I was shocked. At my mother, who, I was certain, did not approve of running away. Bearing up was her philosophy. Making the most of things.

I didn’t tell Brendan. He might have taken it the wrong way.

Iris doesn’t know we’re on the boat.

I haven’t worked out what I’m going to say yet. I don’t know what Iris will say either. There will be expletives. I know that much.

“Where was I?” says Dad, as if we are in the middle of a conversation from which he has become temporarily distracted.

“We’re going to find Iris,” I tell him, linking his arm. I sound definite, like someone who knows what they’re doing. I lead him towards the door. He shuffles now, rather than walks, as if he is wearing slippers that are too big for him. Progress is slow. Inside, there are flights of stairs, and progress becomes slower.

“Hold on to the bannisters, Dad.”

“Yes, but...where are we going?”

“We’re going on an adventure,” I tell him. “Remember when you used to bring me and Hugh on adventures? To Saint Anne’s Park? We’d be Tarzan and Jane, and you’d be the baddie, chasing us up the hills. Remember that?”

“Oh yes,” he says, and he does the laugh he does when he can’t remember but pretends he can.

Although maybe Hugh doesn’t remember either. He’s been in Australia nearly ten years now. Mam didn’t cry at the airport. She wouldn’t have wanted to upset him. He invited her to visit lots of times, but she said it wouldn’t have been practical, with Dad the way he was.

She should have gone.

I should have persuaded her to go.

Dad and I reach the bottom of the stairs. Set in the door at the bottom is a circular window, and through the glass I see a seating area with a hatch where you can get tea.

And I see Iris. Reading. I can’t make out the title of the book, but it doesn’t matter because I know what book it is. The Secret Garden. Iris’s version of a comfort blanket.

Her father bought it for her when she was a child. After her mother left. Iris remembers him reading it to her at bedtime. He’d never read to her before. That’s how she worked out her mother wasn’t coming back.

I open the door and a wave of heat and babble hits me and I feel my father flinch.

“I don’t...” he begins.

“I’ll get you some tea,” I tell him. He has forgotten that his favorite drink is a pint of Guinness with a measure of Bushmills on the side.

“And a bun,” I say. He nods and I persuade him through the door.

Iris has a window seat. One hand holds the book while the other is wrapped around a cup of tea. Her head leans against the window. Through it, gray waves rise and fall, dragging their white manes behind them. And the land, falling away with the distance we have already come. I usher Dad towards her table. He clutches my arm as a small boy barrels towards us and I steer him out of harm’s way as the child, and—in hot pursuit—his mother, rush past us. The boy makes a loud and accurate siren wail and the noise alerts Iris’s attention. She looks over the top of the book and sees us. Surprise freezes her face. Her eyes are wide with it; her mouth open in a perfect circle. She looks unlike herself.