are no damp towels draped across the rim of the bath. The potted plants – which flourish here in the steam – are gone.
I hear a car horn blaring, and rush into the spare room, which Iris uses as her home office. Jerk open the blinds, peer at the driveway below. My car is still there. And so is Dad. I see his mouth moving as he sings along. I rap at the window, but he doesn’t look up. When I turn around, I notice a row of black bin bags, neatly tied at the top with twine, leaning against the far wall. They are tagged, with the name of Iris’s local charity shop.
Now panic travels from my mouth down my throat into my chest, expands there until it’s difficult to breathe. I try to visualise my breath, as Dr Martin suggests. Try to see the shape it takes in a brown paper bag when I breathe into one.
I pull Iris’s chair out from under her desk, lower myself onto it. Even the paperclips have been tidied into an old earring box. I pick up two paperclips and attach them together. Good to have something to do with my hands. I reach for a third when I hear a high plink that nearly lifts me out of the chair. I think it came from Iris’s laptop, closed on the desk. An incoming mail or a tweet or something. I should turn it off. It’s a fire hazard. A plugged-in computer. I lift the lid of the laptop. On the screen, what looks like a booking form. An Irish Ferries booking form. On top of the keyboard are two white envelopes, warm to the touch. Iris’s large, flamboyant handwriting is unmistakable on both.
One reads Vera Armstrong. Her mother’s name.
The second envelope is addressed to me.
YOU MUST ALWAYS BE AWARE OF YOUR SPEED AND JUDGE THE APPROPRIATE SPEED FOR YOUR VEHICLE.
‘The speed limit on a regional road is eighty kilometres per hour,’ Dad says.
‘Sorry, I’m … in a hurry.’ I glance in the rear-view mirror. I think I hear sirens, but I see no police cars behind me.
In my peripheral vision, Iris’s letter, in a crumpled ball at the top of my handbag.
My dearest Terry,
The first thing you should know is there was nothing you could have done. My mind was made up.
Panic is spinning my thoughts around and around, faster and faster, until it’s difficult to make out individual ones.
‘Did I ever tell you about the time I had Frank Sinatra in the taxi?’ says Dad.
‘No.’ Most of my conversations with my father are crippled with lies.
‘It was a Friday night, and I was driving down Harcourt Street. The traffic was terrible because of the … the stuff … the water …’
‘Rain?’
‘Yes, rain and …’
The second thing you should know is there was nothing you could have done. My mind was made up.
The lights are red and I jerk to a stop. The brakes screech. The car is due for an NCT next month. I need to get it serviced before then. Brendan says I should get a new one. A little run-around, he says. Something easier to park. But I like the heft of the Volvo. It’s true that it’s nearing its sell-by date. Maybe even past it. But I feel safe inside it. And it’s never let me down.
‘… and I said to Frank I know the words to all your songs and …’
… but please know that this is a decision I have come to after a long, thorough thought process and I do not and will not regret it.
I’ve never been to Dublin Port before. I park in a disabled spot. I have no permit to do so.
‘Dad, will you stay here? I have to … I have to do something.’
‘Of course, love, no problem.’
‘Promise me you won’t get out of the car?’
‘Are you going to pick up your mother?’
‘Swear you’ll stay here ’til I get back.’
… and perhaps it is too much for me to ask; that you understand my choice, but I hope you do because your opinion is important to me and …
My father looks at me with curiosity as if he’s trying to work out who I am, and perhaps he is. It is sometimes difficult to tell what he knows for sure and what he pretends to remember.
I bend towards him, put my hand on his shoulder. ‘I’ll be back soon, okay?’
He smiles a gappy smile, which means he’s taken out his dentures again. Last time I found them inside one of Anna’s old trainers in the boot.
‘You’ll be back soon,’ he says, and I tell him I will, and close the door and lock him into the car.
… practical arrangements have been taken care of with the clinic in Switzerland and are enclosed for your …
If the car catches fire, he won’t be able to get out. He’ll be burned alive. Or suffocated with the smoke. But the car has never caught fire, so why would it today? Of all days? I hesitate. Brendan would call it dithering.
… only a matter of time before that happens, which is why it needs to be now, before I am no longer able to …
I run through the car park, towards the terminal building. I try not to think about anything. Instead, I concentrate on the sound of my soles thumping against the ground, the sound of my breath, hot and strained, the sound of my heart, thumping in my chest like a fist.
My dearest Terry,
The first thing you should know is …
I spot Iris immediately. She’s easy to spot even though she’s not all that tall. She seems taller than she is.
The relief is palpable. Solid as a wall. She’s in a queue, doing her best to wait her turn. She does not look like a woman who is planning to end her life in a clinic in Switzerland. She looks like her usual self. Her steel-grey hair cropped close to her scalp, no make-up, no jewellery, no nonsense. It’s only when the queue shuffles forward, you notice the crutches, and still, after all this time, they seem so peculiar in her big, capable hands. So unnecessary.
I stand for a moment and stare at her. My first thought is that Iris was wrong. There is something I can do. What that something is, I haven’t worked out yet. But the fact that I’m here. That’s she’s still here. I haven’t missed her. It’s a Sign, isn’t it?
The relief is so huge, so insistent, there’s no room for any other feeling in my head. I’m full to the brim with it. I’m choking on it. My voice sounds strange when I call her name.
‘Iris.’ She can’t hear me over the crowd.
