For the first time I felt pure sympathy for him, and it was like having a hand pushed deep inside my chest cavity. Poor Ted, I thought, with the fingers tightening round my heart. He had been on the run for the whole of his life. He had juggled so hard, for so long, and the fear of dropping those spinning balls must have been ever present. He had been dextrous enough to go to prison and still manage to keep the whole episode from me. All the Ted of my childhood, the RAF slang and the blazers and the cars and the shop in South Audley Street and the vanishing acts, both real and emotional, had only been balls in the air.

‘You can turn the lights on, you know, if that’s what you want,’ Mel said, cautiously.

‘I know I can.’ If finding out the bare biographical details meant anything, when the reflections of coloured smoke made such elaborate pictures.

I told her about my call to the Record Office and the newspaper idea.

‘Are you going to pursue him?’

Pursue was an interesting word for her to choose, I thought. It made Ted into a fugitive little figure, running away from me through the smoke into the inaccessible past.

‘Maybe. Just a little way.’

‘Shall I come with you?’

She was offering to stand by me, if I needed to look at anything that might be difficult to confront alone.

‘I don’t know. I’ll ask if I think I need you, but I’m not used to going public about my life. I felt ashamed of being different from other kids so I put a lot of effort into pretending to be the same as them, and when I couldn’t do that I kept quiet. It’s not like your family, is it?’

‘Not superficially, no. But my father was so powerful, his influence hobbled us all. Look at me, I’m only just finding out how to fall in love with a man who isn’t him. We’re our fathers’ hostages, both of us.’

She put the last morsel of beef into her mouth and leaned smilingly back in her chair. ‘And listen to me, I’m talking about myself again. That’s enough about me. What do you think about me?’

This was one of Mel’s favourite self-knowing jokes and it did have bite because she was interested in herself. She had all the self-confidence that came from being her daddy’s princess, and I enjoyed the privilege of it at second hand by watching the sureness it gave her. With the added charge of being in love, Mel shone as brilliantly as the midday sun reflected off a sheet of mirror glass. I could see the diners at the other tables covertly glancing at her, wondering who she might be.