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

I said: not yet. Let it fly.

I have been asked about that sentence more than any other part of this and people assume it was strategy.

It was not. I said it because there were eleven people on that aircraft with meetings the following morning, and because I have never in my life been able to make somebody else's day worse in order to make a point.

Through the narrow window in the door I could see her already talking into his ear again.

His face had already relaxed. Eleven seconds, maybe twelve, after his wife walked off an aircraft.

I stood at the top of those steps and watched a man's shoulders come down.

He was not worried. Not for one second.

He expected me back on that aircraft within about four minutes, once I had walked down the steps and had a think and swallowed it — which is what he has watched me do for four years, perhaps thirty times, in rooms exactly like that one.