Iris finds our table and I settle Dad in a chair between us. He looks worried. “Your mother should be here by now,” he says, looking at the place on his wrist where his watch used to be before he lost it.

“Don’t worry, Dad, I’ll go and find her.” I cross my fingers. “I’m going to cash in my winnings,” I tell Iris, “and buy you a swanky cocktail.”

“Aren’t you supposed to tell me that alcohol will interfere with my meds?” Iris says, grinning.

“Would it make any difference?”

“No.”

“Well then.”

I get Dad a glass of Coke, which I tell him is a pint of Guinness. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if he came to, one day. Woke up from this stupor he’s been in. Like Sleeping Beauty after her hundred-year slumber. What would he say? I know what he’d do with the glass of Coke anyway. Would he believe it? That it was me, trying to dupe him?

I don’t know why I bother wondering things like that, I really don’t. He smacks his lips after his first sip and declares it a grand drop. I get margaritas for Iris and me. A proper one for her and a nonalcoholic version for me. A mocktail, they call it. Isn’t that clever?

Even after parting with the astronomical amount the bartender asks for, I have winnings left.

And now the lights dim and a reverent hush falls over the crowd and the velvet curtains part and Jason Donovan appears in the center of the stage, at first just a silhouette, then lit by a sudden, single spotlight, and the crowd shows its appreciation with applause, interspersed with high-pitched shrieks.

I applaud. Iris shrieks. Dad drinks his Coke and smacks his lips. Jason hasn’t changed a bit. He looks exactly the same. Maybe a little more forehead on view, but as foreheads go, it’s not a bad one. In fact, it’s a fine forehead, tanned and untroubled by wrinkles.

I know the first song. It’s that one he used to sing with Kylie Minogue. “Especially For You.” The Kylie part is sung by a young woman who is a dead ringer for Kylie when she was twenty. Her shoulder-length chestnut hair, glossy with curls, reminds me of Anna’s. How she complained about her hair when she was a child. And it was true, it was no mean feat, getting a brush through it some mornings. I eventually found an excellent recipe in a library book and made hair conditioner using marshmallow root. And that was back when marshmallow root was pretty tricky to come by.

All Anna remembers about that conditioner was the smell of it. I did my best to sweeten it with essential oils, but it is true to say that the underlying smell of the concoction was a persistent one.

The Kylie-look-alike’s hair appears untroubled by knots. My phone beeps and I dive for it, mortified I have neglected to put it on silent. I glance around. Nobody appears to have noticed. I look at my phone. Two text messages.