Sophie Jenkins - The Forgotten Guide to Happiness - The unmissable debut, perfect for anyone who loved THE KEEPER OF LOST THINGS

Obviously I was intrigued by what I’d heard. I hadn’t been a journalist for five years without knowing a good story when I heard one.

‘Problem?’ I asked lightly.

‘My stepmother’s had a drink with a sex offender. That’s all they would tell me.’

‘How did she know he was a sex offender? And how did the police get involved?’

‘Don’t ask me.’ He shrugged. ‘This always happens,’ he said grimly. ‘Every time. It’s as if – anyway, forget it, let’s crack on. Do you mind if we miss out the coffee and go straight to the boating lake?’

He strode off up the Broad Walk without waiting for an answer and I hurried to catch up with him as he cut across the grass.

I grabbed his arm. ‘Look, Jack, we don’t have to do the boating thing. We can go another day, I don’t mind.’

‘No,’ he said stubbornly, ‘it’s fine. I’ve planned it.’ But he stopped walking, his eyes narrowed with indecision. He rubbed his hands over his face and his grey eyes met mine and held. ‘I’m sorry. You’re right. I s hould go.’

‘Yes.’ I was more disappointed than I’d expected. He was easy to be with and he made me smile, but I could see the relief in his face and I knew that for once I’d said the right thing. ‘I hope you get things sorted out.’

Behind the railings, through gaps in the foliage, I could see the penguins standing at the edge of their blue pool, bracing themselves to dive, wings held at the ready before taking the plunge. ‘Well, thanks. It’s been—’

‘You could come with me,’ he said.

‘Really?’ Our day out wasn’t over! ‘Okay.’ I didn’t need asking twice.

We turned around and headed the other way, towards the road. The crossing beeped and the cars stood at bay and the green man showed, and we walked over the canal together even though the fake date was over and we weren’t going boating any more.

We caught the C11 bus from Adelaide Road and stood in the wheelchair area, crushed together. He was taller than Mark and I was eye-level with his throat. It was a nice throat; smooth and strong.

‘Your stepmother – did she break up your parents’ marriage?’

‘Yes. She was pretty ruthless about it. And my father was weak.’

‘How did she get to be your responsibility?’

He gave a brief laugh. ‘After my mother died I went to live with her and my dad. Then he died, so now it’s just Nancy and me. She was in her late fifties when she and my dad met so she doesn’t have children of her own.’

I thought about the way he’d said that heartbreak had killed his mother. But despite all that, he was still looking out for Nancy. I tried to imagine being that dutiful towards Jo-Ann and failed miserably.

We got off at South End Green and walked up South Hill Park. The house was four-storey, red-bricked Victorian; it backed onto the other side of Parliament Hill Fields. I could probably see it from my window. A police car was parked up against the kerb. Jack rang the doorbell and a community police support officer answered the door; she had short dark hair and an attitude that indicated we shouldn’t mess with her.

‘We’ve taken a statement,’ she told Jack in the hallway.

To the side of the chandelier above her head loomed a huge oil painting of an old lady with a skinny black and white dog. They were looking into an empty cupboard with some dismay.

It seemed a strange choice of picture. I had built up an image of Nancy as an older woman clinging onto her youth with yoga, Pilates and Botox; I’d imagined she’d go for something more modern, an abstract.

‘She seems fine, but she’s vulnerable.’

‘She’s eighty,’ Jack said.

‘Yes, but she’s got no sense of self-preservation. She started a fight with a police officer who tried to take away her drink.’

I suppressed a smirk – but too late.

‘One day someone is going to hit her back,’ the CPSO warned me.

‘You don’t know that,’ Jack said. ‘You’re just seeing the worst-case scenario.’

‘Trust me, this came close to being that scenario.’

‘I still don’t understand what happened. What’s the big deal?’ Jack asked.

‘I can’t say.’

‘Well now, you can’t tell me and she can’t tell me. Fuh … lipping …’

‘Okay, the guy’s a gerontophile. Rules of his licence – don’t engage with old ladies AT ALL. But they were in a pub having a drink, which is engaging, so we arrested him.’

In the background a lavatory flushed, and then a belligerent voice called out: ‘Who’s there? What are you all doing, conspiring in my hall?’

Jack’s stepmother hurried towards us, dressed in a burst of colour – a yolk-yellow cardigan and a yellow, grey and black skirt.

To my astonishment I recognised her immediately. She was Nancy Ellis Hall, the novelist. My mother and I had gone to listen to her at the Hay Festival when she was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and she had signed a book for us with the inscription ‘Be what you are’; which pleased my mother enormously, although she said it didn’t apply to me.

I could have sworn Jack had just said his stepmother ‘wrote a bit’.

I was suddenly self-conscious standing in the hallway at such an awkward moment, with a police officer and some kind of sex scandal going on – I still wasn’t sure how the police had come into it.

‘You! Who are you?’ she asked me crossly, pointing her finger inches from my face.

‘Lana Green,’ I said, thinking she might recognise the name as she’d taken my book out of the library. I felt a shiver of intense happiness. Nancy Ellis Hall had read my book!

‘What have you come as?’

I didn’t understand the question, but I had a stab at it anyway. ‘A visitor.’

‘Oh. In that case, come on in and sit in the parlour, said the spider to the fly. Not you,’ she said to Jack.

‘Nancy, it’s me.’

‘Oh! Well you’d better watch yourself because they will be after you if you talk to me. I met a nice young man today, and these policemen sprang out of nowhere while we were having a drink and took him away.’

‘ VUL-NER-ABLE ,’ the CPSO mouthed from behind her.

‘And she’ – Nancy turned and pointed at the officer – ‘was jealous because he was taking an interest in me.’

‘I was not jealous. That man is a known offender,’ the officer said tightly.

‘Don’t be ridiculous! He didn’t offend me in the slightest. And that constable tried to take my glass of wine before I’d finished it.’ She turned to me crossly. ‘What have you got to say about that?’

‘Very bad-mannered of him,’ I said.

‘Exactly. They think they know better, but I’ve been – what have I been?’ she asked Jack.

‘A novelist and a feminist,’ Jack said.

‘Exactly.’ Her mood lifted. ‘I’m awfully good at it, you know,’ she said happily, and as she smiled I noticed the gaps in her teeth.

The officer’s phone rang. ‘I’ll take this outside,’ she said. ‘John!’

The police officer appeared from another room. He seemed to know Jack. He said he’d taken a statement from Mrs Ellis Hall and he raised his eyebrows meaningfully – although exactly what it meant I wasn’t sure – and that they would be in touch.

‘So, this guy you arrested, what’s happening with him now?’ Jack asked.

‘Sorry,’ John replied. ‘I can’t tell you anything at this point.’ He was interrupted by Nancy Ellis Hall trying to shoo him out of the door with sweeping movements.

‘Off you go! Off you go!’

Once the officers had left, shutting the door firmly behind them, she turned back to look at us with intense curiosity. ‘Are you two sweethearts?’