Chapter 1

The board said delayed at six forty seven pm.

Then at seven fifteen it said delayed again with a new estimated departure that nobody believed.

By eight pm the gate area had developed the specific atmosphere of people who had accepted that they were not going anywhere soon and had begun the process of making peace with that. Laptops open, shoes off, children asleep across seats, a man near the window talking loudly on his phone about something that could clearly have been an email.

Nora had been at gate C14 since five thirty.

She had a connecting flight she was now definitely missing, a hotel in a...