There’s a moment—fleeting—when I think about running. Running across the road, even though there’s no pedestrian crossing and the traffic is dense. Running down the escalator into the Tube station, jumping the barrier. Not even buying a ticket. Just getting on a train to wherever a train happens to be going.

Imagine running away. Twice in one day.

I get into the car. It smells of years of smoke and the heat of damp bodies. There is an underlying smell of dog, earthy and solid. Or perhaps I only think that because of the laminated photograph dangling from the rearview mirror. It looks like a passport photograph. The dog is big and sullen, pinkish-white in color. His teeth are bared as he glares at the camera.

“Anyone mind if I smoke?” says Vera, lighting up.

“I mind,” says Iris.

“I’ll pull the window down, shall I?” Vera struggles with the hand crank and manages to lower the window by an inch.

“Is that a pit bull?” I ask Vera.

She reaches for the photograph, strokes her fingers across its surface. “That’s Coco Chanel.”

“He’s...big,” I say. I am not afraid of dogs per se. Small dogs are okay. Small dogs on leads with careful owners. Small, clean dogs on leads with careful owners.

“She,” says Vera.

“Oh, right, sorry.”

Vera adjusts the mirror towards Iris. “So...Iris, my love. How’ve you been then?”

“Fine,” says Iris. The tissues I gave her are now soggy and pink. I hand her fresh ones, put the bloody ones in one of the Ziploc bags I keep in my handbag for just such occasions. The transaction happens in silence. Iris doesn’t look at me.

“That’s a be-damnedable night,” says Dad, shaking his head at the rivers of water coursing down the windscreen. Vera switches on the windscreen wipers. They groan as they drag themselves across the glass. Ash teeters at the end of her cigarette, falls onto her lap. She doesn’t brush it off.

“So,” she says, looking at Dad. “Where you lot staying then?”

“Who are you?” he asks.

“I’m Iris’s mum, sweetheart.”

Iris makes a sort of strangled noise without opening her mouth.

“Did you say something?” asks Vera, looking at Iris in the rearview mirror.

“We’re staying in Stoke Newington,” I say, and Vera shakes her head.

“Stokey? Why are you staying all the way out there? Full of ponces and yuppies.”

“I... Iris wanted a place with a garden.” I wish I hadn’t said that. I feel like I’m betraying Iris’s confidence in some way. But if Iris has heard me, she gives no indication.

“She always loved nature, did Iris,” says Vera. Her voice is wistful. As if Iris is a memory. A fond, distant one. Perhaps for Vera, she is.

Vera turns the key in the ignition and yanks at the gearstick, which makes a low guttural sound. Without indicating or checking her wing mirror, she pulls the barely there BMW into the traffic where it is greeted by a cacophony of car horns, blaring.