Poor Iris.

Quiet Iris.

Lucky Iris, who had married so far above herself.

They had built the whole story on a single assumption, repeated so many times over so many years that it had hardened into unquestioned fact: that I was beneath them, dependent on them, nothing without them.

It was a comfortable story.

It was also, in every particular that mattered, the reverse of the truth.

And they were about to find out.