I don’t close my eyes of course. I am driving. In unfamiliar environs.

An Irish Ferries employee gestures me into a space. It’s a tight one. The car starts beeping, indicating that I am approaching some impediment; the side of the boat on one side and a Jeep on the other. Dad twists in his seat, anxious as a fledging perched on the edge of the nest. “Careful there,” he says. “Careful.” His face is pinched with fear and he puts both hands on the dashboard, bracing himself for an impact.

It’s hard to believe I was ever afraid of him.

I shiver. “Are you cold, love?” my father asks. He puts his hand on my arm, rubs it, as if to warm me. It does. It warms me.

I smile at him. “Thanks, Dad.”

I find his teeth buried in the pages of the Ireland road map I keep in the pocket of the passenger door. Brendan and I used to talk about going away for weekends when the girls were old enough to look after themselves. Just getting in the car on a Friday evening and driving away, wherever the road took us type of thing.

I don’t know why we never got around to it.

The wind is brisk when we get out of the car. Everything Dad needs is in the suitcase. Enough for a week, the manager said. But I have nothing other than the clothes I’m standing up in. The shoes—navy Rieker slip-ons—are comfortable and warm. And the navy trousers from Marks & Spencer are good traveling trousers. Hard-wearing and slow to crease. My navy and cream long-sleeved, round-necked top is a thin cotton material that does little to cut the draft. At least my cardigan is warm. I pull it across my chest, fold my arms to keep it there. My ponytail—too girlish for my age, my daughters tell me—whips around my head and I catch it in my hand, hold it down.

My other hand keeps a tight grip on the clasp of my handbag into which I have stuffed banknotes. The man at the ticket booth eyed me suspiciously when I pushed the bundle of cash through the gap at the bottom of the glass partition. I don’t carry money about my person as a rule. But I extracted the money from an account I’ve never used before. My mother opened it for me a long time ago but I only discovered it after she died, three years ago. I found the bank card in the blue woolly hat in the top drawer of her dressing table. I found all sorts in that hat. Her children’s allowance book. The prize bonds she got from her mother for her twenty-first birthday. My first tooth. A lock of Hugh’s white-blond baby hair. Her marriage certificate.

Stuck to the bank card on a scrap of paper was the PIN number—my birthday—and a note.

A running-away-from-home account, she had written. Just in case you ever need to.