They reach the front of the queue. They present their printouts and passports. There is extra to pay for consigning two suitcases to the hold. Judith offers to pay. Jomier: ‘Isn’t it simpler if I pay for now and we settle up later?’ Judith agrees. They join new queues to pass through security and passport control. At security a uniformed Sikh searches Judith’s hand baggage. He passes her tub of cold cream and small bottle of Body Shop eau de toilette but singles out a can of Klorane spray-on deodorant. Aerosols may not be taken on to the plane. Judith is angry but impotent against the Sikh stickler for anti-terrorist regulations. How is he to know that Judith is not a jihadist or a reanimated sleeper from the Baader–Meinhoff gang? The Klorane spray-on deodorant is consigned to a plastic bin.

‘You can buy some more in Venice,’ says Jomier.

‘No, I can’t,’ she snaps. ‘It’s almost impossible to find.’

‘Deodorant?’

‘Klorane. You can only get it in France.’

‘What’s so special about Klorane?’

‘There’s no aluminium.’

‘Aluminium?’

‘Other deodorants use aluminium. It gives you breast cancer.’

Jomier waits while Judith goes into the WH Smith bookshop. She comes out with two paperbacks in a plastic bag and a copy of the Independent. They now start the long walk to a far-distant gate reserved for the skinflint passengers of Ryanair. Judith takes his arm again. ‘I’m sorry I got cross.’

‘Don’t apologise. It’s maddening.’

They reach the gate and sit waiting for their flight to be called. Judith reads the Independent. Jomier enters the sum he paid for the checked-in baggage on to his Palm Treo.

They are summoned to board the Boeing 737. Cold-eyed Mädchen in Uniform herd them down a ramp onto the tarmac. They walk in the drizzle towards the plane, climb the steps and shuffle like sheep in a sheep dip looking for empty seats. Jomier and Judith have elected to travel from Stansted to Treviso but they have not paid for ‘priority boarding’. They must sit where they can. Judith finds an aisle seat: Jomier squeezes in between an Italian matron and a bronzed hunk en route to the skiing slopes of the Dolomites. Travel, ‘mankind’s diabolical invention which, for complication, fatigue, danger, time wasted, and nervous expenditure has no rival except war: with the difference that travel costs the shirt off your back, whereas in war at least one is paid for’. Costas in Montherlant’s Pity for Women. In the 1930s, when the novel was written, the shirt off your back bought you a ticket to Venice on the Orient Express: now, for one dirty sock + the 50p wheelchair charge, you are packed into a Boeing. Like sardines.