“Of course,” says Madame Lalouette.

“Do you have the number?” I say.

“What number?” Monsieur Lalouette asks.

“THE TELEPHONE NUMBER!”

“There is no need to raise your voice,” says Madame Lalouette.

I lunge towards the table, and they flinch, and I don’t even care. I speak to them in the kind of French I had no idea I was capable of. “Listen to me,” I say. “Iris isn’t well. And she thinks I’ve let her down. I have let her down. I need to find her. Please. Can you help me?”

They look at each other by way of consultation and seem to reach some sort of consensus because when they turn back to me, Monsieur Lalouette says, “Thirty-three, fifty-four, sixty-two, fifteen.”

“Thank you,” I say, running towards the stairs, taking them two at a time, repeating the number in my head as I go.

I find my mobile phone, punch in the number and it begins to ring.

And ring. And ring.

Until it stops ringing and the line goes dead. No answering machine, no nothing.

THINK.

I sit on the edge of the bed, close my eyes, and massage my temples with my fingers.

What do I know?

I don’t know anything. THINK.

I think that Iris has taken a taxi.

I know she wants to go to Zurich. To the clinic. Pax, it’s called.

I know that she doesn’t think she can rely on me any longer. She can’t trust me.

I ring her number again.

This is Iris. Leave a message but not a long one.

I hang up. Ring the taxi. It rings out.

I leap up and grab my stuff, hurl everything into Dad’s suitcase. I run into his room. He’s asleep. I pull open the curtains. On the windowsill, his dentures, magnified in the glass of water.

“Dad,” I say. “Dad, wake up, we’re going.” He doesn’t budge. I put my hand on his shoulder, shake him gently. “Teresa?” He holds his hand across his forehead like a visor, blinks at me.

“Dad, come on, please. We have to go.”

“Do you need a lift?”

“Yes.”

He pushes himself into a sitting position, eases his legs over the edge of the bed. “Okay then,” he says, nodding at me.

He was always great for lifts. He’d get out of his bed at any hour and in all weathers.

He might grumble about it, drive with a face like thunder.

But he’d show up. Get us to where we needed to be.

Dad is at his most sluggish in the mornings. His most confused. Before his cup of tea. Before his medication.

I wrestle his trousers over his pajama bottoms and pull a T-shirt over his pajama top. He does not comment on the frenzy of my ministrations. I coax his feet into clean socks, tie his laces. Double knot, so he can’t untie them. I rinse his dentures, hand them to him.

“Are we going somewhere?” he asks.

“We have to find Iris,” I say.