Diana’s heart was still beating too quickly and she was as short of breath as if she had been the one who took those stairs two at a time to retrieve Constance, but the most difficult manoeuvres were now over. David chose a small bench isolated from the main waiting areas, big enough for himself and Constance with space for Diana’s wheelchair. They sat and watched the lounge slowly fill with people, mostly old like themselves, learning to take advantage of their geriatric freedom. Once or twice Diana thought she could recognize a face from her school or college days. She was grateful that her own age disguised her so thoroughly. Only an ex-patient might recognize her, and too few would have reached this age to make it likely. David had lived his professional life invisible. Only Constance might be spotted, but she was in little danger of being approached. People had an aversion to acknowledging their gardener at the theatre or a concert, or on an expensive holiday like this one. Her presence tended to blur their sense of distinction.

Still, as an isolated little group, they attracted people’s curiosity. Constance stayed so attached to the wheelchair she would appear to be Diana’s attendant. Even when they were pre-boarded, Constance didn’t surrender the chair to a cabin attendant but pushed it herself, and David stayed carefully and protectively behind them not to be trapped again with the chair between him and Constance.

‘Would you like the window seat?’ Diana asked her.

‘All right,’ Constance said.

‘Let me be on the aisle,’ David suggested.

So Diana settled herself between them, a placing that would have made her faintly claustrophobic under any other circumstance, but with Constance in her seat belt and with David there on the other side, Diana could finally relax into excitement and remember how much she loved to travel.

As the plane taxied out on to the runway, Diana turned to David and said, ‘I love the take-off.’

‘Do you?’ he said, surprised.

‘Don’t you?’

‘Well, I’m glad I’m not the pilot,’ David said.

He didn’t seem nervous so much as resigned. Constance looked out of the window. As the engines revved up, she reached over and took Diana’s hand. Diana reached over and took David’s.

‘This is wonderful of you, you know,’ Diana said to him.

After his pre-lunch gin, David’s mood lifted. He began naming the mountains for Constance. As he leaned across Diana in order to see, sometimes using her shoulder for balance as he half-stood, she recognized the casual physical intimacy from her girlhood which made such absolute claim, making no claim at all. Her own gesture had had to be deliberate.

‘What a silly picnic,’ Constance said, as they sat in a row with their elbows carefully tucked in at their sides. ‘Everything is either too hot or too cold.’