My paperback was on my lap and I’d been using a photograph of Daniel as a bookmark. There he was, my beautiful boy, sitting astride the skateboard that Anna had bought him for his fifth birthday. He’d been asking for a skateboard for months, begging for one, and Joe and I kept saying ‘No,’ because we didn’t think he was big enough and back then we lived in a tiny flat on the second storey of an old house in North London. There was no way I could manage the creaky stairs with a child, a shopping bag and a skateboard in tow. But Anna being Anna, that didn’t stop her. She presented the gift to Daniel on his birthday; his eyes were wide with delight as he tore the paper from the present, its shape and weight giving away what was inside. It was a fabulous board, the exact one he’d wanted. He kept saying: ‘This is the best day of my whole life!’ Anna told him the skateboard had to stay at her house, close to the park. She also – pre-empting objections from us – gave him a protective helmet and pads and told him that using the board was conditional on him wearing the safety gear. I could still recall the sinking feeling as I watched Daniel hugging his present, the half-hearted smile I dredged up, Anna’s eyes flicking from Daniel to me, delighted at his joy, desperate for my approval, and Joe saying: ‘Wow, that’s great, Anna!’ (he never called her Mum) and then reaching across to take hold of my hand to let me know he knew how annoyed I was.

I lay Daniel’s picture back in the book, closed it carefully and tucked it into my bag. The closer I came to seeing Joe again, the more anxious I felt. Funny how it was always the relationships that once were closest that caused the most trouble when they were over.

We were lower now, so low that details of the landscape were revealing themselves: a water park, a motorway junction, a shopping mall. I saw the shadow of our plane swoop beneath me, a ballet partner mirroring the arc of the real thing. I thought of Joe, waiting for me, and had a rush of nerves. Here I was – a jolt as the landing gear mechanism lowered the wheels – here we were – a groaning of the air brakes – the two of us about to be reunited because of the machinations of his mother, and it was too late to do anything about it now; too late to do anything but comply.

The man beside me was breathing heavily. ‘Oh God,’ he muttered, ‘Oh God, oh God, oh God!’