“I› have it all on tape! Everything you say is on tape!”

“Good!” says Valentina, “this is what I want say you bitch vixen no-tits. You have no tits, you jealous.” She puts her hands under her breasts, pressing them obscenely up and together, and makes little pouting kisses with her mouth. “Man like tits. You Pappa like tits.”

“Please, Valentina,” says Vera, “control yourself. There is no need for foul language.”

But she knows she is defeated. She holds her head high, but humiliation sits heavy in her heart.

On the other side of the locked door, Father is scratching and whimpering like a whipped dog.

“Oh Vera! You did your best. You are magnificent. A heroine. Have you got the tape?”

“There was no tape in the Dictaphone. It was all a bluff. What else could I do?”

Later on, before she went out, Valentina unlocked the door of Father’s room, but she kept the key.

Father had soiled himself again.

“He can’t help it. He really shouldn’t wear dungarees.”

“Oh yes, he can help it-not the incontinence, of course, but the obsession. He clings to it against all reason-the excitement, the glamour of it. He still defends her against me, you know.”

“I know.”

“And do you know what else I found? Plugged in to the socket under his bed was a baby alarm.”

“Goodness. What does he need that for?”

“She, not he. The other one’s plugged in upstairs in her room. It’s one of those clever things that works on the mains circuit. It means she can hear everything he says in his room.”

“But does he talk to himself?”

“No, stupid, when he talks to us on the phone.”

“Ah.”

I think it was the baby alarm that finally did the trick. Father has agreed to a divorce. I am charged with finding a suitable solicitor-someone who is authoritative enough to stick up to Valentina’s army of legal-aid lawyers, someone who will fight my father’s corner, not just go through the motions and collect the fees.

“Not the youth I spoke to about the annulment. He was useless,” Mrs Divorce Expert says. “It must be a woman-she will be outraged by what has happened. Not the biggest firms, because they will pass the smaller cases on to a junior. Not the smallest firms, because they will have no expertise.”

I wander up and down the streets of Peterborough ’s legal district, looking at the names on the brass plates. What can you tell from a name? Not a lot. That’s how I find Ms Laura Carter.

The first time I meet her, I almost get up and walk straight out of the room. I am sure I have made a mistake. She seems far too young, far too nice. How am I going to be able to talk to her about bosom-fondling, about oralsex, about squishy squashy? But I am wrong-Ms Carter is a tigress: a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, pert-nosed English rose of a tigress. As I talk, I see her pert nose twitching with anger. By the time I have finished, she is furious.

“Your father is at risk. We must get her out of the house as soon as possible. We’ll apply for an injunction immediately, and we’ll file for divorce at the same time. The three cars are good. The note from Eric Pike is good. The episode in the hospital is excellent, because it is a public place, and there were plenty of witnesses. Yes, I think we can get something in place by the tribunal appeal in September.”

The first time I take my father to meet Ms Carter in her office, he wears the tattered suit he wore for his wedding and the same white shirt with the black-stitched buttons. He bows so low over her outstretched hand, in the old Russian way, that he almost topples over. She is charmed.

“Such a nice gentleman,” she murmurs to me in her English-rose voice. “Such a shame that someone would take advantage.”

He, however, has reservations. He tells Vera on the phone, “Looks like young girl. What does she know?”

“What do you know, Pappa?” Big Sis retorts. “If you knew anything, you wouldn’t be in this pickle.”

Ms Carter also throws light on the mystery of the small portable photocopier and the missing medical appointments.

“She may want to show that your father is ill-too ill to attend a tribunal. Or she may be getting evidence that he is of unsound mind-confused, doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

“And the translated poems?”

“That will be to demonstrate that it is a bona-fide relationship.”

“The scheming vixen!”

“Oh, I expect her solicitor told her to do it.”

“Solicitors do that?”

Ms Carter nods. “And worse.”

It’s mid-July now, and the September tribunal hearing, having seemed an eternity away, suddenly seems very close. Ms Carter arranges for a private detective to serve the papers.

“We’ll have to make sure the divorce petition is served on her in person. Otherwise she can claim she never received it.”

Vera has volunteered to be there on the day, to make sure that Valentina receives it in person. Now there is to be some action, she doesn’t want to miss out. My father insists that she does not need to come, that he is after all an intelligent adult and can handle this himself; but he is overruled. The trap is set.

At the pre-ordained time, the detective, a tall dark louche-looking man with plenty of five-o’clock shadow, turns up at the house and hammers on the door.

“Oh, it must be the postman!” cries Vera, who has been up since six o’clock anticipating the excitement. “It could be a parcel for you, Valentina.”

Valentina rushes to the door. She is still wearing her frilly pinafore and her yellow rubber gloves from washing up the breakfast things.

The detective thrusts the envelope into her hands. Valentina looks confused.

“Divorce pepper? I no want divorce.”

“No,” says the detective, “the petitioner is Mr Nikolai Mayevskyj. He is divorcing you.”

She stands for a moment in stunned silence. Then she explodes in a ball of fury.

“Nikolai! Nikolai! What is this?” she screams at my father. “Nikolai, you crazy dog-eaten-brain graveyard-deadman!”

My father has locked himself in his room and turned the radio on full volume.

She swings round again to confront the private detective, but he is already slamming the door of his black BMW and driving away with a screech of tyres. She turns on Vera.

“You she-cat-dog-vixen flesh-eating witch!”

“I’m sorry, Valentina,” says Big Sis, in a voice which she later describes to me as calm and rational, “but this is no more than you deserve. You cannot come to this country and deceive and cheat people, however stupid they are.”

“I no cheat! You cheat! I love you Pappa! I love!”

“Don’t be silly, Valentina. Now, go and see your solicitor.”

“Oh Vera, that’s wonderful! Did it all go so smoothly?”

If I feel a moment’s pity for the trapped bewildered Valentina, it is only fleeting.

“So far so good,” says Mrs Divorce Expert.

But Valentina’s solicitor has a trick up his sleeve that Ms Carter has not foreseen. The first court hearing, at which the injunction will be served to oust Valentina from the house, has been brought forward at Ms Carter’s request. Neither my sister nor I can be there, so we only have Laura’s account of what happened. She and my father arrive early at the court. The judge arrives. Valentina and Stanislav arrive. The judge opens the proceedings. Valentina stands up. “I no understand English. I must interpreter.” There is consternation in the court. Clerks rush around, hurried phone calls are made. But no Ukrainian-speaking interpreter can be found. The judge adjourns the hearing, and a new date is set. We have lost two weeks.

“Oh, bother!” says Ms Carter. “I should have thought of that.”

In early August, the same group reassembles, but this time with a middle-aged woman from the Ukrainian Club in Peterborough, who has agreed to act as an interpreter. My father will pick up the tab. She must know about the story of Valentina and my father-all the Ukrainians for miles around know about it-but she is po-faced, and reveals nothing. I have taken the day off to be there too, to give Laura and Pappa moral support. It is a blazing hot day, just over a year since they were married. Valentina is wearing a navy-blue pink-lined suit-maybe the same one she wore for the immigration panel. My father is wearing his wedding suit again and the white shirt stitched with black button thread.