‘Excuse me.’ She ducks into the nearest toilet and sits on the closed lid as she tries to calm down. I can do this, she tells herself, I have to do this.

It’s fear she feels, pure fear for what’s going to happen next and how little she can control it. Outside the taps run, hand driers blow and doors slam. She unrolls the tissue and wipes her tears. This is hard. It’s too hard. How can she do it? How can she open herself up to so many possibilities like this?

Outside the cubicle two women have a conversation about their joint fortieth birthday afternoon tea at the Burj Al Arab. Emma would have turned forty this August. She would have hated the extravagance of doing something so opulent.

As the women’s voices withdraw, Yvonne emerges from the cubicle. She splashes water on her face and reapplies her make-up. She has to remind herself that even if Emma was still alive, it’s not a guarantee that they would still be friends. They would probably never have been those middle-aged women going on holiday together. The thought hurts her, because it opens up too many what ifs, all these parallel things which might have happened had Emma lived.

Kiama sits on the floor outside, his long legs in the skinny jeans straight out in front.

The departures board announces the last call for flight EK225 and a shrinking crowd makes its way through the gate.

He turns over the luggage tag on Yvonne’s bag in his hand. ‘Your name wasn’t always Olsson, was it?’

‘No.’

‘You were married?’

‘Yes, for three years. But I liked having a name different from the one I grew up with, so never bothered changing it back.’

‘Bet the press couldn’t find you so easily then either?’

‘No. But they mostly left me alone.’

‘Wasn’t that easy to disappear with my name. Some journalist came to the school once, walked into the playground at home time as if to collect me. Completely freaked me out.’

‘I’m sorry. They weren’t supposed to do that.’ A national paper had published Kiama’s picture a week after Emma’s death. Yvonne’s brother Claude had seen it first and brought it over to her flat. It was terrible to know that people were reading about what happened, looking at Kiama’s little face and feeling sorry for him. But this, the idea that someone would actually try to seek him out, was worse.

Yvonne should have been there when this happened; she should have been able to stop it.

One of the air hostesses makes another call, shooting Yvonne a look. ‘Last call for Flight EK225,’ she repeats, ‘Very last call.’

Kiama sighs, ‘I know this isn’t your idea of a holiday, it’s not mine either.’