She had never made a scene in her life.
She looked at the captain. He was standing very close to her now, in the aisle, a big man with a beard and four gold stripes on his sleeves, looking down at her with an expression that was not angry and not unkind but was absolutely, immovably serious. Behind him, at the front of the cabin, the cockpit door stood open on a gray rectangle of sky. Beside him, in the cream suit, Naomi Morgan stood with her hands at her sides and said nothing.
Catherine looked down at her own hands on the armrests. The diamond on her left hand caught the light from the window. She had not taken off her wedding ring. She did not know why. Two years. Richard had taken his off the night he left; she had seen it on the hall table in the morning, a plain gold band lying beside the bowl where they kept their keys. She had picked it up and put it in a drawer and she had not taken hers off, and she had told herself that it was because she did not want to have to answer questions at the club, and that was true, and it was also not the reason.
She thought: I could stand up now. I could stand up and pick up my bag and move one seat to the right and sit down, and it would be over.
She did not stand up.
"Captain," she said. Her voice had come back, a little. It was still thin, but it no longer shook. "I think there has been a misunderstanding."
"Ma'am?"
"I didn't know." She looked past him, at Naomi, and then quickly away again. "I didn't know who she was. Nobody told me. If someone had told me, I would never have... It was simply a mix-up about the seat. That's all it was. I've flown with this airline for eleven years. I've never had the slightest difficulty. Graham will tell you. I'm sure if we all just..."
"Mrs. Ashworth."
It was Naomi. She had not raised her voice. She had not moved. But the captain stopped, and Graham stopped, and Catherine stopped, and the whole cabin seemed to tilt very slightly toward the place where she was standing.
"You said you didn't know who I was," Naomi said.
"I didn't. I promise you, I didn't."
"I believe you." Naomi looked down at her. Her face was calm. "That's what I'd like you to think about. You didn't know who I was. You didn't need to know who I was. You looked at me, and you decided what I was, and you decided that I didn't belong in this seat. You didn't decide that because of anything I said or did. I said, excuse me, that's my seat. You decided it before I finished the sentence."
Catherine opened her mouth.
"If I'd been somebody else," Naomi went on, very quietly. "If I'd been a nurse, or a teacher, or a graduate student who saved for two years to buy this ticket. If I'd been a woman who just happened to have the same face and the same hair and the same suit, and nothing else. Would you be apologizing now?"
Catherine did not answer.
"I don't think you would," Naomi said. "I think you'd be sitting in 2A, and she'd be sitting in 2C, or in the back, and she'd be telling herself on the way to London that it didn't matter, that it was only a seat. And you'd have forgotten her by the time we reached Nova Scotia."
Something in Catherine flinched at Nova Scotia. It was what she used to say, about Richard. Fast asleep before we reach Nova Scotia. She could not possibly have known that. It did not matter. It went into her like a needle.
"That isn't fair," Catherine said. Her voice cracked on the last word.
"No," Naomi agreed. "It isn't. It's never been fair. That's the thing I'd like to discuss." She held Catherine's eyes for one more moment. Then she looked away, toward the captain, and stepped back half a pace, as if returning the floor to him. "I'm sorry, Captain. Go ahead."
Whitaker cleared his throat.
"Mrs. Ashworth," he said. "Who Ms. Morgan is doesn't change anything about what I've asked. I'd be asking you the same thing if she were anybody else on this airplane. 2C, please, and courtesy to the other passengers and the crew for the duration of the flight. That's all."
Catherine looked at 2C.
It was right there. The other half of the double seat, separated from hers by the narrow walnut console with its little cup holder and its reading lamp. The same cream leather, the same small privacy partition, the same fold-down tray table. Exactly the same seat. Graham had said so. A lovely seat. Direct aisle access. Just for today.