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Jochen told the story of the encounter with the driver of the brewer's lorry and my unashamed use of the F-word. My mother cupped his face with her hands and smiled at him, adoringly.
    'Your mother can get very angry when she wants to and no doubt that man was very stupid,' she said. 'Your mother is a very angry young woman.'
    'Thank you for that, Sal,' I said and bent to kiss her forehead. 'I'll call this evening.'
    'Would you do me a little favour?' she said and then asked me if, when I telephoned in future, I would let the phone ring twice, then hang up and ring again. 'That way I'll know it's you,' she explained. 'I'm not so fast about the house in the chair.'
    Now, for the first time I felt a real small pang of worry: this request did seem to be the sign of some initial form of derangement or delusion – but she caught the look in my eye.
    'I know what you're thinking, Ruth,' she said. 'But you're quite wrong, quite wrong.' She stood up out of her chair, tall and rigid. 'Wait a second,' she said and went upstairs.
    'Have you made Granny cross again?' Jochen said, in a low voice, accusingly.
    'No.'
    My mother came down the stairs – effortlessly, it seemed to me – carrying a thick buff folder under her arm. She held it out for me.
    'I'd like you to read this,' she said.
    I took it from her. There seemed to be some dozens of pages – different types, different sizes of paper. I opened it. There was a title page: The Story of Eva Delectorskaya.
    'Eva Delectorskaya,' I said, mystified. 'Who's that?'
    'Me,' she said. 'I am Eva Delectorskaya.'
     
The Story of Eva Delectorskaya
     
    Paris , 1939
     
    EVAN DELECTORSKAYA FIRST SAW the man at her brother Kolia's funeral. In the cemetery he stood some way apart from the other mourners. He was wearing a hat – an old brown trilby – which struck her as odd and she seized on that detail and allowed it to nag at her: what sort of man wore a brown trilby to a funeral? What sign of respect was that? And she used it as a way of keeping her vast angry grief almost at bay: it kept her from being overwhelmed.
    But back at the apartment, before the other mourners arrived, her father began to sob and Eva found she could not keep the tears back either. Her father was holding a framed photograph of Kolia in both hands, gripping it fiercely, as if it were a rectangular steering wheel. Eva put her hand on his shoulder and with her other quickly spread the tears off her cheeks. She could think of nothing to say to him. Then Irene, her stepmother, came in with a chinking tray holding a carafe of brandy and a collection of tiny glasses, no bigger than thimbles. She set it down and went back to the kitchen to fetch a plate of sugared almonds. Eva crouched in front of her father, offering him a glass.
    'Papa,' she wailed at him, unable to control her voice, 'have a little sip – look, look, I'm having one.' She drank a small mouthful of the brandy and felt her lips sting.
    She heard his fat tears hit the glass of the picture. He looked up at her and with one arm pulled her to him and kissed her forehead.
    He whispered: 'He was only twenty-four… Twenty-four?…' It was as if Kolia's age was literally incredible, as if someone had said to him, 'Your son disappeared into thin air,' or 'your son grew wings and flew away'.
    Irene came over and took the frame from him gently, gently prising his fingers away.
    'Mange, Sergei,' she said to him, 'bois – il faut boire.'
    She propped the frame on a nearby table and started to fill the little glasses on the tray. Eva held out the plate of sugared almonds to her father and he took a few, carelessly, letting some tumble to the floor. They sipped their brandy and nibbled at the nuts and talked of banalities: how they were glad the day was overcast and windless, how sunshine would have been inappropriate, how it was good of old Monsieur Dieudonné to have come all the way from Neuilly and how meagre and tasteless the dried flowers from the Lussipovs had