A few moments later, a man emerges and stands in the doorway staring in my direction. He is tall and thickset with a heavy black moustache. As he begins to walk down the drive towards me, I quickly turn the key in the ignition and drive off.

On my way back, I have another idea. I make a detour to Hall Street, to Bob Turner’s house, where we once delivered the fat brown envelope. But the house is clearly empty, with a For Sale sign by the front gate. I peer in through the window; the net curtains are still up but I can see that there is no furniture inside. A neighbour sees me and sticks her head, bristling with curlers, round the door.

“They’ve gone away.”

“Stanislav and Valentina?”

“Oh, they went ages ago. I thought yer meant the Linakers. Left last week. Gone to Australia. Lucky sods.”

“Did you know Valentina and Stanislav?”

“Not much. Made a lot of noise, him and her romping about the house in the middle of the night. Don’t know what the lad made of it.”

“You don’t know where she’s living now?”

“Last I heard she married some old pervert.”

“A pervert? Are you sure?”

“Well, a dirty old man. That’s what Mr Turner called him-‘Valentina’s dirty old man’. ‘Appen he had a load of money-that’s what they said.”

“That’s what they said?”

The watery eyes below the curlers blink and continue to stare. I meet their gaze.

“She married my father.” The eyes blink again, and look down. “Have you tried the Ukrainian Club? ‘Appen she goes in there once in a while.”

“Thank you. That’s a good idea.”

I recognise the elderly lady on reception at the Ukrainian Club as a friend of my mother’s, Maria Kornoukhov, whom I had last seen at the funeral. We greet each other with hugs. She has not seen Valentina for several weeks. She wants to know why I am looking for her, and why she isn’t living with my father.

“Painted doll. I never liked her, you know,” she says in Ukrainian.

“Neither did I. But I thought she would care for my father.”

“Ha! She will care only for his money! Your poor mother, who saved every penny. All spent on greasepaint and see-through dresses.”

“And cars. She has three cars, you know.”

“Three cars! What folly! Who needs more than a good pair of legs? Mind you, she won’t walk far on those stab-stab shoes she wears.”

“Now she’s disappeared. We don’t know how to find her.”

She drops her voice to a whisper and puts her mouth close to my cheek.

“Have you tried the Imperial Hotel?”

The Imperial Hotel isn’t really a hotel, it’s a pub. It isn’t really Imperial, either, though the maroon dralon upholstery and mahogany panelling suggest it has pretensions. I still feel awkward going into pubs alone, but I buy a half of shandy at the bar, and take it to a corner where I can sit and observe the whole room. The clientele are mainly young, and very noisy; the men drink bottled lager, the women drink vodka chasers or white wine, and they shout across the room to each other in a relentless ear-splitting banter. They seem to be regulars, for they call to the barman by his first name and make jokes about his bald-look haircut. How do Valentina and Stanislav fit in to this place? At the far side of the lounge I notice a young man clearing glasses from the tables. He has longish curly hair and a horrible purple polyester jumper.

As he reaches my table, he looks up at me, and our eyes meet. I smile a broad friendly smile.

“Hi there, Stanislav! Great to see you! I didn’t know you worked here. Where’s your Mum? Does she work here too?”

Stanislav does not reply. He picks up my glass, which is still half full, and disappears into the room behind the bar. He does not re-emerge. After a while the barman comes up and asks me to leave.

“Why? I’m not doing any harm. I’m just enjoying a quiet drink.”

“Appen yer’ve finished yer drink.”

“I’ll get another.”

“Look, just piss off, will yer?”

“Pubs are supposed to be public, you know.” I try to muster my middle-class dignity.

“I said, piss off.”

He leans over me so close I can smell his beer-breath. His bald-look haircut suddenly doesn’t look very amusing.

“Fine. I’ll cross this hotel off my recommended list, then.”

It is dusk when I find myself out on the pavement again, but still warm from the afternoon sun. It hasn’t rained for a fortnight, and the yard at the back of the pub smells of beer and urine. I am surprised to feel that my hands are shaking as I reach for my car keys, but I am not ready to give up yet. I sneak round to the back and peep through the open scullery window. There is no sign of Stanislav or of Valentina. Inside I can hear one of the rowdy regulars calling, “Hey, Bald Ed-what was all that about?” and Bald Ed’s reply: “Oh, some old cow that was threatening the staff.” I sit down on an empty barrel and feel the tiredness sink into my bones. All the encounters of the day bang around in my head: so much aggression. I can do without it. I climb into my car and, without going back to my father’s house, drive straight home to Cambridge and to Mike.

Vera puts her finger on it straightaway.

“They are working illegally. That’s why he doesn’t want you asking questions. Of course Stanislav is probably under age to be working in a pub, too.”

(Oh, Big Sis, what a instinct you have for digging up the dodgy, the dirty, dishonest.)

“And the woman at Eric Pike’s house?”

“Obviously his wife has been having an affair while he has had an affair with Valentina.”

“How do you know all these things, Vera?”

“How do you not know them, Nadia?”

After they came to England in 1946, my parents were model citizens. They never broke the law-not even once. They were too scared. They agonised over filling in forms that were ambiguously worded: what if they gave the wrong answer? They feared to claim benefits: what if there was an inspection? They were too frightened to apply for passports: what if they weren’t allowed back in? Those who got up the nose of the authorities might be sent off on the long train journey from which there was no return.

So imagine my father’s panic when he receives a summons through the post to appear in court for non-payment of Vehicle Excise Duty. Crap car has been found parked on a side street without a tax disc. He is the registered keeper of the vehicle.

“You see, through this Valentina for the first time in my life I am become a criminal.”

“It’s OK, Pappa. I’m sure it’s a misunderstanding.”

“No no. You know nothing. People have died from misunderstanding.”

“But not in Peterborough.”

I telephone the DVLA and explain the situation. I tell the voice on the other end of the phone that my father has never driven the car, is no longer physically able to drive. I had been braced for an encounter with a distant bureaucrat, but the voice-older, female, with a touch of Yorkshire about the vowels-is gently sympathetic. Suddenly for no reason I burst into tears and find myself pouring out the whole story: the enhanced bosom, the yellow rubber gloves, the pork-cutlet driving licence.

“Oh my! Oh, I never!” coos the gentle voice. “The poor duck! Tell him he’s not to worry. I’ll just send him a little form to fill in. He only has to give the details of her name and address.”

“But that’s just it. He doesn’t know her address. We have to communicate through the solicitor.”

“Well, put the solicitor’s address. That’ll do.”

I fill the form in for my father, and he signs it.

A few days later, he rings me again. Overnight, Crap car has reappeared on the drive. It sits with two wheels on the grass, next to the rotting Roller. It has a flat rear tyre, a broken quarter light on the driver’s side, and the driver’s door is buckled and tied up with string to the door pillar, so that the driver has to get in on the passenger side and climb over the gear lever. There is no tax disc. Meanwhile, the Lada has disappeared from the garage.