“No, I—”

“You know where Suicide Bridge is?”

“Em...no, I don’t...”

“Well, I live there. On Archway Road. Just before the bridge.”

“Right.”

“They used to queue up, in the olden days, to throw themselves off that bridge. But they got railings now, don’t they? Made it real difficult.” She shakes her head.

“What’s difficult?” Dad asks.

“Killing yourself. Off Suicide Bridge,” Vera tells him. “Not as easy as it used to be, see?”

“Killing yourself?” Dad says, his face creased in bafflement at the notion. Dementia has gifted him a dread of death.

“Yeah,” says Vera. “Suicide, y’know? Like the song, yeah?” Vera’s singing voice is the most elderly thing about her. It’s high and warbling and frail.

“Suicide is painless, it brings on many changes, I can take or leave it if I please.”

Dad sings along, his fear wiped away as easily as a child’s tear. I remember him watching M*A*S*H on the couch in the front room on a Sunday afternoon while me and Mam did the washing up in the kitchen and Hugh would escape out the front door as soon as the last mouthful of jelly and ice cream was swallowed. Dad’s laugh. More like a giggle. Trickling from time to time through the double doors in the kitchen. I loved hearing his laugh on those Sunday afternoons. Sunday was his day off. He didn’t go out in the taxi, he didn’t go out to the pub, he didn’t pin his hopes on a sure thing at the bookies. Things were easier on Sundays. I didn’t have to worry on Sundays. We went to mass. We went for a walk. We came home. Mam and I made dinner. Dad watched the telly. Hugh’d be in his room, listening to music louder than usual and nobody telling him to turn it down.

Now, he’s singing along to the M*A*S*H theme song and smiling again, and I glance at Iris, but she is still looking out the window.

I wish Vera didn’t live beside a bridge called Suicide Bridge.

I shiver.

“Are you cold back there?” Vera asks. She must have been looking at us through the rearview mirror. I hope she’s paying attention to the road, I really do.

“We’re fine, thanks,” I say. But Vera isn’t listening. She’s pointing to a pub—she calls it a boozer—and now she’s telling Dad about the darts championship and how she’s been unbeaten for five years in a row. She holds her hand in front of Dad’s face. “Look at that,” she tells him. “Steady as a rock, that is.” Dad takes Vera’s hand, holds it in one of his. She is unfazed by this development. She drives on, now with only one hand on the wheel.

Iris stares out the window. I see London passing by in the reflection of her eyes. I lean towards her. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.” Her voice is flat and low. She doesn’t look at me.

The car lunges to the left all of a sudden, mounts a pavement, screeches to a stop, and Vera says, “Here we are, lovies. Home sweet home.”