That’s not something you could tell Angela in number 34. It has to be something significant. An affair perhaps. Or a gambling addiction. Or, I don’t know, some sort of cruelty.

Brendan says he’s too tired to have an affair.

And he’d never put more than five euro on a Cheltenham race once a year.

And when we had a mouse in the kitchen that time, he fashioned a trap with a plastic bottle and toothpicks and elastic bands. When he caught the mouse, he released it into the field behind our house.

So I can’t cite cruelty when I’m trying to get Angela from number 34 to understand why I’ve run away from home.

And why am I trying to get Angela from number 34 to understand anyway?

I shouldn’t care about Angela from number 34. I shouldn’t care what she thinks about me running away from home.

Besides, I’m not running away from home. I’m here because of Iris.

“Terry? You okay?” Iris appears beside me on the bench, and I wonder how long I’ve been sitting here, not noticing the day getting on or paying attention to Dad, and I glance inside the Visitors’ Center and I see him, still pushing crumbs of Bakewell tart around the plate.

“You look worried,” Iris says, sitting beside me.

“I always look worried,” I say, and she smiles and nods her head.

“Everything okay?”

“Yes.” If I tell her otherwise, she will say I should go home. I am needed at home. And she will be right. So I don’t tell her otherwise. In fact, I add, “Everything is great,” although I might have gone too far because Iris looks at me with her eyebrows raised nearly to her hairline, which is her sceptical look, and I can’t really blame her because I am not the type of person who declares things great, in the normal course of events.

“You can see the cliffs from here,” I say, pointing towards them. I don’t know why I insisted on this detour. Iris won’t be able to walk on that bumpy trail with her sticks, especially after last night. And neither will Dad. Nor do they want to, so why on earth am I dragging them around after me, the way Kate used to drag Egg?

Iris looks at the cliffs. “They really are quite spectacular, aren’t they?” she says and she sounds surprised. Like she wasn’t expecting that.

“How’s your ankle?” I ask.

“It’s a lot better,” says Iris, rotating her foot. “The swelling’s come right down.”

“Vera will be delighted to hear that,” I say tentatively. Iris opens her mouth to say something, then decides against it, nods instead.

“So,” I say, “do you think you could manage a bit of that walk I showed you on the map?”

Iris nods in Dad’s direction. “What about himself?”

“We’ll bring him.”

“He won’t be able for it.”

“We’ll chivy him along.”

“Chivy him?”

“Yes.”

And that’s what we do. Chivying is linking Dad’s arms and singing a song that he knows—I pick “Someone to Watch Over Me”—so that he stops complaining and joins in. It works every time and soon the three of us are on the trail, like the Lion and the Scarecrow and the Tin Man, on the yellow brick road.