If I told my new friend the truth, our friendship would be over

‘Achoo!’ was the first thing the girl sitting next to me on the plane said as I took my seat beside her. She groaned and blew her nose, coughed, spluttered, and apologised. ‘It’s hay fever, honestly,’ she said. She was in the window seat, I was in the middle. The older lady beside me in the aisle seat grimaced.

‘Please, don’t worry,’ I said to the sneezing girl. ‘I’m so over it. I couldn’t care less if it’s hay fever or if it’s Covid.’

She smiled, fumbled, and offered me a Strepsil, that well-known cure for the effects of pollen. I liked her immediately – something about her fidgety energy, her tousled short hair – so I took a cough sweet even though I don’t like them. She popped it out of its blister pack and it flew down between the sticky budget airline seat arms.

I poked my hand down, retrieved it from an absolutely filthy little nook and put it in my mouth.