We gripped each other tightly for 75 minutes, her lost in anguish, me in a state of panic

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I will never forget the face of the woman who sat next to me on that flight from Sydney to Melbourne; pale, frantic, crestfallen. Her hands were shaking and her breath kept sticking in her throat. As a fear-of-flying veteran I thought I recognised the symptoms. I’d come prepared with remedies chemical and naturopathic. I offered her my goods.

But her anguish, it turned out, had another cause. While boarding the plane, she had received a phone call: her sister in Sydney had died suddenly in her sleep, and her sister’s wife had woken up next to the body. My seatmate was due in Melbourne to pick up her kids, and in that moment – as the final boarding call sounded – she had no ability to process the news, let alone work out who to call for help. So she boarded the plane and had to turn off her phone. I hope to never know what that would have felt like: trapped in a plane flying away from a family that needs you, towards another that will never be the same.