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.

And the Post-it is hers. Every word in that box was either an airline’s or hers, and I did not write one thing in it, and that was not restraint — it was the only way I could think of that did not put me in there with them.

And at about half two in the afternoon I put it in a box with my boarding pass and had it taken to seat 2B.

She wrote that at my fridge at nine o’clock and she was in 2B by half one.

PART 3 — ELEVEN ROWS

I watched from fourteen.

She took the lid off and she looked at it for about two seconds and I saw her understand it, because her whole body did something.

Then she turned round.

She turned round in her seat and looked back up that cabin and found me, which took her about three seconds, and I did not look away.