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.

Not large. That is the point. Nothing in this story is large except the thing at the end of it.

All four fall within forty-eight hours of meetings about the ownership of those thirteen patents.

Four out of four. Not four out of forty.

Daxon put those two columns on a tablet, turned it round, and said nothing at all.

That is how you show somebody something when you have been a chief financial officer for nine years and you have worked out that whatever you say next will be the thing they remember you saying.

I looked at it for about four minutes. He drank his coffee.

But the money is not the point, and it took Daxon about four minutes to make me understand why.

The seat is.

Because the patent licensing agreement — mine, the one everything rests on — has an automatic renewal clause.

And that clause depends on my remaining an active member of the board.