different from the economy cabin, where thirty-three rows of nine are afforded a three-inch recline.
“Are we nearly there yet?” asks a man in one of the center seats, traveling alone. I laugh politely, although he’s the fourth passenger to ask the question, each convinced of their own originality. Behind him, a sweet couple has retracted the privacy barrier between them and reclined their seats to an identical angle. On their screens, the same film plays, with a synchronicity only achievable by design. Newlyweds, perhaps, although if they are, the passenger list tells me she’s kept her surname.
“May I have another blanket?” The woman’s in her late twenties, with a riot of auburn ringlets held back by a wide band. “I’m freezing.”
“Ginny’s part lizard. Needs a heat lamp to be truly happy.” Her partner’s older than her, lines etched on his brow. He smiles as he speaks, but his eyes don’t sparkle the way hers do.
“Well, you’ll be glad to know it’s twenty-five degrees in Sydney right now,” I tell them. “How long are you there for?”
“Three weeks.” Ginny bounces upright as though propelled by the force of her announcement. “We’re eloping!”
“Gosh, that’s exciting.” I think of my wedding to Adam—church, family photos, hotel reception—and of the week we spent in Greece afterward. Conventional, perhaps, but reassuringly so. It felt solid. Safe.
“Ginny!”
“What? It doesn’t matter now, Doug—we’ve done it. No one can stop us.”
“Even so.” He puts in his earphones, and Ginny flushes, her excitement squashed. I leave them to their film, but although they’re sitting just as close as they were, something’s shifted between them, and I’m uneasy for them. For her. I feel a sudden sadness for the couple Adam and I were, on that Greek island, and for the way we have ended up. Every relationship changes when you have children, no matter what route you take, but a child with special needs places pressure on a relationship that neither of us was prepared for. My response was to search for solutions, to read everything I could about adoption trauma and attachment disorder.
Adam’s was to run away.
He was physically present—when he wasn’t at work—but emotionally, I started to lose him years ago. I don’t know if that was when the affairs started, and I don’t know how many there have been; Katya is the only one I’ve been certain of.
I asked him once. I’d found a bank card for an account I hadn’t known existed, then realized he’d changed the passcode for his phone to one I didn’t know.
“Are you having an affair?”
“No!”
“Then why change your code?”
“I put the wrong one in three times. I had to change it.” The lie was written all over his face.
I’m summoned to a seat across the aisle, where an older man with round glasses and thinning hair is frowning at his laptop. “There’s still no Wi-Fi.”
“No, I’m sorry. They’re doing their best to find out what the problem is, but—”
“Will it be sorted soon?”
I resist the temptation to press my fingers to my temples and gaze into an invisible crystal ball. “I don’t know. I’m so sorry for the inconvenience.”
“Only I need it for work.” The man looks at me expectantly, as though the power to mend the Wi-Fi network lies entirely within my hands. “It’s a very long flight.”
“It certainly is.”
The flight crew is almost ready for the first handover. Cesca and Mike will go upstairs to the relief bunks for six hours; by the time they return, we’ll be halfway to Sydney. There’s a second rest area at the back of the plane for the cabin crew, accessed via a locked door in the rear galley. Eight small bunks, foam barriers and a curtain between each. I doubt I’ll sleep much during my first break, but it’ll be a different story by the second. The whole crew will be back on duty two hours before arrival, with strict instructions from Dindar to be box-fresh for the landing photos.
We’ll have a couple of days in Sydney before the return flight. It’ll be great to explore the city but even better to revel in sleep undisturbed by Sophia’s screams. She’s had nightmares every night for months, no matter what bedtime routine we adopt, no matter where she sleeps. I wake, heart pounding, running down the landing to find her bolt upright in bed, stiff and unyielding in my arms for a second or two before she lets herself be held. “Maybe she’s missing Katya,” I said once to Adam. The implication