“Your turn, Terry,” Iris said when Dad finished.

I didn’t want to sing. I never know all the words.

I sang “Mull of Kintyre” in the end. We learned it in choir in sixth class. While my voice lacks the style or tone of my father’s, the physical effort that the singing required, the concentration on the melody, the lyrics, the projection of my voice around the room that shouldn’t look like somebody’s sitting room but did—all these things distracted me from phones and handbags and everything else.

Iris sang “Love Is All Around,” the theme song from The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which was her favorite program when she was a kid.

Who can turn the world on with her smile?

Who can take a nothing day, and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile?

“You have a lovely singing voice,” Hanneke told her.

“You’re only saying that because I’m about to die,” said Iris, grinning.

Hanneke smiled. “Is this the black humor you Irish are famed for?”

“Yes,” said Iris. “We’re either hysterical with the laughing or weeping into our pints. You have to visit. You’d love it.”

“I am perhaps a little too Swiss for the laughing and the weeping,” said Hanneke. I laughed at that and so did Iris. I know it’s not particularly funny, but it’s just...well, Hanneke made a joke and I get the impression that it’s not the kind of thing she does all that often, which means she is not just making a joke. She is making an effort.

And then the alarm on Iris’s phone rang. There was nothing but quiet then.

Damien gently extricates his hand from my grip, gestures towards my chair. “Sit yourself down there, love, you’re looking a bit peaky.”

“No, I’m fine, I...a touch of seasickness is all. The crossing can be a bit rough.”

Damien arranges me into the seat and I whisper in his ear. “Eugene has dementia.” I never like Dad to hear me saying that. I’m not sure he knows. Or ever knew. What is happening to him. And there’s something so harsh about the word. It seems cruel, to say it in front of him. Like rubbing salt into an open sore.

“Ah no, I’m sorry to hear that, love.”

“What?” asks Dad.

Damien turns to Dad. “About your dementia,” he says, louder now, as if Dad is hard of hearing. People sometimes do that. I don’t know why.

“Dementia?” Dad says, and he looks at me, confused.

“Don’t worry, Dad, it’s—”

“I bet you’re still bragging about Frank Sinatra though,” says Damien. “Aren’t you?”

The confusion clears from Dad’s face like a switch flicked.

He smiles. His Frank Sinatra smile.

“Have I told you about Francis Albert?” Dad asks Damien.

“Sure, wasn’t I the one you were on the radio to, when your man ducked into the cab?” says Damien, grinning.

I study Damien’s face. “What do you mean?”

Damien looks at me, his eyes behind his glasses wide and round. “Surely he’s told you the story?”