I boarded my husband’s private jet and his secretary was in my seat, feeding him peeled orange. His mother told me to be considerate. I stepped off. Then the crew asked whether I wanted the flight cancelled.

I stepped back and picked up my bag off that armrest.

My hands were steady, which I noticed at the time and which has bothered me since more than almost anything else.

There was no seat on that aircraft worth another argument about whether my husband could treat me with respect.

I said: I know where I belong. I’m not going to fight you over a chair.

Nine words and then eight. I have thought about them a great deal since.

They are good sentences. They are also, and this took me about four months to see, a woman declining to say the only true sentence available — which is that is my aircraft and she will move now.

I was proud of myself for that line for about six hours.

And I turned towards the door.

Nobody behind me asked him to reconsider. Not one of eleven people.

Two of them have worked with me directly. One of them has been to my house four times.

Not this is out of order. Not even Aurelio. Nothing, from the moment I stepped back to the moment the door was behind me, which was about eleven seconds.

I knew exactly how they would read it, and they read it that way, and two of them have since told me so to my face, which I respect.

And then, near the cabin door, a flight attendant came quickly towards me, with two more behind her.

She said: ma’am, would you like us to cancel the flight?

Not are you all right. Not can I get you anything.

A procedural question, asked correctly, by somebody who had made a decision about which of two people on that aircraft she worked for.

I looked at the gold emblem on her uniform.

It is my family’s aviation company. It has been on that uniform the entire time, on every crew member, on every flight, for two years.

Nobody in that cabin had ever looked at it. Including me, properly, in a way that meant anything, until a woman in a navy jacket stood in front of me and asked a question that only made sense if she knew.

He has used that aircraft for almost two years, calling it his corporate jet, and billing the hours to a cost centre.

I never corrected him. Like a great deal else I provided, its ownership had become something he had simply stopped wondering about.