Nick Harkaway

Cantaloupe.

Thomas Cantaloupe, which would not have been good.

I was in a room with him as a baby, and he immediately looked at me and said, there you are, you see, my eyes.

Hmm.

At which point my mother apparently kind of stepped between us and said, no, he does not.

You know, Ronnie was a con man and he did do prison time.

He didn't do enough.

You know, and my dad, although he talked about Ronnie and he didn't struggle with Ronnie, he was haunted by Ronnie.

He was sort of

onwardly terrorized by Ronnie.

Ronnie was... was walking trauma with a shiny smile.

And... you know, and the weird thing, he had that thing that some really terrible people have where...

even the people he worst misused were pleased to see him when he turned up again.

People he conned, people whose life savings he ruined would go to court to defend him because he was charming and he made everybody feel good.

But I have the privilege of having grown up with the funny Ronnie stories and not with Ronnie.

But in my...

kind of adulthood as I look at my dad's life and my dad... And incidentally, you know, when we say they were hiding from the bailiffs and they were hiding from the law and so on, Ronnie was hiding from the law and his minor children were dragged along for the ride.

Yeah.

No, not just recruited.

I mean, I think the reason...