This is what you get. When you interfere.

Every time I shift on the blow-up mattress, I hear the hiss of air escaping so that, by the time the pale light of dawn glances against the window, it is pretty much flat as a pancake.

Vera was right. Coco Chanel was one pungent dog.

I sit up. Dad snores his light, delicate snores. Mam said he snored like a little old lady.

You couldn’t say that about Vera.

Dad’s hair, still thick albeit ash gray now, falls across his eyes. He could do with a haircut.

Beside him, Iris. She looks so peaceful when she’s asleep. As though she’s dreaming about the sound of the sea. She loves the sea. Swimming in it, walking beside it, looking at it. She loves the way the colors shift and change, the way the water moves across the surface, gentle and ferocious and restless and still. She says it’s like being inside a painting. How can someone like that come up with a plan like this?

A flicker of movement behind Iris’s eyelids. My mouth is suddenly dry and all the counterarguments I came up with during the night disappear. Maybe she’ll sleep on. It’s only seven o’clock. But Iris’s eyelids flutter and I see the dark length of her eyelashes lift and fall. I arrange my face to appear relaxed yet resolute.

“Do you have toothache?” Iris asks, squinting at me.

“No. I just wanted to tell you that there’s no need to worry. What happened last night, well, it won’t happen again. I’m not going to ring any other family members. Or anyone. At all. Ever. I promise.”

Iris grins. “I can’t believe you rang her. Did she not chew you up and spit you out on the phone?”

“Well, I...I just took her by surprise. But she still came. To the Hippodrome, I mean. She wanted to see you.”

Iris shakes her head, but her grin remains.

“She’s a scourge, isn’t she?”

“I wouldn’t quite say...”

Iris grips the edge of the windowsill and pulls herself up. Her hand slips and she falls back. I force myself not to help as she tries again. Instead, I cast about for my handbag, root around inside it.

“Okay,” Iris says when she is sitting up straight. “I will give you fifty euros if you can think of one nice thing to say about her.”

“Oh, right, let me see.”

It seems vital that I come up with something. Anything. Because while it is true that Vera is indeed a scourge, she is also a mother. And I believe that she is well aware of her deficiencies in this capacity.

Perhaps I feel sorry for her. Or maybe I believe that it is my duty—as a member of the same tribe—to display some solidarity.

THINK.

Then I see it. Iris’s silk jumpsuit. Folded neatly and laid across the top of the storage heater. I lean towards it and pick it up. “Vera’s washed it out,” I say. I examine the knee and see that the tear has been...well, “mended” might be a little strong. While Vera has used green thread, it’s a different shade of green, which clashes against the beautiful jade of the silk. Also, she has employed a running stitch instead of a slip stitch. But still. It is something nice. I show it to Iris, who has the grace to look shocked. She touches the bandage on her forehead. The swelling appears to have subsided. She looks at me, and I brace myself. This is the moment she will tell me that she no longer needs my help.