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.

And she did it because she signed a personal guarantee on a loan in 2021.

Eleven million, against the house, at a point in 2021 where I was deliberately not told anything about anything.

She signed it in an office on her own. No lawyer of her own, at sixty-five, for her son.

I have thought about that a great deal and it has not made me like her and it has made the whole thing considerably sadder.

If that renewal clause lapses, the licensing income goes, and the loan covenant breaks, and she is the one who is liable.

Sixty-eight years old.

She did that arithmetic entirely on her own, over some period of months, and she arrived at a seat on an aeroplane.

It is, and I want to be fair about this, extremely good work. She found the one mechanism in that whole structure that does not require money, lawyers, or her son's cooperation.