“Respect,” the girls said in unison, when Vera sprang up the steps of the bus in them this morning. My girls have taken to Vera, since she started visiting after Iris’s memorial service. They call her Gangsta Granny and she tells them they’re not too old for a clip around the ear, but it’s all good-humored banter. I think.

“Another twenty kilometers,” Kate tells her, consulting my road map.

“So we should be there in about an hour and a half,” says Anna, pushing her seat back and closing her eyes. She was out late last night, celebrating the submission of her thesis for her master’s. I typed it up for her. I didn’t understand much of it, but I can attest to the fact that it contains no typographical errors or misspellings. She’s going to do a PhD next. “I’m not like you, Mum,” she said. “I’m not ready for the real world yet.”

I’m not sure I’m ready either. And yet here I am.

The bus is secondhand. Iris left everything she owned to the Society, but even so, brand-new buses are prohibitively expensive. And we needed the rest of the money to pay for ongoing costs. Like petrol. And cake. I feel bad taking a salary, but the Society said they couldn’t give me the job otherwise, which would be a shame after I’d gotten my Carers’ Diploma and PSV driving license.

I got the license first time round. I still can’t get over it.

“It’s as good as new, Terry,” Brendan said, when he arrived at my apartment for dinner and I gave him a sneak preview of the bus.

I showed him the seats I had upholstered using Iris’s patchwork quilts. I saved two of the quilts for Vera, one for her bed and one for Coco Chanel II’s basket. “I don’t believe in replacing fings,” Vera said when I arrived at her flat with the puppy at Christmas.

“Maybe you’ll make an exception just this once,” I said, coaxing the dog into her long, bony arms.

“I didn’t know you could upholster,” said Brendan.

“I watched a tutorial on YouTube,” I told him.

“You keep surprising me,” he said.

He has surprised me too. For example, he no longer smells of office machinery. It is a sharper smell. Soil and sun and the type of sweat you produce when you spend the day digging potato drills, which is what he’s been doing in the garden of his mother’s house, where he has been staying since we sold the house. They play poker with Monopoly money in the evenings. He no longer plays golf. Or works in insurance. He says he doesn’t know why he ever did either. He is learning Italian. He said he always wanted to and I felt bad, that I never knew that.

He’s working part-time in the local MABS office, dispensing budgeting advice. He says it’s temporary but he’s enjoying it. I can see that.

I pull into the car park of the library and the girls help me set up the signage around the bus while Brendan pulls out the awning in case of rain.