‘Shush,’ he said, looking around to make sure that she hadn’t been overheard. ‘Please, Angela! God, I don’t know why I even told you that.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Forget I said anything, all right? Look, I’m sorry, I have to go. As you probably know, I’m in a spot of bother, and I have a meeting shortly with a bunch of people who want to push me gently off the roof. Can I call you later?’

‘You can,’ agreed Angela, looking momentarily appeased. ‘But if you don’t, George, I won’t be contacting you again, is that understood? Call me today, or that’s the end of it. I’ll take matters into my own hands.’

‘You were always rather good at that, as I recall,’ replied George with a smile and a wink.

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ she said, turning around and leaving.

Perhaps not the best time for a bit of cheeky innuendo, he told himself as he made his towards the lift. But honestly, he needed a little levity in his life right now.

ECONOMY CLASS

Beverley’s flight to Odessa involved an early start, departing Heathrow for Vienna at 6 a.m. before making a quick transfer in a crowded airport for the next leg of her journey. She did her best to sleep on the first plane, but images of her daughter locked in bouts of passion with Pylyp kept dragging her back to consciousness, so by the time she boarded the second, which, to her horror, did not offer business class, she was feeling grouchy and tired, emotions that were only exacerbated when she saw that her neighbours were an elderly man and a seven-year-old boy.

The boy remained mostly silent at the start of the flight, content with reading his comics and listening to music through his headphones, but the man seemed starved of adult companionship and tried unsuccessfully a number of times to strike up a conversation.

‘Are you Ukrainian?’ he asked, breathing coffee fumes over her.

‘I most certainly am not,’ she replied. ‘I’m British.’

‘I used to be British,’ he said wistfully. ‘But when I married my wife, I gave up my citizenship and became Ukrainian.’

‘And is this your son?’ she asked, unimpressed by the idea of a man his age procreating with some unfortunate young woman.

‘Oh no,’ he said, laughing a little. ‘My grandson.’

She nodded, relieved.

‘Do you have grandchildren?’ he asked. ‘Or great-grandchildren?’

She gave him her chilliest expression, wondering whether he was being deliberately rude, before shaking her head.

‘My children are aged between seventeen and twenty-two,’ she said. ‘So I hardly think it likely that a new generation would have appeared just yet. Let alone the one to follow that. Now, if you don’t mind, I must get some work done.’