So what did Iris do? My sweet, small, timid, delicate flower of a sister? She called up the ambulance service all by herself, that's what she did.
-- Ruth Macallister (Prologue)

Importance: These are the words Ruth uses to describe Iris at the very beginning of the book. While this passage is placed at the beginning of the book, she speaks these words after nearly all of the action that has occurred in the book is over. Iris has managed to deceive her husband for years, take down a Soviet spy ring, get key intelligence out of the Soviet Union, and get back to safety in Britain while suffering from an infection brought on by a very recent cesarean section. She has proven to herself that she is capable of more than she believed she was. Still, to her sister Ruth, who knows all that Iris has done, she is just the same docile, timid...