Trouble lay ahead of her.

The line to board the plane had stopped moving, leaving Mia stuck next to a galley where two attendants made preflight preparations. One of them, a brunette with a silk scarf tied around her neck, opened a drawer containing a tray of foil-covered meals while her colleague poured water into small plastic cups. Mia watched them work, gathering her belongings in front of her. She had checked no bags. All she had was a small carry-on containing, among other items, a black dress, a leather tote that held her laptop, a paperback novel, a bottle of Extra Strength Tylenol, a charger for her phone, and an aluminum water bottle. She wore jeans and sneakers and a long wool coat, which she presently took off and draped over her right arm. The flight attendant who had been filling cups of water looked down the aisle. The line still hadn’t moved.

“We’ve got a luggage problem,” he said. His colleague closed the drawer containing the meals and glanced back to where he was gesturing. There Mia saw a man struggling to squeeze a large suitcase into the overhead storage bin. He kept turning it around, pushing it harder, but even from where she was standing Mia could see there was no way the bag was going to fit.

“These idiots,” the flight attendant in the scarf said. “I mean, honestly.”

She smiled at Mia, as if suddenly realizing she was there, then excused herself and slid by her. Threading her way past other passengers, she eventually reached the man and tapped him gently on the shoulder. Mia took her phone from her pocket and opened her photo app. Before boarding began she had been looking through it, trying to find the last picture she had taken of all her friends together. Waiting at the gate, she had told herself that if she could find one, just one, then all of this would have turned out differently. But she hadn’t, so now she found herself scrolling, past shots of Regent’s Park and Broadway Market and her small, empty flat in Islington. When she reached November of last year, the flight attendant had made her way back to where Mia was standing, the bag held high above her head. She looked at her colleague and rolled her eyes. The line moved again.