A couple of hours later I sighed an inward breath of relief and undid my seat belt.

It took a couple of tugs. I turned to look at the young woman next to me who was effortlessly undoing hers, her attention never wavering from the e-book she was reading.

I had let Hannah Shapiro have the window seat and she had pulled the blind down, which had suited me just fine. A little bit of turbulence had been predicted and the fasten-seat-belt sign had lit up. I had got mine on a lot quicker than it took to get it off. Luckily the threatened turbulence hadn’t arrived!

I craned my head to look at the book that Hannah was engrossed in. ‘What are you reading?’ I asked her.

She didn’t look up. ‘The Beautiful and the Damned,’ she said.

‘Tender is the Night is my favourite novel,’ I said.

She looked up then, surprised. ‘Really?’

‘Really. And I know what you’re thinking.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘That a big man has no time really to do anything but just sit and be big.’

There was a slight crack in the corner of her mouth. It might even have been a smile.

‘F. Scott Fitzgerald?’

‘The same.’

‘Tender is the Night – my mother’s favourite book.’

‘Are you going to miss her?’

‘I already do. She died, Mister Carter.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘It was a long time ago. I was a child.’

‘What happened?’

‘I grew up.’

I decided not to press the point – Hannah clearly didn’t want to talk about it. Looking at her it seemed to me that whatever had happened it hadn’t been so long ago. She might have been nineteen but she still looked like a child to me.

‘Losing a parent is never easy,’ I said gently. ‘No matter how old you are.’