Her mother sighed. ‘Yes yes, and you think you’re very open-minded, but I wonder if you know how things are for them really, it’s not easy for them, not even now, and it certainly wasn’t for Roger. It’s illegal you know; you can go to jail. What I didn’t tell you was soon after you were born he got arrested for soliciting. In a public lavatory. In Piccadilly Circus actually. It was horrible and sordid, put his cock through a hole or something, and it got in the papers and his family got to hear about it and there was a terrible to-do, his father had been made a Sir for something and as they couldn’t hush it up they disowned him and wouldn’t help and your father – I mean Ronnie, your stepfather if you want – he’s a –’ she searched for the right words ‘– a man who does what he thinks is right you know Pauly, even if he is disapproving with it. Anyway, he thought he should help Roger because Roger was your father, and so he found the bail for him. He borrowed the money. But Roger skipped the bail and went to Paris. We had a very difficult time for a while but...’ Mrs O’Brien sighed. ‘I don’t blame him, not really. It was horrible and sordid and he would’ve had a terrible time in prison, poor chap, no I didn’t blame him at all,’ and she sat back in her seat again, exhausted by all the talk, her glass already almost empty. But she saw the white face of her illegitimate daughter Pauline turned away in pain and something else that might or might not have been disgust.

‘Listen love, listen, he paid the money back finally. One day years later we get this parcel from France, just ordinary, through the post, and you know what it’s full of? French francs – almost double the money he owed us for the bail. That’s how we had those two French holidays when you were at school. And a long letter about the circus and about the clowns and how he was the one who could calm the chimpanzees and how he was sometimes allowed to fly on the trapeze and how he called himself not Roger Popham any more but Popka and about his friends in the circus and one was called – I remember because it was such a funny name – Zarko. Well, at least you met Zarko. He didn’t want to know us, did he?’ She emptied her glass quickly. ‘So there you are. You wanted to have a romantic hero for a father and who was I to stop you?’

Still Pauline said nothing.

Mrs O’Brien added kindly, ‘He was a kind man.’

‘Did he ask about me?’ said Pauline in a small voice, ‘in the letter?’