have really weird dress sense when you knew her?’
He looked amused. ‘Oh yes.’
‘At least that’s something I didn’t inherit from her.’ Lola patted her furry white nylon suit. ‘I mean, I’d rather shoot myself than go out in public wearing something that people might laugh at.’
Nick nodded in agreement. ‘Thank goodness for that. I have pretty high standards myself.’
He did, come to think of it. Each time she’d seen him he’d been wearing expensive clothes well.
A million questions were bubbling up in Lola’s brain.
‘So what happened?’ she blurted out. ‘I don’t understand. Why did you and Mum break up?’
He paused. ‘What did she tell you?’
‘Well. A big lie, obviously. But the story was that she met an American guy called Steve when he was working over here one summer. She thought he was wonderful, completely fell for him, discovered she was pregnant, told him she was pregnant and never saw him again after that day.
When she went along to the pub he’d been working in, they told her he’d left, gone back to the States. They also told her his surname wasn’t what he’d said it was. So that was that. Mum knew she was on her own. She’d fallen for a bastard and he’d let her down. She told me she never regretted it, because she got me, but that she’d learned her lesson as far as men were concerned.
Then when I was four years old she married Alex Pargeter, who was the best stepfather any girl could ask for.’
‘Good.’ Nick sounded as if he meant it. ‘I’m glad.’
‘But none of that stuff was true, was it?’ Lola’s fingers gripped the now-empty mug in front of her. ‘Your name isn’t even Steve. So now it’s your turn. I want to know what really happened.’
‘What really happened.’ Another pause, then Nick exhaled and shook his head. Finally, slowly, he said,’What really happened is I went to prison.’
‘It was my own stupid fault. There’s no one else to blame. Everything would have been different if I hadn’t messed up.’
Having left the cafe, they were now heading in the direction of Notting Hill. It was a frosty night and the pavement glittered under the street lamps but Lola was protected from the cold by her bunny suit. She was getting a bit fed up, though, with groups of Christmas revellers singing
‘Bright Eyes’ at her. Or bellowing out ‘Run, rabbit, run, rabbit, run run run’ while taking aim with an imaginary shotgun. Or bawdily asking her if she was feeling rampant .. .
Which was the kind of question you could do without, frankly, when you were out with your dad.
Your jailbird dad.
God, look at me, I’m actually walking along the Bayswater Road with my father.
‘Blythe knew nothing about it,’ Nick went on. ‘She was four months pregnant. We’d been together for almost a year by then. Obviously we hadn’t planned on having a baby, but these things happen. We started looking around for a place to buy, so we could be together. That was an eye-opener, I can tell you. I was only twenty-one; there wasn’t much we could afford. I felt such a failure. If only we had more money. Are you cold? Because if you’re cold we can flag down a cab.’
‘I’m fine.’ Lola’s breath was puffing out in front of her but the rest of her was warm. ‘So what did you do, rob a bank?’
‘I got involved with a friend of a friend who’d set up a cigarette and booze smuggling operation.
Bringing the stuff over from the continent, selling it on, easy profit.’ Drily, Nick said, ‘Until you get caught. Let me tell you, that wasn’t the best day of my life.’
‘You were arrested.’ Lola tried to imagine him being arrested; she’d only ever seen it happen on TV.
He nodded. ‘What can I tell you? I was young and stupid, and I panicked. Blythe would have been distraught, so I couldn’t bring myself to tell her. I appeared at the magistrates court, still didn’t tell her. Had to wait four months for the case to come up in the crown court. Still didn’t tell her. Because I’d only been involved in the operation for a few weeks my solicitor said there was a chance I wouldn’t go down and I clung on to that. I know it’s crazy, but I thought maybe, just maybe, Blythe wouldn’t need to know about any of it. That she’d never find out.’
Lola could kind of see the logic in this. Hadn’t she once failed to hand in an entire geography project and pinned all her hopes on the school burning down before her teacher found out? Oh God, she was her father’s daughter .. .
Aloud, she said, ‘Good plan.’
‘It would have been if it had worked. Except it didn’t.’ Nick shrugged. ‘The judge wasn’t in a great mood that day. I got eighteen months.’
They’d both gambled and lost. Except her punishment hadonly been a trip to the headmistress and three weeks’ detention. ‘So how did Mum find out?’
‘My cousin had to phone her. Can you imagine what that must have been like? She came to visit me in prison ten days later, said it was all over and she never wanted to see me again. I told her I’d only done it for her and the baby, but she wasn’t going to change her mind. As far as she was concerned I was a criminal and a liar, and that wasn’t the kind of father she wanted for her child.
It was pretty emotional. Understandably, Blythe was in a state. Well, we both were. But she was nine months pregnant, so all I could do was apologise and agree with everything she said. That was the second-worst day of my life.’ He paused. ‘You were born a week later.’
Lola was beginning to understand why her mother had invented an alternative history.
‘I served my time, behaved myself and got out of prison after nine months,’ Nick went on. ‘You and your mother
