She keeps walking. I cup my hands around my mouth. “IRIS,” I shout.

She disappears through revolving doors.

Behind me, a line of traffic, bristling and beeping. Another line coming towards me. I force my way through traffic and jerk to a stop at the drop-off only area in front of the hotel. I put on the hazard lights and jump out of the car. A doorman, in gloves and a top hat and tails, smiles at me as if no one is beeping their horn or shaking their fist in my direction. “Please keep an eye on my father,” I shout at him as I bound up the front steps of the hotel. “I’ll be back in a minute,” I add, holding my breath as I make a run at the revolving doors. I get myself into one of the quadrants, wait for it to rotate, then propel myself out the other side.

I stumble into the lobby, twisting my head this way and that, trying to look everywhere at once. “IRIS,” I shout, and people stop what they are doing and turn to look at me. One of the people is the woman I thought was Iris. She examines me with an expression of mild curiosity. One of her feet is in plaster of paris. I hadn’t noticed that before. I hadn’t noticed anything. She is shorter than Iris. And slighter. She has thin hair. She has pale eyes. She has wan skin.

This woman is nothing like Iris. She is like a negative of Iris.

A negative of Iris who is waiting for me to say something sensible. I can think of nothing apart from, “Sorry.”

Not even in Swiss German. Just a plain old English sorry and without much conviction, truth be told.

Outside, Dad is standing on the pavement, telling the doorman his Frank Sinatra story. “...and he offered me a cigarette from a silver case engraved with his initials, FAS. Francis Albert Sinatra. And I...”

“I’m so sorry about that,” I say.

“Not at all,” the doorman says, in jovial English. “Your father was regaling me with tales of—”

“Do you think we could stay here?” I blurt. I don’t even say, excuse me. I need to stop moving. I’ll be able to think better, if I can just stop moving.

“Do you have a reservation?” he asks.

“No,” I say, my shoulders sagging.

“Don’t worry, I will check,” the doorman says. I sit on the curb. Dad tells me the ground is dirty and I’ll ruin my clothes and also catch my death of cold. I reach my hand up to hold his. Squeeze it. I tell him that the ground is warm, that I’ll wash my clothes. I look at myself. I’m wearing last night’s top and skirt under the silver boyfriend cardigan, which is the last clean thing I possess. I think about Jennifer in her lovely shop in Stoke Newington. She seems faraway and ethereal, and my spending spree seems like it happened a long time ago, to a different person.