Page 82 of Secret Paths

“It gets worse,” I say.

“I was hoping it would.”

“The seatbelt sign was on. I needed the loo. A flight attendant told me I could not get up. I told her, in what Karim later described as my most frightening doctor voice, that I was either going to the toilet or creating a public health incident in row twenty-six.”

Peter is shaking beside me. “And?”

“She let me go.”

“Wise woman.”

“I got halfway down the aisle before turbulence hit.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Mandy.”

“I went sideways into a man eating a bread roll.”

Peter presses a hand over his eyes. “Not the bread roll.”

“It survived.”

“Thank God.”

“I did not.”

He is laughing properly now, the kind that makes the mattress move. I should be offended. I am not. The whole memory has softened with time into something ridiculous rather than humiliating.

“Karim spent the rest of the flight apologising to everyone in three languages,” I say. “Then he bought me peppermint tea at Heathrow and told me I had never looked more terrifying.”

Peter wipes at the corner of his eye. “I like Karim.”

“He is very likeable.”

The laughter eases.

The room settles around the sentence.

Peter studies me, still smiling but more gently now. “Do you miss it?”

“Food poisoning?”

“The work.”

I look back at the ceiling.

There it is. A door opened quietly. No forcing. No demand that I step through. Just the question, waiting.

“Sometimes,” I say.

“What do you miss?”

“The clarity. The pace. Knowing that if someone came to me, it was because something needed doing and I could usually do at least part of it.” I pause. “And the people. Not the suffering. Not the politics or the helplessness or the sheer scale of it. But the people.”

Peter is quiet.