Departures: Seven Stories from Heathrow

‘They do courses for people who, er, don’t like to fly,’ he said. ‘British Airways had a course called Fear of Flying – please don’t do that, darling’ (this to his daughter) ‘– and now they call it, um, Flying With Confidence.’
Zoe laughed bitterly. ‘That’s a smart move. Flying With Confidence sounds a lot more positive than Fear of bloody Flying.’
Nick looked hurt. ‘But that’s a good thing, isn’t it? To be positive about the . . . aversion.’

‘It says here,’ he said, ‘that twenty-five per cent of people have some fear of flying and around ten per cent have a real psychological phobia.’
‘But I’m not afraid of flying,’ Zoe insisted.
In the silence her husband, Nick, and their daughter, Sky, smiled at her sympathetically, as if forgiving her this blatant lie.

I am not weak, she thought, so vehemently that she almost said it out loud. I’m not, I’m not, I’m not.

When a girl grows up heavily outnumbered by brothers, Zoe thought, she learns to take the knocks, and never to let them see you cry, and always to be tougher than they expect.