One from Anna:

where r u? tried to phone u but it went straight 2 voice mail. dad’s being really weird. My yellow silk #notreallysilk dress isn’t in the pile of clothes you left for me. Do you know where it is? #emergency

One from Kate:

where r u? dad seemed a bit confused earlier on the phone. did he tell u about hotel? have you booked another? dress rehearsal today a disaster. wish i’d listened to dad and become an accountant instead ;) can you send me the recipe for your ‘fail-proof stress-busting’ tea you used to make me?

I try to come up with a response to both texts, but in the end, I switch off the phone.

where r u?

There is no answer I can give that lends itself to the brevity of a text message.

Obviously I could simply say, I’m in London, but that would lead to a deluge of other questions and it would be these subsequent questions that might prove difficult to answer.

And it might implicate them.

Does this mean Brendan is already implicated?

And what about me? Could I go to jail simply for being here, with Iris?

Imagine the girls. Their mother in jail.

Kate’s career ruined before it even gets off the ground.

And Anna, failing her exams for the first time in her life and her skin blighted with eczema.

Iris tugs at my sleeve and I look up. “Are you okay?” she mouths. I smile brightly and nod, toss my phone into my bag, and take an enormous gulp of my mocktail. The burn of tequila would be most welcome now. And I don’t even like tequila. I drank two on my eighteenth birthday at the insistence of my brother, who deemed it a rite-of-passage sort of a drink. I threw up in the smoking area where I had gone to get some fresh air, which I realize is a contradiction in terms. Hugh marched me home, then returned to the pub, since it was only 10:00 p.m. My mother couldn’t bring herself to give out to me, such was the sorry state I was in. She helped me to bed and told me she’d deal with me in the morning. But she never did. Perhaps she realized there was no need. And it’s true, I haven’t had tequila since.

Jason Donovan turns out to be a soothing sort of a fellow. A comfort. When I accidentally catch his eye—he’s singing “Too Many Broken Hearts,” if the chorus is anything to go by—he smiles and nods at me as if he knows me. Knows why I’m here. Is sure that everything will work out just fine.

I have only vague recollections of him on Neighbours. I don’t remember watching a lot of telly when I was a teenager. I think it might be because I never recognized myself in any of the characters on any of the programs that were geared towards my age group. The teenagers on the telly were rebellious, or funny, or smart. Some were all of those things. The quiet ones were only quiet for a short time before they, I don’t know, took off their glasses and pulled their ponytails out and allowed one of their girlfriends to apply makeup to their faces and then they weren’t quiet anymore. They were rebellious or funny or smart and—now—heavily made-up.