THINK.

“You could choke,” I shout after her. “You could choke to death.”

This is cruel, and I wouldn’t say such a thing ordinarily. Or at all. Iris is not afraid of many things, apart from flying. And I know she’s not afraid of dying. Of death.

But the disease has compromised her swallow, and she is terrified of choking to death. She says she’d prefer to burn.

Where death is concerned, I am more of a worrier than an existential thinker. When the girls were little, I regularly imagined scenarios in which they were in mortal peril and there was nothing I could do to save them. Kate, in a Babygro, crawling out of an open, upstairs window. Anna toddling unnoticed off the footpath, as a Des Kelly Carpets truck, looking for number 55, bears down on her wobbly little body.

Iris stops and turns. She walks back to our table. “What did you say?” It’s nearly a whisper, as if she can’t quite believe I’ve stooped this low.

“I know the Heimlich maneuver,” I say.

“What has that got to do with—”

“If you start choking,” I say, “I can do the Heimlich maneuver.”

Iris shakes her head slowly. “Listen, Terry, I know you don’t understand this and—”

“I won’t try to change your mind,” I say.

She looks at me then. Examines my face. I cross my fingers in deference to the lie, a habit that has persisted from childhood.

I sense a slackening of Iris’s resolve. While I know it’s more to do with her being tired than any powers of persuasion I may possess, I press home the advantage it affords me.

“I’ll never forgive myself,” I say, “if I let you go on your own.”

“Oh for God’s sake, now I’m supposed to feel guilty on top of everything else?”

“Well, no, but...I would.”

“Fuck’s sake.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

“For making you feel bad.”

“I don’t feel bad.”

“You do.”

“Who is feeling bad?” Dad asks, anxious, and Iris and I look at him, and our expressions are both a little shamefaced, and I think it’s because we sort of forgot about him and because he has no idea what’s going on.

Iris sits down, all of a sudden, as if her legs have collapsed beneath her. She exhales and shakes her head, and I know I’ve won, although “won” might not be the appropriate word.

“Two conditions,” she says.

I can’t believe there are only two. I nod and wait.

Iris holds up the forefinger of her left hand. “One,” she begins. “We do not talk about this again for the rest of the trip.”

I cross my fingers beneath a napkin and nod. Iris leans towards me. “Do you agree?” she says.

“I do,” I tell her, which cannot be categorized as a “white” lie. It is an out-and-out blatant lie. I will think about this conundrum later. For now, I need to concentrate, because Iris is holding up a second finger. “Two,” she says. “The furthest you can come is the Swiss border. After that, you have to turn around and go back home.”