Outside, I shepherd us under the shelter of an awning, prop Iris against the wall. “Wait here,” I say. “I’ll see if I can flag a taxi.”

“I don’t need a taxi,” says Iris.

“I’m a taxi driver,” says Dad.

“You can’t walk to the car park,” I say. “Look at your ankle. It’s the size of a watermelon.”

“That’s an exaggeration,” Iris says. “A grapefruit perhaps.”

“Your mother loved grapefruit,” Dad says.

“She did,” I say, surprised at his recollection. Although loved might be a little enthusiastic. But she ate it. For breakfast when she was on a diet. She’d last until Wednesday most weeks.

“I’m pretty sure I can make it to the car,” says Iris, reaching for the crutches in my hand.

“What about your wrists?” I say. Iris’s wrists are a favorite target of MS, which can make walking with the sticks difficult at the best of times. And this is not the best of times.

“They’re...” Iris hesitates, then says, “grand,” and I wish so hard for a wheelchair that when I hear a bang and see a flash of light, I almost imagine a wheelchair has materialized in front of us, as if by magic. Isn’t that daft? The bang is from a backfiring engine and the flash of light is lightning. I listen for thunder, but hear none, although perhaps the backfiring engine has compromised my hearing.

The rain intensifies and I close my eyes against the deluge, just for a second, just to get my bearings. Check my hearing hasn’t been compromised. Work out some plan. When I open my eyes, there is a woman standing in front of us. A tiny, thin, elderly woman in a fur coat, skinny black jeans, and black patent high heels. Her knee-high pantyhose have slid down her birdlike legs and bunch in baggy folds around her bone-tight ankles. Over her head, she holds a leopard-print umbrella, sagging where some spokes have broken. The wisps of hair on her head are painted a bright, furious red, and, judging by the way she is squinting at us, I’d say she is a woman who has a prescription for glasses which she has never filled. A hand-rolled cigarette hangs from one corner of her pinched, parched mouth. The cigarette is pulpy with rain and it is just a matter of time before it dissolves onto the pavement.

My first thought is, Wow. As high heels go, these ones are at the upper end of the scale. I am not a wearer of heels. Partly because of my height. But mostly because of my inability to walk in them and so I am impressed by other women’s proficiency in this regard.

Before I can have a second thought, Iris, examining the woman with open hostility, says, “Vera?”

Vera is here. She came. She came because I asked her to. And she was right. About the road to hell. Iris’s face is thunderous. “What are you doing here?” A bead of blood clings to a strand of her hair, then drops onto her face, rolling down her cheek like a tear. She wipes it away with the back of her hand.