playing silly buggers. The town and the house and everything looked exactly as Danny had described them to me. I felt as though I was in some weird sci-fi movie. But then these poor people showed me Danny’s death certificate . . .’ My mother’s voice broke off raggedly.
‘The document confirmed the details Danny had always given us.’ The Countess took up the conversation. ‘It named the town where he was born in March 1955. It was the same person. The same parents. The same address. But Dan Kincade had died as a boy in a hit-and-run accident.’
‘I chucked a mental,’ Roxy continued. ‘I refused to believe them. I gave them the rough end of my tongue, believe me. Eventually, the only way they could get me to shut my gob was to take me to the graveside. I saw the sculpture of the boy standing guard above the grave. “Safe in the arms of Jesus” – that’s what the engraving said. It was then that my world turned upside down.’
The Countess nodded. ‘It was only later, after some serious in-depth sleuthing, that your mother found out the truth.’
‘What truth?’ I asked urgently. ‘Roxy?’
‘That your father was an undercover cop.’ My mother coughed up this confession like a fur ball. ‘Using the alias of Danny Kincade.’
It’s a strange sensation when two people you know well suddenly start speaking to you in Swahili. ‘What?’ I said.
‘It’s like something out of a horror movie, I know. Your father belonged to a special unit in the police force. He stole this dead boy’s identity so he could infiltrate protest movements. Of which I was a member.’
I only knew of my dad as a crude outline filled in with grey and black. And now here he was, in full, garish, ghoulish Technicolor. ‘I don’t believe you,’ I said, as casually as a cardiac arrest would allow.
‘It’s true. Even though it sounds more like something that would happen in an old Communist Bloc country. Turns out it was common practice in the seventies and eighties for undercover British police to use the identity of dead babies who roughly matched their age and ethnicity. The cops issued their undercover agents with fake passports, drivers’ licences and national insurance numbers in the name of these poor little boys who’d died,’ the Countess confirmed.
‘And it was me who unwittingly gave the bastard credibility. I fell in love with a bloke I thought was a gardener. He was so sympathetic to all my beliefs and causes – animal welfare, pro-abortion, anti-nuclear – that I welcomed him into my circle. Because of me, this “Danny” was able to get inside information on all the peace activists and other protesters. It was the complete dingo act. I fell in love with a fraud,’ Roxy fumed, violently tossing back more vino.
‘And, oh, he was bloody good at his job,’ the Countess elaborated. ‘We found out years later that Danny’s skills of deception earned him legendary status in the elite ranks of the covert unit known as the Special Demonstration Squad.’
It also earned him legendary status as the Biggest Asshole Ever. I gazed at my mother in mortified astonishment. I’d always fantasized that my missing father was off in the Amazon, using his horticultural expertise to discover herbal cures for cancer that would win him the Nobel Prize for medicine . . . Or that he’d died heroically rescuing blind orphan babies from a fire in a far-flung favela. ‘Oh my God, Roxy. Why didn’t you ever tell me this?’
‘I’m only telling you now because I want you to rethink your attitude to Jack Cassidy. Yes, he’s a rogue and a rascal. But he doesn’t pretend to be what he’s not. Yes, he was a bit of a sexual kleptomaniac at college, but you were both young. I’m sure he’s mended his wicked ways.’
I looked at my mother the way you would look at a stranger on the Tube who had 50 pounds of plastic explosives strapped to his body. A wave of irritation overwhelmed me.
‘Well, I hate to break up this
‘The document confirmed the details Danny had always given us.’ The Countess took up the conversation. ‘It named the town where he was born in March 1955. It was the same person. The same parents. The same address. But Dan Kincade had died as a boy in a hit-and-run accident.’
‘I chucked a mental,’ Roxy continued. ‘I refused to believe them. I gave them the rough end of my tongue, believe me. Eventually, the only way they could get me to shut my gob was to take me to the graveside. I saw the sculpture of the boy standing guard above the grave. “Safe in the arms of Jesus” – that’s what the engraving said. It was then that my world turned upside down.’
The Countess nodded. ‘It was only later, after some serious in-depth sleuthing, that your mother found out the truth.’
‘What truth?’ I asked urgently. ‘Roxy?’
‘That your father was an undercover cop.’ My mother coughed up this confession like a fur ball. ‘Using the alias of Danny Kincade.’
It’s a strange sensation when two people you know well suddenly start speaking to you in Swahili. ‘What?’ I said.
‘It’s like something out of a horror movie, I know. Your father belonged to a special unit in the police force. He stole this dead boy’s identity so he could infiltrate protest movements. Of which I was a member.’
I only knew of my dad as a crude outline filled in with grey and black. And now here he was, in full, garish, ghoulish Technicolor. ‘I don’t believe you,’ I said, as casually as a cardiac arrest would allow.
‘It’s true. Even though it sounds more like something that would happen in an old Communist Bloc country. Turns out it was common practice in the seventies and eighties for undercover British police to use the identity of dead babies who roughly matched their age and ethnicity. The cops issued their undercover agents with fake passports, drivers’ licences and national insurance numbers in the name of these poor little boys who’d died,’ the Countess confirmed.
‘And it was me who unwittingly gave the bastard credibility. I fell in love with a bloke I thought was a gardener. He was so sympathetic to all my beliefs and causes – animal welfare, pro-abortion, anti-nuclear – that I welcomed him into my circle. Because of me, this “Danny” was able to get inside information on all the peace activists and other protesters. It was the complete dingo act. I fell in love with a fraud,’ Roxy fumed, violently tossing back more vino.
‘And, oh, he was bloody good at his job,’ the Countess elaborated. ‘We found out years later that Danny’s skills of deception earned him legendary status in the elite ranks of the covert unit known as the Special Demonstration Squad.’
It also earned him legendary status as the Biggest Asshole Ever. I gazed at my mother in mortified astonishment. I’d always fantasized that my missing father was off in the Amazon, using his horticultural expertise to discover herbal cures for cancer that would win him the Nobel Prize for medicine . . . Or that he’d died heroically rescuing blind orphan babies from a fire in a far-flung favela. ‘Oh my God, Roxy. Why didn’t you ever tell me this?’
‘I’m only telling you now because I want you to rethink your attitude to Jack Cassidy. Yes, he’s a rogue and a rascal. But he doesn’t pretend to be what he’s not. Yes, he was a bit of a sexual kleptomaniac at college, but you were both young. I’m sure he’s mended his wicked ways.’
I looked at my mother the way you would look at a stranger on the Tube who had 50 pounds of plastic explosives strapped to his body. A wave of irritation overwhelmed me.
‘Well, I hate to break up this
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