He is asleep. In Vera’s bed. But not dead.

Anna tells me I’m one of the greatest catastrophic thinkers she’s ever met.

When I return to the sitting room, Vera is throwing everything back into the Tesco bag.

“Where’s the old geezer?” she asks. Iris is still staring at the blank television screen.

“I’m really sorry, Vera, but he got into your bed. He’s fast asleep.”

“Best leave him where he is,” says Vera. “You don’t wanna go waking up old people when they’re having forty winks.”

“Well, no but—”

“You can stop ’ere tonight. Iris can kip in my bed too, she looks like she could do with forty winks an’ all. There’s a blow-up mattress under the bed you could ’ave, Terry. I got it for Coco when she got poorly. So she could stretch out a bit better.”

I have no idea what to say without seeming rude. Iris will know what to say. Iris will stand up and declare the idea nonsensical. She will march down to Vera’s bedroom and rouse Dad. Lift him out of the bed if she has to and manhandle him down the narrow, dark stairwell, onto the pavement outside, where she will whistle for a cab which will materialize instantly.

Iris does stand up, as I predicted. But the movement is a slow, careful one, as if she is unsure of her body’s capacity to bear her weight. She moves towards Vera’s bedroom. She is going to take Vera up on her offer. Suddenly the Airbnb seems like the homiest, coziest place in the world. How could I ever have thought it sterile?

“But what about you?” I say to Vera.

She nods at the armchair. “I’ll kip here,” she says.

“You can’t,” I say. “You take the blow-up mattress, I’ll sleep in the armchair.”

Vera shakes her head. “Nah. The mattress reminds me too much of Coco. Still got her sweet doggy smell. You’ll see.”

I am distracted by Iris, who stumbles. I move towards her, but it is Vera who reaches her. It is Vera who hooks Iris’s hand around her neck, Vera who slips her arm around Iris’s waist. And when Vera says, “Lean on me, lovie,” Iris does.

Big, brash Iris leans on the scrawny collection of bones that is her mother and somehow, Vera manages to support her daughter down the corridor, into her bedroom. I follow in their wake.

When they reach the room, Iris does not rouse Dad and manhandle him out of the room and down the narrow, dark stairwell. Instead, she sits on the edge of her mother’s bed and kicks off her silver sandals, unwinds the silver-gray wrap from around her shoulders.

“Iris?” Vera whispers as she tackles one tiny button at a time down the front of her daughter’s jumpsuit. The material must be a comfort against her stiff fingers. The marshmallow softness of it. Iris stares at the top of her mother’s head, perhaps noticing the pale pink patches of scalp, where hair used to grow.