Hiroko’s calm, symmetrical features, on which Iris could never discern even the ghost of emotion, and Sophia’s prettiness blurred with crying and the onset of a monumental sulk. ‘You’re going where?’ she’d said. ‘You’re going to see him?’ Outside, the sound of the rain seemed to have been turned up, a dozen different kinds of percussion, pinging and clattering and rushing as it streamed down relentlessly. Iris had felt as if she was drowning in the big, dimly lit rooms of Hiroko’s apartment, as if she was underwater. And she needed to have it out with Jackson. ‘There’s something I need to ask him,’ she’d said. And there was a question she had for Jackson, but the guilty truth was that even as they all sat there talking about Ronnie’s watercolours and that small but blinding moment of revelation about Ronnie came to her, part of Iris knew she could use it as a way of going forward with him. Getting in a room with him, shouting, accusing, looking him in the eye, at least so she could know for once and for all whether she could believe a word Jackson said.
