With a sudden raucous laugh, her father started to cough, tears now filling his eyes, as he tried to clear his throat. ‘Fuck me. I would’ve loved to ’ave been a fly on the wall. I can just see her snooty face, like a bulldog chewing a wasp, eh?’

‘Well, yeah, something like that. She wasn’t a happy bunny, that’s for sure.’

Ten minutes into their drive, they turned into a residential side street and arrived outside a small pub that nestled in between a row of two-up two-down houses.

‘Wait here!’ he demanded, as he leaped from the car that was still ticking over and carelessly parked in the middle of the road.

The street was narrow. Kendall looked behind her, hoping that no other vehicle wanted to pass, as there was no room. Left alone, she idly popped open the glove compartment and pulled out three CDs and looked at the covers: Madness, The Specials, and Bad Manners. She smiled to herself. The titles spoke volumes about her dad’s taste in music and perhaps his warped sense of humour. As she opened the Madness case to play one of the titles, she found to her shock and horror that there was no disc at all; instead, she was looking at transparent bags of white powder. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. Quickly, she opened the Bad Manners case; again, she found a similar quantity of what she could only guess were drugs. Her eyes shot back to the pub door. She shoved the CD cases back into the glove compartment and slammed the lid shut; yet it sprung open. It took three attempts before it would shut properly, and by this time, her heart was almost beating outside her chest. Christ, my dad’s a dealer, she said to herself.

Her inquisitive nature pushed her to look down in the footwell of the driver’s side, and there, just like in the gangster films, she saw a metal cosh. The centre console was another temptation, and her hands trembled; if she opened the lid, would she find a gun too? Just as she was about to go for it, she was distracted by the pub door opening. And there, taking up the doorframe, stood her father. Suddenly, she was seeing him in a different light. As if she was a gangster herself, she, like her father, scanned the surroundings. Was anyone watching?

He hurried over, opened the door, and threw a white cotton bag onto the back seat and pulled away. Kendall, still in gangster style, looked behind her at the building from which her father had just left. There, standing half in and half out of the doorway, scribbling something on a piece of paper, was a man almost the same size as her father.

‘Dad, a bloke back there is taking down your number plate, I think.’