Here One Moment
About this book
The passengers expect an uneventful domestic flight until an older woman walks down the aisle assigning each person a cause and age of death. Most dismiss the episode as strange theatre, but the predictions remain difficult to forget once the flight lands.
When events begin to resemble what she announced, the people she named respond in sharply different ways. Some reorganise their lives around avoidance, some pursue the woman for answers, and others discover that fear can distort a family long before any prophecy comes true.
Liane Moriarty moves among the passengers and the mysterious forecaster, giving the premise consequences beyond a puzzle about accuracy. The novel is interested in risk, coincidence, and how readily a statistical possibility becomes a personal command.
Here One Moment combines an ensemble family drama with speculative suspense. Its central question is less whether fate exists than what happens when ordinary people begin treating an uncertain future as settled fact.
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From the opening
Chapter 1
Later, not a single person will recall seeing the lady board the flight at Hobart Airport.
Nothing about her appearance or demeanor raises a red flag or even an eyebrow.
She is not drunk or belligerent or famous.
She is not injured, like the bespectacled hipster with his arm scaffolded in white gauze so that one hand is permanently pressed to his heart, as if he’s professing his love or honesty.
She is not frazzled, like the sweaty young mother trying to keep her grip on a slippery baby, a furious toddler, and far too much carry-on.
She is not frail, like the stooped elderly couple wearing multiple heavy layers as if they’re off to join Captain Scott’s Antarctic expedition.
She is not grumpy, like the various middle-aged people with various middle-aged things on their minds, or the flight’s only unaccompanied minor: a six-year-old forced to miss his friend’s laser-tag party because his parents’ shared custody agreement requires him to be on this flight to Sydney every Friday afternoon.
She is not chatty, like the couple so eager to share details of their holiday you can’t help but wonder if they’re working undercover for a Tasmanian state government tourism initiative.
She is not extremely pregnant like the extremely pregnant woman.
She is not extremely tall like the extremely tall guy.
She is not quivery from fear of flying or espresso or amphetamines (let’s hope not) like the jittery teen wearing an oversized hoodie over very short shorts that makes it look like she’s not wearing any pants, and someone says she’s that singer dating that actor, but someone else says no, that’s not her, I know who you mean, but that’s not her.
She is not shiny-eyed like the shiny-eyed honeymooners flying to Sydney still in their lavish bridal clothes, those crazy kids, leaving ripples of goodwill in their wake, and even eliciting a reckless offer from a couple to give up their business-class seats, which the bride and groom politely but firmly refuse, much to the couple’s relief.
The lady is not anything that anyone will later recall.
The flight is delayed. Only by half an hour. There are scowls and sighs, but for the most part passengers are willing to accept this inconvenience. That’s flying these days.
At least it’s not canceled. “Yet,” say the pessimists.
The PA crackles an announcement: Passengers requiring special assistance are invited to board.
“Told you so!” The optimists jump to their feet and sling bags over their shoulders.
While boarding, the lady does not stop to tap the side of the plane once, twice, three times for luck, or to flirt with a flight attendant, or to swipe frantically at her phone screen because her boarding pass has mysteriously vanished, it was there just a minute ago, why does it always do that?
The lady is not useful, like the passengers who help parents and spouses find vanished boarding passes, or the square-shouldered, square-jawed man with a gray buzz cut who effortlessly helps hoist bags into overhead bins as he walks down the aisle of the plane without breaking his stride.
Once all passengers are boarded, seated, and buckled, the pilot introduces himself and explains there is a “minor mechanical issue we need to resolve” and “passengers will appreciate that safety is paramount.” The cabin crew, he points out, with just the hint of a smile in his deep, trustworthy voice, is also only hearing about this now. (So leave them be.) He thanks “folks” for their patience and asks them to sit back and relax, they should be on their way in the next fifteen minutes.
They are not on their way in fifteen minutes.
The plane sits on the tarmac without moving for ninety-two horrendous minutes. This is just a little longer than the expected flight time.
Eventually the optimists stop saying, “I’m sure we’ll still make it!”
Everyone is displeased: optimists and pessimists alike.
During this time, the lady does not press her call button to tell a flight attendant about her connection or dinner reservation or migraine or dislike of confined spaces or her very busy adult daughter with three children who is already on her way to the airport in Sydney to pick her up, and what is she meant to do now?
She does not throw back her head and howl for twenty excruciating minutes, like the baby, who is really just manifesting everyone’s feelings.
She does not request the baby be made to stop crying, like the three passengers who all seem to have reached middle age with the belief that babies stop crying on request.
She does not politely ask if she may please get off the plane now, like the unaccompanied minor, who reaches his limit forty minutes into the delay and thinks that maybe the laser-tag party is a possibility after all.
She does not demand she be allowed to disembark, along with her checked baggage, like the woman in a leopard-print jumpsuit who has places she needs to be, who is never flying this airline again, but who finally allows herself to be placated and then self-medicates so effectively she falls deeply asleep.
