And was this whole thing about planes born in that other flight back after catastrophe, and did it go deeper than that, to layers of insulation I'd been wrapping around myself all my life, to all the hierarchies of contacts and business associates and good reports and executive levels and salary increments and pay-off guesses and colours of credit cards and classes of aircraft cabin and higher-level interest rates and even friends and lovers I'd collected around myself over all the years, not to keep the world away from me, because people were the world, but to keep me away from me?

My last thoughts, as dawn was coming up and I fell briefly asleep again, were that all this stuff about flying beds and aircraft and sleeping on them was making certain that I'd be so tired and sleep-deprived that I was bound to sleep on the plane; the Gulfstream if not the Twin Otter.  Then, before it seemed I had really got back to sleep at all, the alarm went off and it was time to get up, feeling groggy and terrible and dizzy with the effects of interrupted sleep, and stumble sticky-eyed to the bathroom.

I stood beneath a tepid shower, listening to the wind moan in the vent to the outside air and making my own moaning noise as I heard it pick up and start to gust.

I dressed ethnic, in the long red jacket and matching trousers.  It was only after I'd put everything on that I remembered I'd meant to dress Western.  Oh, well.

My bags were already on their way down to the airfield when i did my usual last look round the room for anything I might have forgotten.  Just a formality, really:  I'm a conscientious packer and I hardly ever forget anything.

The little netsuke monkey.  It was still sitting there on the bedside table.

How could I have missed you?  I thought.  I stuffed it in a pocket of my long red padded jacket.

The Twin Otter landed, I thought, spectacularly.  Not an adverb I enjoyed settling on as the mot juste, in the circumstances.  The Prince, bundled up against the cold, stiff wind, took my gloved hand in his.  The wind was making my eyes water, so I guessed it was doing the same to his.  He asked, 'Will you come back, Kathryn?'

'Yes,' I said.  Dark clouds were moving fast across the sky, torn to great rolling ribbons by the high peaks.  Swathes of snow dragged down the slopes.  The pilots were hurrying the few pallid passengers off the craft and helping with the unloading, loading and refuelling.  The crowd was small.  Gravelly dust was picked off the football/landing field and thrown into the air.

Everything was late; the plane had been delayed at Siliguri with a burst tyre for an hour.  I'd used the time to do a bit of present shopping while the weather worsened.  When we heard the plane had taken off and was on its way I wasn't sure whether to feel relieved or terrified.  My insides settled on both, which just seemed to leave my lower brain confused.

'You promise?'

'I promise, Suvinder.'

'Kathryn.  May I kiss your cheek?'

'Oh, for goodness sake.'

He kissed my cheek.  I hugged him, briefly.  He nodded and looked bashful.  Langtuhn Hemblu and B. K. Bousande looked in different directions, smiling.  I saw a way out of our mutual embarrassment and went over to where my little pointy-hatted friends had appeared.  I squatted down to say hi.  Dulsung wasn't there, but Graumo, Pokuhm and their pals shook both my hands and patted my cheeks with sticky fingers.  I tried to ask why Dulsung wasn't there, and they tried to tell me, miming something that seemed to involve lots of twirling and fiddly work.

I distributed the gifts I'd bought earlier.  I gave Graumo two presents and tried to make it clear that one of them was for Dulsung, but he looked suspiciously surprised and delighted and promptly disappeared.  I hailed Langtuhn, who came over with a big bag of boring but useful stuff like pencils, erasers, notebooks, dynamo flashlights and so on.  We presented this to the children, getting them to promise to share it all out.

We'd just finished doing this, and I'd given away the last of the presents, when Dulsung appeared, breathless and smiling broadly.  She offered me a little home-made wire-and-silk flower.

I squatted down so our faces were level, accepted it from her and attached the new flower securely to my jacket.

I looked round for Graumo but there was no sign of him.  I had nothing to present to Dulsung:  I'd given everything away.  I checked my pockets for a gift I might have missed.  Only one lump remained in any of the jacket's pockets.  The little monkey.  That was all I had left: my tiny dour-faced netsuke piece.

I pulled it out of my pocket, held it in my fingers for a moment, then offered it to her.  Dulsung nodded, then accepted it with both hands.  Her face split into a huge smile and she reached up with both arms.  Still squatting, I hugged her.  The little monkey was in her right fist; I could feel its chunky hardness against the back of my head.

Then it was time to go, and so I went.

I left as I'd arrived, just me and the guys up front in the plane.  Once the ground had dropped away — along with my stomach — I looked back to see the people I'd left, but by the time we turned after take-off all there was to see was the inside of a big black cloud full of jack-hammer turbulence and glimpses of swirling snow.

The flight was horrific.  We got there; we got to Siliguri, but it was pretty damn frightful.  One of those flights where you contemplate death and terror so closely that no matter what happens, even if — when — you arrive safely, the you that got on the plane really hasn't survived after all; the you that gets off is different.

I'd given away my little netsuke monkey.  What had I been thinking of?  Ah, well, never mind.  It had seemed like the right thing to do.  It still did.  Anyway, it was my own fault for almost leaving it in the bedroom; otherwise it would never have been in my pocket in the first place.  A superstitious person would have thought that somehow the little carving had wanted to stay in Thulahn.  A Freudian…well, never mind what a Freudian would have thought.  Luce had asked me once was I a Freudian?  I'd told her no, I was a Schadenfreudian.

During one of the wilder bits of the flight, I found myself touching and stroking the little flower in my lapel.  My hand was on the brink of jerking away again as my brain thought, Hello, is this some sort of rosary scene going on here?  I looked down at my hand as though it belonged to somebody else.  Then I thought, No, this is just a childish thing.  Comfort, not superstition.

Same difference, I thought.

Of course, a really superstitious person would have thought that the monkey supernaturally knew that the plane was going to crash in the mountains and had made sure it was safely on terra firma at the time in the hands of a new owner.

The plane dropped sickeningly and hit another seemingly solid wall of air.  I grabbed the flimsy seat arms with both hands.  Yeah, very fucking comforting, I thought.

Gulfstream all the way.  Siliguri to Leeds-Bradford just like that, in a tad over eight hours; would have been less but for head winds.  I'd assumed we'd have to touch down somewhere to refuel, but no.  The plane's seats were big and broad and leather in a cabin gleaming with mahogany; there was a rest room with gold and marble fittings, up front there was a no-nonsense flight crew and back with me a welcoming but unfussy stewardess who served hot and cold food and drinks that would have earned a Michelin star back on the ground, plus there were today's papers, this month's magazines — some of them women's magazines, hot diggety — and every TV channel under the sun and over the horizon.  I got myself a serious news fix.  Oh, and the flight was blissfully smooth.