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sincerity, and she looked back down at the table. ‘You know how old people are sometimes asked the secret of their long marriage and they always say there are good times and there are bad times and the secret is perseverance or whatever, you’ve got to work at it, and everyone says, “Ah, isn’t that lovely and old-fashioned. What a pity we aren’t like that any more.” Well, I reckon the old buggers are right, you do have to work at it and the best sort of marriage comes from two people having spent a long time together sharing a house and a bed and having so much to do bringing up half a dozen kids that there simply wasn’t the time to wonder whether they’d hitched themselves to a soul mate. And then when the kids leave home one by one to go and do the same thing themselves the two old codgers are left together and discover that they’refused at the hip. And maybe that’s actually what love is and everyone more or less knows it but doesn’t like to admit it because they prefer the Hollywood version. I don’t know.’
    Annie looked around. No other couples seemed to be talking this earnestly. Indeed most sat in silence, looking across the crowded concourse, their hand luggage packed around their feet like plumply obedient dogs.
    â€˜And one more thing. I’m in too far already so I might as well say it. I’m not too bad a bloke. No, I’ll rephrase that. I’m a good bloke. I know blokes pretty well. I’ve spent a lot of time with blokes. And some of them are pretty nasty and a lot of them are bloody selfish or vain or they lie a lot, especially to women. Well, I may not be the most sensitive or emotional bugger on the planet, but I’m not nasty and I won’t bloody deceive you, just as I’m not trying to deceive you now.
    â€˜So, Annie, yeah, go to New Zealand, go back home and I hope you find your dad and anything else you may be looking for. And I’ll be here when you come back, and I’m yours if you want me. But if you do want me it’s on the condition that we’re going to get married and start having a whole tribe of kids. Which will probably mean you’ll have to give up work, and I’ll have to earn a heap more money and, but hell, it can’t be that hard, can it? I mean raising a family’s not exactly unheard of. No, don’t say anything. I’m glad to have got that all out. Now I’ll be off.’
    They both stood. He opened his arms to draw her in and kissed her on the lips and then folded her, pressed her againsthis chest and it was like being clamped in a warm cupboard. He kissed the top of her head.
    â€˜You have a good flight,’ he said. ‘And email me when you get there, okay?’
    By way of a reply she squeezed herself tighter against his chest and stayed there a while, her cheek against his ribs, and then she pulled away and they stood facing each other and he stroked the sleeve of her coat and was half bashful schoolboy again and she felt a surge of affection and he said, ‘Be seeing you, Annie,’ and smiled and turned away. She stood where she was in the cafe and watched him till he reached the automatic glass doors and he turned and waved and she waved back, though she wasn’t sure that he’d have made her out. Then she turned and breathed deeply and went to join the absurdly long queue for security, at the far end of which she’d be obliged to remove her shoes.
    * * *
    Some time during the night Annie went to the toilet, then leant a while on the bulbous emergency door, peering out of the window over what was probably central southern Russia. Each settlement 40,000 feet below was visible only as a cluster of lights, joined to other clusters by roads that showed as the frailest of gossamer threads. Annie felt a sense of the world’s vastness, of all the millions down there leading lives as remote from hers as the lives of plants or antelope, people