Dad, Iris, and I crowd into one of the bedrooms to allow Madame Lalouette to pass back up the corridor. She descends the stairs with barely a sound.

“Yappy, isn’t she?” says Iris, throwing her bag and her sticks on the floor and flinging herself onto the bed. Without taking her shoes off.

The walls between each room are so thick, I doubt even I—a light sleeper—will hear Dad if he gets up in the night.

“I should have swiped the monitor from Jacques-of-all-trades instead of the bloody candelabra,” says Iris, shaking her head.

“Please tell me you didn’t steal a candelabra from the castle,” I say, already wondering how to return it, candelabras being notoriously difficult to wrap, let alone fit through the mouth of a post box.

Dad worries at the rim of his ears. “Your mother will be wondering where we are,” he says.

I thread my arm around his. “Come on,” I say. “I’ll bring you to your room.”

“We’ll keep the bedroom doors open tonight,” says Iris. “So we’ll hear any movements.” I nod. As a solution, it will have to do.

Dad sits on the bed in the room between mine and Iris’s. His shoulders sag and his clothes seem baggy and creased. He looks old. And tired.

“Do you want to have a snooze?” I say.

He looks around. “I don’t know where I am,” he says wearily.

“You’re with me,” I tell him, crouching down beside him and easing his feet out of his shoes. His socks are hot and damp. I pull them off. His feet smell. There’s no getting away from it. In my mind’s eye, my mother, looking at me with her arms crossed tightly across her chest. Her look is expectant. She knows what needs to be done. She’s just waiting for me to do it.

She kept him so presentable. A new shirt every Christmas and birthday. A haircut once a month. Tweezed the hairs out of his nose and ears as soon as they protruded. A shower every second day. “Whether you need it or not,” she’d laugh, manhandling him into the bathroom. He hated her attention to his personal hygiene. Perhaps some part of him remembered that he had once swept this woman off her feet. And then, there she was, every Saturday night until she died, clipping his toenails.

For the six months after she died, when I tried—and failed—to mind him in my house, I had home help. A lovely woman with strong arms and a repertoire of Elvis songs, who visited Dad for an hour every second day and took care of that side of things.

And yes, I’ve brushed his dentures every morning and night since we’ve been gone, got him to wash his face and hands, sprayed deodorant under his arms.

He was never a particularly sweaty person. And I never got a bad smell from him. Ever.

In my mind’s eye, my mother’s arms tighten across her chest. He’s my dad, I want to remind her. I can’t do it.