She’d had Sinatra on the stereo and had picked up Michael Davies because he looked even more disappointed with his luck than herself. They’d spent a while sitting silently together, driver and passenger, brooding on their bad fortune, till a muttered obscenity from one of them initiated a conversation based on the theme of keeping one’s eye on the ball.

“Where’s the risk?” Michael had asked. “No risk, no stress. Take your eye off the ball for a second and a point’s lost, a game. But no one’s going to die as a result of an off backhand. Now take air traffic . . .”

She’d said it wasn’t about death. It was about shattered egos.

He’d said air traffic control had shattered ego plus the innocent lives of hundreds of people.

She’d asked what made him so sure they were innocent. Who was innocent?

He’d said all right not innocent, strangers then.

She’d said statistically many of them wouldn’t be strangers either.

He’d asked her why couldn’t she let him make his bloody point?

She’d said strangers was a relative term. He had some connection with someone on that plane, any plane, however slight. She’d said get talking to anyone, on a plane, on a bus, and he’d find that the school he went to was the same school as that attended by the girlfriend of the other one’s cousin.

He’d said what?

She’d said for example.

She’d said it would be far more weird if one didn’t find anything. She’d said the point was, each plane he’d guided in that night, and every night, would’ve been full of people he had some connection to. However slight. So technically they weren’t strangers.

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And she was right, too.

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He’d said that made it worse. The lives of hundreds of friends and relatives were at stake. Whichever way she looked at it, he had a higher level of stress than a table tennis player.

Though not football players. He respected those.

She’d asked why. He didn’t know exactly.

She’d said the issue was public failure. She’d had twenty thousand people watching her that night.

He’d said twenty thousand? For table tennis?

She’d said perhaps not twenty thousand.

In Barnsley?

She’d said all right, not twenty thousand.

He’d asked if her opponent had been Frank Sinatra.

She’d gotten irritated at his tone and threatened to kick him out.

He’d changed the subject by singing along to “My Way” and saying he’d forgotten what a good voice Sinatra had.

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Michael Davies thought You Too Can Fly by Dr. Frankburg didn’t compare to Sinatra, didn’t even come close.