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.

It was: who’s picking Immy up from dance on Saturday.

Because I had said I would. Saskia had asked me on the Thursday.

I wanted to go up that aisle. I had about four minutes of sitting there with my feet actually moving, composing it.

And then I did not, because I worked out that going up that aisle would get me thirty seconds and a row and a story that everybody in Fennow would have within a day and that would be about me.

So I got up and went to the galley at the back and asked the woman there whether she could take something to 2A and 2B.

She said of course.

It was a small box. About six inches. Cardboard, with a ribbon on it, the sort of thing they sell at an airport for eleven pounds.

She took it up. I watched her do it from the back of the cabin.