We walk down a corridor. It could be the hallway of an apartment. A home. A place where a family lives. Hanneke—lovely, smiling, ordinary Hanneke—gestures towards a room off the corridor and we file inside. Hanneke picks up a teapot and says, “Tea?” with the smile of a kindly aunt who wants to hear all your news and trusts it is good.

Already, Iris looks at home, sitting on a chair at a small round table, drinking tea, signing forms, small-talking with Hanneke.

Iris hates small-talking.

And yet here she is, chattering away like one of those mothers at the school gates. I could never think of a thing to say.

Hanneke glances up, smiles at me. “Please,” she says, pulling out a chair. “Join us.”

I sit down. Hanneke pours tea, which I accept but don’t drink. Good to have something to do with my hands all the same. I tuck my index finger into the handle of the teacup, lift it, wrap my other hand around the swell of the cup. The warmth through the china is immediate. That’s probably why they picked china cups. I feel the warmth traveling up my hand, into my arm, across my chest.

It’s only when I open my eyes that I realize I had closed them. Iris and Hanneke are looking at me. “Sorry?” I say.

“Iris was just telling me how you drove from Dublin. All the way to Zurich,” Hanneke says, shaking her head a little. “That’s quite a journey.”

“Oh,” I say. “Yes. It was. Quite a journey.” And now a lump in the back of my throat, like all the words that were queueing there have melded together. Congealed. I clamp my mouth against them.

Hanneke smiles at me. “However you are feeling, it is normal,” she says.

I nod. I refuse to blink. Or open my mouth. If I blink, tears will fall. If I open my mouth, the deluge of words. Or just sound. The sound of all the words that are stuck there, at the back of my throat.

Dad leans towards Hanneke, touches the sleeve of her blouse. “Have I told you about the time I had Frank Sinatra in the cab?” he says in a conspiratorial whisper.

“No,” whispers Hanneke.

Iris mouths the words “fresh meat” at me and I open my mouth, forgetting, but it is laughter I hear. Not crying or shouting or a deluge of congealed words. The relief is enormous. I laugh louder and longer than Iris’s comment strictly warrants. Perhaps I’m hysterical. I wonder has Hanneke ever had to slap people like me across the face?

I imagine she has. And she would again. I stop laughing.

Hanneke produces another form. Iris signs her name in the box provided, which is never big enough for her substantial scribble.

She looks at Iris.

“Are you certain you want to die?” As calmly as asking a question about plans for the weekend.

Iris says, “Yes.” No frills.

“Are you sure?”