My grandmother gave away the first-class seat I bought her for her 80th birthday and asked to sit in economy instead. Halfway through the flight a pilot came out of the cockpit and walked down the aisle looking for her.

And all three of them are the same decision wearing different coats, and the decision is: I would rather not know, if knowing is going to be awkward here in this departure lounge.

PART 2

Because of the change we ended up nowhere near each other.

I stayed towards the front and she disappeared several rows behind me.

Past the curtain. Past the galley. Eleven rows and a bulkhead between us, somewhere I could not see at all without standing up and turning round.

Which she would have known when she asked for that row. She chose a seat I could not watch from mine.

For the first half of that flight I could not stop thinking about it.

Not because of the money, although four separate people have since assumed that and one of them said it to my face.

I did not care about the money by the time we were airborne. I have never once cared about the money.

Because it did not fit.

My grandmother does not make quiet unexplained decisions. She is a woman who announces what she is doing, at volume, and then does it, and then tells you again afterwards.

She has argued with a council. She has returned a sofa. In 2019 she made a supermarket manager come out onto the shop floor over four pounds of ham.

That woman does not hand over a boarding pass and say nothing.

Eventually I got up and walked back to check on her.

She was sitting beside the window, staring quietly at the clouds.

Pressed tightly against her chest was the same worn brown leather handbag she has carried for as long as I can remember.

I said: you doing all right?

She looked at me and smiled. She said: perfectly.

My grandmother does not use that word. She says fine, or not too bad, or better than some.

Perfectly is a word you reach for when you are managing somebody out of a conversation and you have about one second to pick something.

But something about her told me otherwise.

Her fingers were trembling.

And she was holding that bag so tightly.

Both arms. Flat against her chest, the way you hold something on a bus in a city you do not know.

Not resting on her lap. Not beside her hip. Held, the entire way, for four hours.

Almost as though there was something inside she was frightened of losing.