turns out to be a woman. She is matter-of-fact, when I tell her my father’s story.

“Yer poor Dad. Yer get some right villains.” Her voice sounds young and chirpy, with a broad fenland accent. She doesn’t sound old enough to have carried out many deportations.

“Listen,” I say, “when all this is over, I’m going to write a book about it, and you can be the heroic young officer who finally brings her to justice.”

She laughs. “I’ll do my best, but don’t hold yer breath.” There is nothing she can do until after the tribunal. Then there may be leave to appeal on compassionate grounds. Only after that will there be a warrant to deport, maybe.

“Phone me a week or so after the hearing.”

“You can have a starring role in the film. Played by Julia Roberts.”

“Yer sound as if yer a bit desperate.”

Will Valentina be able to keep up this regime of little-pigeon cooing and bosom-stroking until September? Somehow I doubt it. Will my father, thin as a stick, frail as a shadow, be able to survive on his diet of tinned ham, boiled carrots, Toshiba apples and the occasional beating? Seems unlikely.

I telephone my sister.

“We can’t wait until September. We’ve got ‘to get her out.”

“Yes. We’ve tolerated this for far too long. Really, I blame…” She stops. I can almost hear the screech of verbal brakes being slammed on.

“We need to work together on this, Vera.” My voice is placatory. We are getting on so well. “We’ll just have to persuade Pappa to reconsider his objections to divorce.”

“No, something more immediate. We must apply for an ousting order to get her out of the house at once. The divorce can come later.”

“But will he go along with it? Now they’re back on bosom-fondling terms, he is quite unpredictable.”

“He’s mad. Quite mad. In spite of what the psychiatrist said.”

This is not the first time my father has been given the all-dear by a psychiatrist. It happened at least once before, some thirty years ago, when I was in what he described as my Trotskyist phase. I found out about it by chance. My parents were out, and I was rooting through their bedroom-the same room with the heavy oak furniture and discordantly patterned curtains that Valentina has now converted into her boudoir. I can’t remember what I was looking for, but I found two things that shocked me.