“Are you scared?” I asked her.

“No.” Her voice was quieter. Slower.

“I am,” I said.

“You’re braver than you think, Terry.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know you.”

Her hold on my hand loosened, her head moved onto my shoulder. I felt the weight of her there, the solidness of her.

“She is sleeping now,” Hanneke told me gently.

I wondered if Iris’s life flashed through her mind. Does that happen?

If it does, I imagine the reel, all bright colors, filled with the sounds of a life that has been lived.

Every single day. Even today.

Epilogue

The inaugural journey of the Iris Armstrong Memory Bus happens on a Friday. It is spring again, and, as I drive along, I see patches of bright yellow along the hedgerows as brave daffodils burst through swollen buds and dance on their slender stems.

Anna says, if I drive any slower, we’d see individual blades of grass, growing.

I am not driving slowly. I am driving within the speed limit, which is an entirely different thing. Besides, you have to be extra careful when driving a bus. “It’s a minibus, Mum,” Kate reminds me.

A minibus is still a bus.

In the reflection of the windscreen, I see my girls, strapped into the front seats, leafing through the information packs. They take out the page with the staff bios and laugh at my mug shot on the top. In fairness, I look sort of horrified. The photographer’s camera was one of those enormous contraptions that flash and whir and stare.

“You don’t look old enough to be in charge, Mum,” says Anna, nodding at the photo.

“It’s the pixie haircut,” says Kate, matter-of-fact.

“Oh dear,” I say, “perhaps I should grow—”

“NO,” they shout.

On the seats across the aisle, Dad and Brendan, holding hands. Dad is looking out of the window and smiling. He has stopped telling his Frank Sinatra story.

He has stopped talking, for the most part.

And he no longer eats Bakewell tart. He has to be fed by the nursing home staff now. Mainly fortified yogurts and rice puddings and thickened soups.

But he still smiles his old, before-version smile. And he likes to hold the hand of whoever is sitting beside him. Today, that person is Brendan. I glance in the mirror and catch Brendan’s eye. He smiles even though I know he wishes Dad would release his hand. Brendan is not a fan of prolonged hand-holding. He dislikes the clamminess it produces. Dad will hold his hand all the way to Kilkenny. And Brendan will let him.

Is that the reason we’re still friends? It is one of the reasons.

“Are we there yet?” says Vera from the back of the bus where she flounced in a temper when I told her she couldn’t smoke. Or vape. Now she is sticking a second nicotine patch on her arm and unwrapping another stick of Nicorette gum. Her hair—bright orange today—matches her skinny jeans, and her leopard-print high heels are her highest yet.