That statement of hers came back to me tonight as I pulled up in front of Klara’s place. It underscored an unspoken rule that my daughter and I had: we were always there for each other. But we also respected the fact that we didn’t have to speak about all going on in our separate lives. That was a hard rule for a father to adhere to. But when I considered whether I should tell her about all that I had driven into in Van Nuys last week I decided that, for the moment, I was going to stay silent about everything. Not because I didn’t want to her to know. Rather because she might start applauding my own ‘activism’ – when it was nothing of the sort. And because I feared that the next time her mother called her – as I knew she did at least once a week – Klara might use this knowledge as a way of getting at her. Even if I told her that this was a secret between us, Klara so disagreed with everything to do with Agnieska’s faith and politics that she went out of her way to provoke and anger her. I wanted what I had driven into not to become a point of family discussion.

Klara’s place on North Beaudry Avenue was situated behind a high concrete wall. Pulling up outside and getting out of my car I sent her a text:

I’m here.

Her reply:

Be right there.

About a minute later the door opened. I could hear loud music from her place. She had a bottle of beer in each hand. She looked like she’d lost about five more pounds since I’d seen her two weeks ago. She also seemed very stoned.

‘Hey, Poppa!’ she said, all smiles, giving me a hug. ‘Want an IPA?’

‘Where we going to drink it?’

‘On my porch – if you don’t mind heavy metal and the whiff of weed.’

‘It’s legal now in California,’ I said, following her in. ‘And you are three years over the legal age for all that – so as long as you don’t drive when high, what you do is not my business.’

‘Even though you still clearly worry that I may drive when high.’

We reached the porch. A battered table spray-painted with graffiti. A couple of dented metal chairs. An ashtray piled high with butts. A couple of empty beer bottles. Head-banging music blasting away inside – where it sounded as if quite a crowd was hanging out in the living room; a place which, the last time I saw it, had little in the way of furniture and a lot of mattresses on the floor. I accepted a bottle of beer. Klara accepted a cigarette from me.

‘If Momma could see you offering me a cancer stick and me giving you a beer when you’re driving.’