“No,” says Lucas even though I distinctly heard Dad tell him the story at least once last night. Still, he listens as though he’s never heard it before as I put the suitcase in the boot. That’s one of the good things about dementia. You bear witness to the kindness of people. I maneuver Dad into the car, belt him in.

“Money!” I suddenly remember when I look at Lucas. “How much do I owe you?”

Lucas tilts his head towards the sky, considers my question, then says, “Forty euros.”

“It can’t be that little. What about the tow and—”

“Forty euros,” he says again. “If you please.”

I hand him two twenties. “Can I at least drive you back to the garage?”

“I like to walk,” he says.

“Right,” I say. “Thanks. For everything.”

I need to move. I need to get on the motorway. The noisy, fast, scary motorway. I need to find Iris.

Instead I stand beside the car, shifting from foot to foot.

Lucas examines my face.

“You do not like the motorway, Terry,” he says.

“No,” I say.

“It is like dancing,” he says then with a hint of a grin. “You just keep moving.”

29

On the motorway, you must only drive ahead.

No turning or reversing is permitted.

I’m on the motorway.

Driving.

On the wrong side of the road. In a foreign country.

I’m in the lane people refer to as the slow lane. It’s not the slow lane. It’s the lane you’re supposed to drive in unless you’re overtaking.

I am not overtaking. I am overtaken.

It seems like every car on this motorway has overtaken me. I have been beeped at, flashed at, and, on two occasions, been the recipient of hand gestures.

I grip the wheel with both of my knuckle-white hands.

The ten-to-two position as Dad taught me.

Six of the most stressful months of my life. Dad. Teaching me how to drive.

My mother insisted on it. And she never insisted on anything. But in this matter, she was insistent.

She said that every woman should know how to drive. Perhaps because she did not.

Engage the bloody clutch, he’d shout at me on those endless Sunday afternoons in the industrial estate in Baldoyle.

And then later, out on the road, the cars behind me beeping and flashing and hand-gesturing as I grappled with the hill start, the three-point turn, the parallel parking.

Engage the bloody clutch.

My hands, sweaty on the wheel, as they are now. My eyes darting, at the wing mirrors, the rearview mirror, the front windscreen, trying to keep a safe distance from the other cars.

Each of the lessons ended in him flinging open his door, marching around to the driver’s side, telling me to get out.

GET OUT.

Him, driving off, leaving me standing there, in the middle of the road with the cars beeping and the lights flashing and the hands gesturing.

I’d walk home.

“How’d it go, love?” Mam would call from the kitchen.