The Clothes On Their Backs by Linda Grant

' Let me tell you a secret - now don't repeat this to your father, I'm only telling you because it's a special day. It wasn't Ervin I met first in his family, it was his terrible brother. He walked past me when I was in a cafe with some girlfriends and he tipped his hat, just like that. Not at the others, at me. My stick was leaning against the table so it wasn't a mistake. He knew. I was so surprised and blushing, but he came over and asked me to join him the next day for an ice-cream. Well, you know, no one had ever paid any attention to me before in that way, so I turned up. Why not? It was an adventure for me. All by myself, I went, I was eighteen. ' 

' Where was this? '

' Oh, a cafe along the river where you could sit out and eat ices and look at Buda on the other side and the boats sailing along. Now after only a few minutes even an innocent could see that he was a bad man, a womaniser, not for me at all, but then who should turn up but Ervin and he introduced us, and the Ervin - well. '

' So you knew Sandor before Daddy? '

' Yes, only a day. But I have to admit, if I never met him, then I never met your father, and where would you be now, eh? '

' Nowhere. '

' Exactly. '

' And then of course Ervin had the sense to bring us out of Hungary in the nick of time. Sandor has no such sense. '

' What was he like? '

' Ugly, but very attractive at the same time. Look, he was a pimp, he knew how to talk to women. '

' Why do you think he tipped his hat to you and asked you for ice-cream? '

' I don't know. He is a complicated person. '

' What did you see in Daddy? '

' He had beautiful eyes. Even under his glasses. The eyes of a man who looks. '

from The Clothes On Their Backs by Linda Grant.