I can scarcely believe it.

Turns out my sense of direction isn’t as bad as I thought.

Turns out that being familiar with a route means driving it once.

Iris is impressed. I can tell.

When I pass the Sue Ryder shop, I see Jennifer, standing outside, having a cigarette. I check my mirror; there is no traffic behind me, which, given it’s London, seems like a definite Sign. I stop the car, put my hazard lights on.

“What are you doing?” asks Iris.

“Why are we stopping?” asks Dad.

I don’t answer them. Instead, I open the door, step onto the road.

“Jennifer,” I shout. “Hi. It’s Terry. From yesterday.” Jennifer looks at me. So do about a hundred other people, which was not my intention. Still, there’s nothing I can do about that now. I twirl. A full 360 degrees. The mohair jumper clings to my body, and the pink tulle high-waisted midi-skirt carousels around my legs. I close my eyes so I can’t see anyone’s reaction to a middle-aged woman twirling in public.

I do one full rotation and then I open my eyes. The world is a little skewed now, which just goes to show how unused I am to twirling.

“I’m wearing my clothes,” I shout at Jennifer, spreading my arms. Which, I realize, is a bizarre kind of thing to proclaim in the middle of a street in broad daylight.

“You look amazing,” Jennifer shouts back, barely audible over the blare of the horns of cars that have now collected in a line behind mine.

I wave in an apologetic way to the nearest driver. His mouth is moving fast, and there are specks of white spittle on his fleshy lips. His arms are gesticulating wildly, and his face floods with the color purple.

I worry that he’s going to do himself an injury, I really do.

I get back into the car, turn off the hazards and release the hand brake.

“What’s gotten into you?” Iris asks, looking at me like I’ve got, I don’t know, a unicorn horn growing out of my forehead.

“That was Jennifer. From Sue Ryder’s. Remember I was telling you about—”

“Yes I know, but...you were twirling. In the middle of the road.”

“I know.”

“Well?”

“I don’t know,” I say to Iris, and I really don’t. I haven’t a clue.

Iris leans back against her seat, eyes me cautiously as though I’m an animal escaped from the zoo. Or a circus, God love them. Either way, she’s looking at me as if she’s not quite sure what to expect, and for this, I cannot blame her.

In the Airbnb, I sit Dad at the kitchen table and feed him his tablets. Ten of them. He can only take one at a time now, and sometimes he spits them out and holds them in his hand, like an offering.

That’s what I’m doing when I make the decision about Dover. About visiting the white cliffs before we get on the ferry.