It’s a scribble, her signature. Like something a child would write on wallpaper. In crayon.

A porter, in a black frock coat with gleaming brass buttons, approaches her. Points at her bag. Iris hesitates, then nods, secures a stick under each armpit, swings her way towards the exit. I hold my breath, but she runs the gauntlet of the revolving doors without incident.

Iris moves towards me, her eyes fixed on my face. I am suddenly, urgently aware of myself. The length of my arms hanging down by my sides, the ends of my fringe falling over my eyes, the citrus smell of the hotel soap I used to hand wash the shirtdress last night, the unfamiliar slant of my feet in the kitten heels, the dryness of my mouth. There’s so much to say. I don’t know how to say any of it. Iris stops in front of me. Close enough so I can see the slight flare of her nostrils as she inhales. Feel the warm rush of her breath as she exhales. Her eyelids are pulpy and the skin of her face is a blotchy red.

“This is why I don’t cry,” she says, pulling a balled-up tissue from her handbag. “It really messes with my face.” She blows her nose noisily.

“You’ve looked better, I’m not going to lie,” I say, and Iris laughs and so do I and the porter puts her case in the boot, pauses beside us and we stop laughing and Iris looks at him blankly. I hand him a note and he nods and walks back inside the hotel.

“Oh,” says Iris. “The tip. I forgot.”

“You’ve a lot on your mind,” I say.

She nods. “I know this isn’t easy for you,” she says.

“I insisted on coming, remember?”

“I’m glad you did.” She whispers it and two tears swell in each of her bright green eyes, roll over her lower lids and down her face with solemn deliberation as if they know they are the last ones.

I wipe at the tracks the tears have made, then cup the sides of her face with my hands, commit her to memory. She reaches forward until her forehead is touching mine and we lean against each other and I close my eyes, breathe her in. There is a feeling inside me, billowing like sheets on a line. It fills me and I let it. There is nothing else to be done with it.

It is love, this feeling that I am full of.

And not like love in fairy tales or films. It’s fluid, this feeling. This love. It is a giving and a receiving.

I have given.

I have received. I feel love.

I feel loved.

33

Diverging traffic ahead.

The drive from Zurich takes half an hour. The atmosphere inside the car is one of comfortable silence. Which seems odd. Not the silence. But the comfort of it.

I drive.

Oddly, I don’t think about the fact that I am driving on the wrong side of the road. Instead, I think about my mother. What would she make of this? She was a woman with a strong sense of duty. Filled to the brim with it. Not the hardened version of it. Not the bitter version. Never that. “In sickness and in health, ’til death do us part.” That’s what she said when I asked her how she managed with Dad for so long. Looking after him, long past the point when he could thank her for it.