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.

He did not move it and he did not move himself.

Instead he looked at me with irritation, as though my arrival had interrupted something important.

He said: she gets terrible airsickness. I told her to sit here. Go back to row five.

Row five is behind the galley, eleven rows back.

It is where the junior analysts sit, next to the toilet, in the two seats that do not recline because of the bulkhead.

He did not pick a row at random. He picked the furthest seat on that aircraft from the one I was standing next to.

His executive team watched from their seats. Eleven of them, plus crew, plus his mother.

And before I could answer, his mother spoke from behind me.

Which means she was already standing in that aisle. Behind me. Close enough to be heard by the first four rows.

A woman of sixty-eight does not happen to be standing in the aisle of an aircraft at the exact moment her son's wife walks into a problem.