Iris bends towards him. “Yes, Mr. Keogh, you can get out now,” she tells him. “I’m going to take you for a cup of tea while Terry is organizing your ferry tickets back to Dublin.” She looks at me then, and I say nothing, and she nods as if I haven’t said nothing. As if I have agreed with her, because, let’s face it, that’s what most people do.

“And a bun?” Dad asks.

“Of course,” says Iris.

He negotiates himself out of the car. The sluggishness of the endeavor suits me, as I need time to think.

THINK.

I lift Iris’s bag out of the back seat. She’s traveling light.

I’d say three days’ worth of clothes inside. Which means I have maybe three days. Three days.

During which Brendan will worry himself sick about the Canadians. There are young people in his department. Two of them with brand-new mortgages and one with a brand-new baby.

Last in, first out. Isn’t that what they say?

And Anna. Conscientious, hardworking Anna, who, despite all her conscientiousness and hard work, is always convinced that she will fail every exam she has ever sat. And these are her finals. Not a weekly spelling test. Although it is true to say that she worried about those too.

And then there’s Kate’s play, debuting in Galway next week. Which is a marvelous thing, of course it is. But she’ll be stressed about it and pretending she’s not stressed at all, which, in my experience, makes the thing you’re stressed about even more stressful.

I am needed at home.

What will happen if I’m not there?

I can’t imagine not being there. I’ve always been there.

But I’m already not there, and, so far, nothing has happened. Nothing bad at any rate. But it’s only been—I check my watch—seven hours since I left the house this morning. How can it only be seven hours? They don’t even know I’m gone yet. Brendan will assume I didn’t get on the boat, I know he will.

Because I am needed at home.

Apart from all that, am I really thinking about dragging my father behind me for three days? And apart from all that, Iris will go berserk if she even suspects that I am considering doing anything other than what she has told me to do.

THINK.

In the terminal building, Iris shows me where the ticket sales office is. “We’ll be in here, okay?” she says, nodding towards a café that smells like the oil in the deep-fat fryer needs changing as a matter of urgency.

Iris smiles her full-on, no-holds-barred smile at me. “Thanks, Terry,” she says.

“For what?”

“Just...for being so understanding.” I nod.

I understand nothing.

I stop outside the ticket sales office. Iris turns just before she and Dad enter the café and I make a great show of rummaging in my bag for something. My purse, perhaps. Yes, my purse. I find it easily. I make a great show of finding it. Kate will not be casting me in one of her plays anytime soon. In my peripheral vision, Iris waits. My father looks around in his confused, vexed way as if he has no idea what he is doing here but he is certain it is nothing good.