“Is there a problem with the hotel?” I ask.

“I think so. I’m not sure. Look, you should really talk to Kate yourself,” says Brendan.

“But you were on the phone to her. Why didn’t you talk to her?”

“I don’t do phones, Terry. You know that.”

“Well then, I’d better not keep you.”

“Terry, wait, I—”

I hang up.

That’s the second time in one day I’ve hung up on him. The second time in twenty-six years.

6

If you are approaching a junction with a major road, you must yield.

“Are you okay?” Iris wants to know when I arrive in the café where they have drained their tea and my father has eaten all of the tiny denominations of his tart.

I am out of breath and very possibly flushed of face, having run from the ticket office to the bookshop, then to the café. I don’t know why I ran. People stared as if they’d never seen a long, loping woman before.

I am out of shape. I can feel the flush of blood across my usually pale face. I had relied on running up and down the stairs several times a day, carrying baskets of laundry, to keep obesity and heart disease in check, and perhaps it did, back in the day. I can’t remember the last time I took the stairs at a run.

I put the book on the table, faceup so there can be no confusion. Dad reads the title.

“The A to Z of L...on...don,” he reads in the faltering way he has now, dragging his finger under the words.

“No,” says Iris.

I take off my cardigan and sit down. I feel the sweat I have worked up collect in the hollows of my armpits, and I am reminded that I have no change of clothes for three days. For any days. I open the book. “Well, I’ve never driven in London before,” I say. “Now, whereabouts is the Hippodrome?” I ask, oh-so-matter-of-factly. I follow that with an offhand, “And have you booked somewhere to stay?”

“You’re not coming with me, Terry,” Iris says, in her quiet, steely voice that brooks no argument.

“I am,” I rally with a casual tone.

“No,” Iris says, her voice rising. “You’re not.”

“If it were me going to Switzerland, would you come with me?”

“If you wanted me to, I would.”

“And if I didn’t want you to?”

“Look, this is a moot argument. You wouldn’t go to Switzerland.”

“How do you know?”

“Because...you’d always be thinking that a cure would be discovered.”

“Exactly!”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“It could.”

“It’s unlikely. In my lifetime at any rate.”

“Only if you insist on cutting your lifetime short.” I whisper this, but it’s a loud whisper and attracts the attention of a couple at a neighboring table.

Iris glares at the couple, who whip their heads in the other direction so now it looks like they are taking a keen interest in the hot food, which no one in their right mind would do.