You went with him on a couple of shoots after Tilly was born: one to Dublin, another to Cape Town. But it wasn’t what either of you had thought it would be and it certainly wasn’t a holiday, trying to placate a baby in unfamiliar surroundings, endless hours wandering alone or lying in a hotel room trying to sleep while half-waiting for him to come back. A driver, each time, at your disposal, but where to drive to, and when you got there, what to do? It was, in the end, far lonelier than being at home alone with Tilly would have been, and after those two trips, you didn’t do it again.

You think of times apart early on, when you, or usually he, would be away, and of meeting each other again, at train stations or getting out of taxis, and how strange and shy 117you’d feel, wondering if he’d look different to how you remembered him, or smell wrong, and how sometimes, at first, you could barely look him in the eye. You’ve tried, for Tilly’s sake, to talk every day: Cape Town is six hours ahead of Toronto, so you FaceTimed each night at her bedtime, his midnight, but he was inevitably still up, either drinking with the crew or trying to resolve more problems on an already fraught and overextended shoot.

You are trying not to think of it, this prolonged separation, as a separation; as a test.

Anything for your wife? the stewardess’s voice says, and you open your eyes.

Oh, you say, we’re not—just as he says, Oh, we’re not—and he grins.

I think, he says, she needs a gin and tonic too? and you smile and say, Yes, thank you, that sounds good, and the stewardess scoops the ice and drops in lemon and opens the little green bottle and flips the can’s tab with deft, practised movements, and he takes it from her and sets it on the tray table next to his.

Thank you, you say again, and you shift your daughter’s weight to free a hand, and take the cup from him.

Cheers, he says, the twang of his accent making it almost two syllables, like yours, and you reply with your almost-two syllables, cheers, and you touch cups and sip.

To sleeping babies, he says, and you say, Look, I’m so sorry, and he says, I once flew solo with the twins when they’d just turned three, Vancouver to Sydney, with a layover in LA, oh boy. 118

Solo with twins, you say, and he says, Yeah, my wife was away and the childminder was sick, it was like a bad farce, I wouldn’t wish that journey on anyone, and he’s quiet for a moment and says, My sister died an hour before we got there, and then he says, Sorry.