“Terry?” Iris puts her hand on my shoulder. “Are you sticking or twisting?”

I examine the cards on the table in front of me. Four of them. The six of hearts. The eight of spades. The ace of clubs. The five of diamonds.

Iris and Dad are already bust.

The boy has an ace showing, his second card still facedown.

“Hit me,” I say.

“You’ve got twenty,” Iris says. “You should stick.”

I shake my head. “Hit me,” I repeat. I don’t know why I insist. The odds are certainly stacked against me. I need an ace, and there are only two left in the pack. Maybe only one if the dealer’s second card turns out to be an ace.

The boy’s fingers reach for the pack and I think, If it’s an ace, it’s a Sign. That everything is going to be all right. That I’ll be able to persuade Iris to turn back and we’ll all go home.

This is madness. I should stick. I’m going to lose.

But it’s too late to change my mind and I watch the boy reaching for the card at the top of the deck, flicking it expertly between his fingers and pushing it towards me.

It’s an ace.

It’s the ace of hearts.

The boy calls it a Five-card Charlie. He says it’s the first one he’s ever seen.

“Fucken Nora,” Iris says. “You beat the house.”

“Who is Nora?” Dad wants to know.

“Shall I deal again?” the boy asks.

“Yes!” I say. I see now how easy it would be to get addicted to gambling. I have this feeling blooming inside me and it’s a gorgeous feeling, warm and sweet like homemade toffee. It feels like I can’t lose.

Iris scoops up my winning chips. “We need to go,” she says. “The show is starting in two minutes.”

“Oh right,” the boy says. “Justin Donovan.”

“It’s Jason,” Iris tells him.

“That’s him,” the boy says. “He used to be in Home and Away.”

“Neighbours,” Iris says. I pick up our handbags. Dad is telling his Frank Sinatra story. “...and he offers me one of his cigarettes. American ones. He kept them in a beautiful silver case with his initials—FAS, Francis Albert—engraved along the...”

Dementia is laden with oddities and here is one of them. Dad’s language can be full of holes, like a moth-eaten jumper. But sometimes, like now, when he is telling one of his old, familiar stories, the words reappear. They grow back so that, where once there were tattered holes, now there is a tapestry rich with the kind of vocabulary my father used to use and it is just a question of choosing the right word from a glut of right words.

The theater is at the back of the casino. I was expecting something like the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, or perhaps even bigger because it’s London and everything is bigger here. And I had worried about Jason’s ability to fill such a space, given that I was able to procure two tickets at short notice. But the venue at the back of the casino is small. Intimate is perhaps a better word. It is set up cabaret-style, with round tables scattered about the floor, and people—women in their forties, mostly—sitting at them sipping complicated gin and tonics. At the back of the room is a balcony with tiered seating, and every seat is occupied, and I feel relieved on Jason’s behalf.