I got on a plane to my mother’s hospital and my husband was eleven rows in front of me with my best friend. There was a note of hers in my handbag that she’d written on my fridge that morning.

Corin took it out of her hands.

Of course he did. He took it off her and looked at it himself and his face went from the neck up, which is a thing that man does and which I have seen maybe nine times in eighteen years.

And then he did the arithmetic and turned round as well.

Saskia got up and went past him into the aisle and down to the front toilet and she was in there until the seatbelt sign.

He did not come back to me. I want that on the record because about four people have asked.

A man had eleven rows and forty minutes and he sat in 2A and looked out of a window.

When we landed he was off and gone before I had got my bag down. She came past me in the aisle and did not look at me and I did not say anything, and neither of us has ever mentioned that moment in the cabin.