The High Street. That’s what you call it in England.

Either way, it’s still a street. An unfamiliar street in an unfamiliar place with no laminated itinerary in my handbag that I can touch with my hand from time to time, just to feel it there.

I think it’s then—that moment—that I come up with The Plan.

I’ll ring Iris’s mother. Vera.

Called for Vera Lynn.

It’s like Jennifer says. We’d be lost without our mothers. Even mothers like Vera, who, on the face of things, is perhaps not going to be a poster girl for motherhood anytime soon. But who is still, essentially, a mother. Perhaps she is who Iris needs right now.

In the absence of any other plan of action, this seems like a viable option.

I’ll be breezy. Let her know we’re in town. We’re passing through. Suggest that she might like to meet up. I could dress it up as a surprise for Iris.

Iris hates surprises.

But Vera is not to know that.

I’m pretty sure the last time Iris saw Vera was at her father’s funeral. Iris said Vera only showed up on the off chance there might be something in the will for her.

That can’t be true. Not entirely, at least.

Vera is Iris’s mother, after all. That will always be true no matter what has happened.

They haven’t spoken since then. But it’s never too late for a second chance. Did someone famous say that? Or did I just see it on a T-shirt once?

It doesn’t matter. The idea has taken hold, grown roots. I become convinced that a mother’s love is what is needed here. A mother’s love will be like a bridge over the hurt and neglect and, well...abandonment, yes, there’s no getting around that. It might prove a difficult one to bridge.

But not impossible.

9

Expect the unexpected.

I don’t have my mobile with me. It’s charging back in the apartment. But then, on the corner, I see a bright red London telephone box.

Which could be a Sign.

I step inside the box. The phone is stained with rust and the smell of urine makes my eyes water, but there is a dial tone when I pick up the receiver with my sleeve-covered hand, and there is a number for directory inquiries, which I am going to have to call despite the astronomical cost of the service according to the instructions above the phone. I push many pound coins into the grimy slot before an operator says yes, she has a number for a Vera Armstrong on Archway Road—I remember the address from the envelope on Iris’s laptop—and would I like to be put through and I say yes I would and the operator says, One moment please, and now there is a ringing sound on the line, which means that somewhere in London, along Archway Road, a phone is ringing. I imagine an old-fashioned telephone—a black Bakelite perhaps—on a polished hall table with curved feet and a little drawer where she keeps, I don’t know, coupons maybe. Or knitting patterns.