“Can you stand up, Dad?”

He stands, like an obedient child, looks at me with his watery blue eyes. “Does your mother live here too?” he says.

I don’t give him any of the lines I usually give him. Maybe because of the lateness of the hour. Or the strangeness of the day. I shake my head. “She died.” I shouldn’t have said that. I should have said she was gone to the shops.

But his face is more resigned than shocked. Like he already knows. “I miss her,” he says, almost a whisper.

I nod. “So do I,” I say. I undo his belt, pull down his trousers. Unbutton his shirt. He stands patiently as I attend to him, his arms down by his sides. I wonder if he minds. This intrusion. He does not appear to be annoyed. His skin is paper-dry. I will buy some E45 cream tomorrow. Or Silcock’s Base. Something gentle.

He takes out his dentures, hands them to me. His cheeks sink into the hollow of his mouth. I put the teeth in a glass of water, put the glass out of sight. This is our system now. We are a well-oiled machine.

“Goodnight, Dad.” I tuck the covers under his chin, kiss his forehead. Something about the sequence of my movements reminds me so vividly of my mother that, for a moment it seems like she is here, in the room with us. When I turn my head, I almost expect to see her standing there, smiling at us.

I leave the lamp on, pause at the door. “See you in the morning.”

“Don’t close the door.” His voice is small and anxious.

“I won’t,” I say. I stand in the corridor outside his room until I hear his light, delicate snores. It doesn’t take long.

Downstairs, Iris is waiting for me with a bottle of wine in one hand and two mugs in the other, dangling from her thumb by their handles. I suspect she has been raiding Monsieur and Madame Lalouette’s cellar. I don’t ask, although I am aware that ignorance will be no defense if a charge is leveled in the morning.

She grins at me. “Let’s assume the position,” she says, heading towards the back door.

“Can we go to the front garden instead?” I say.

“Sorry,” says Iris, changing direction. “I forgot about the baby pigeons.”

We sit on a low wall at the front of the house, beside the statue of Joan, who looks even more splendid at night, cloaked as she is in moonlight. Iris fills the mugs and we clink and drink. “Do you think it’s ever too late to become an alcoholic?” I ask her.

“Nope,” she says, lighting the cigarette she got from Dapper Dan, “but you’ve a ways to go before AA will take you in.”

We don’t say anything else for ages. We sit there and drink our wine and listen to the night and pass the cigarette back and forth between us. It seems like such a companionable thing to do. And I’m only doing it tonight. It’s not like I’m hooked or anything. Which, I realize, is classic addict-speak. I read enough pamphlets when the girls were teenagers.