I find the ice cubes, wrap them in a cleanish towel, and hand them to Vera who tells Iris to hold it against the bump on her head. The fact that Iris does what she is told is more worrying than the bump on her head.

Now, Vera is examining Iris’s knee, which is an angry red. She peers through a magnifying glass and uses tweezers to remove the threads of gray industrial carpet from the Hippodrome embedded in the abrasion. She dips a piece of cotton wool into the warm water. She dabs it along the cut on Iris’s knee, in slow, careful movements.

Iris succumbs to the mothering. For that is what it is. It is innate. We tend to our young. It is like a memory of a song. No matter how long it’s been since you heard it, you still remember the lyrics. The music. You can still sing along to it. “This might sting a little,” she tells Iris, pouring TCP on a fresh piece of cotton wool. Iris doesn’t reply. She looks far away. Like she’s not even here.

“You ’ave a few too many, lovie?” Vera says, cutting a length of bandage with a shaky hand and a pair of rusty scissors. I try not to think about tetanus.

“Not that I’m judging, mind,” she continues as if Iris has responded. “I’m no stranger to havin’ the odd tipple meself, eh?” She cackles, pats Iris on the arm, then kneels on the carpet beside Iris’s feet. The movement generates a symphony of clicking bones that is painful to hear. “How’s your ankle?” Vera asks her daughter. Iris shrugs.

“I’m just gonna see if you can move it, all right?”

Vera lifts the ankle in her skeletal hands, palpates it. “It’s funny,” she says. “I used to fancy myself as a nurse when I was a kid.” She packs ice cubes around Iris’s ankle, wraps it in a frayed towel, and sets it gently on one of the two white plastic chairs.

“Iris is a nurse,” I cut in.

Vera looks up at her daughter. “Is ya?” Iris nods.

“Well now, that’s something to be, that is,” says Vera.

When she smiles, I see Iris in her face. In her smile.

I hear a noise down the corridor and jerk my head around. I’d forgotten about Dad. And Coco Chanel.

“Your old man’s takin’ his time,” says Vera.

I stand up. “Is it okay if I go and check on him?”

“’Course, lovie, you must make yourself at home!”

I hesitate.

Vera looks at me. “You all right, sweetheart?”

“Oh. Yes. I am. It’s just... I was wondering if Coco Chanel is—”

“She’s dead.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” I’m not sorry.

“She was sixteen,” Vera says. “And that’s human years, mind.”

“Oh, that’s a...that’s a good...for a dog, I mean.”

“That’s what people say, all right.”

“When did she...pass?”

“Last year,” Vera says. She looks at the dog basket and smiles as if Coco Chanel is still in residence.