She does not abruptly cry out in despair, “Oh, can’t someone do something?” like the red-faced, frizzy-haired woman sitting two rows behind the crying baby. It isn’t clear if she wants something done about the delay or the crying baby or the state of the planet, but it is at this point that the square-jawed man leaves his seat to present the baby with an enormous set of jangly keys. The man first demonstrates how pressing a particular button on one key will cause a red light to flash and the baby is stunned into delighted silence, to the teary-eyed relief of the mother and everyone else.
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At no stage does the lady make a bitter-voiced performative phone call to tell someone that she is “stuck on a plane”…“still here”…“no way we’ll make our connection”…“just go ahead without me”…“we’ll need to reschedule”…“I’ll have to cancel”…“nothing I can do”…“I know! It’s unbelievable.”
No one will remember hearing the lady speak a single word during the delay.
Not like the elegantly dressed man who says, “No, no, sweetheart, it will be tight, but I’m sure I’ll still make it,” but you can tell by the anguished way he taps his phone against his forehead that he’s not going to make it, there’s no way.
Not like the two twentysomething friends who had been drinking prosecco at the airport bar on empty stomachs, and as a result multiple passengers in their vicinity learn the intimate details of their complex feelings about “Poppy,” a mutual friend who is not as nice as she would have everyone believe.
Not like the two thirtysomething men who are strangers to each other but strike up a remarkably audible and extraordinarily dull conversation about protein shakes.
The lady is traveling alone.
She has no family members to aggravate her with their very existence, like the family of four who sit in gendered pairs: mother and young daughter, father and young son, all smoldering with rage over a fraught issue involving a phone charger.
The lady has an aisle seat, 4D. She is lucky: it is a relatively full flight, but she has scored an empty middle seat between her and the man in the window seat. A number of passengers in economy will later recall noting that empty middle seat with envy, but they will not remember noting the lady. When they are finally cleared for takeoff, the lady does not need to be asked to please place her seat in the upright position or to please push her bag under the seat in front of her.
She does not applaud with slow sarcastic claps when the plane finally begins to taxi toward the runway.
During the flight, the lady does not cut her toenails or floss her teeth.
She does not slap a flight attendant.
She does not shout racist abuse.
She does not sing, babble, or slur her words.
She does not casually light up a cigarette as if it were 1974.
She does not perform a sex act on another passenger.
She does not strip.
She does not weep.
She does not vomit.
She does not attempt to open the emergency door midway through the flight.
She does not lose consciousness.
She does not die.
(The airline industry has discovered from painful experience that all these things are possible.)
One thing is clear: the lady is a lady. Not a single person will later describe her as a “woman” or a “female.” Obviously no one will describe her as a “girl.”
There is uncertainty about her age. Possibly early sixties? Maybe in her fifties. Definitely in her seventies. Early eighties? As old as your mother. As old as your daughter. As old as your auntie. Your boss. Your university lecturer. The unaccompanied minor will describe her as a “very old lady.” The elderly couple will describe her as a “middle-aged lady.”
Maybe it’s her gray hair that places her so squarely in the category of “lady.” It is the soft silver of an expensive kitten. Shoulder length. Nicely styled. Good hair. “Good gray.” The sort of gray that makes you consider going gray yourself! One day. Not yet.
The lady is small and petite but not so small and petite as to require solicitousness. She does not attract benevolent smiles or offers of assistance. Looking at her does not make you think of how much you miss your grandmother. Looking at her does not make you think anything at all. You could not guess her profession, personality, or star sign. You could not be bothered.
You wouldn’t say she was invisible, as such.
Maybe semitransparent.
The lady is not strikingly beautiful or unfortunately ugly. She wears a pretty green-and-white-patterned collared blouse tucked in at the waistband of slim-fitting gray pants. Her shoes are flat and sensible. She is not unusually pierced or bejeweled or tattooed. She has small silver studs in her ears and a silver brooch pinned to the collar of her blouse, which she often touches, as if to check that it is still there.
Which is all to say, the lady who will later become known as “the Death Lady” on the delayed 3:20 p.m. flight from Hobart to Sydney is not worthy of a second glance, not by anyone, not a single crew member, not a single passenger, not until she does what she does.
Even then it takes longer than you might expect for the first person to shout, for someone to begin filming, for call buttons to start lighting up and dinging all over the cabin like a pinball machine.
Chapter 2
It’s been forty-five minutes since takeoff and the atmosphere on board is quiet, stoic, only a touch aggrieved. The delay, when time slowed and stretched and thinned so that every minute lasted its full quota of sixty seconds, is in the past. Time is once again ticking by at its usual brisk invisible pace.
A “light snack” of almonds, pretzels, crackers, and salsa has been served in the main cabin. The five business-class passengers have enjoyed a “light meal” (they all chose the chicken) and quite a lot of wine (they all chose the pinot).
In the main cabin, most of the garbage has been cleared and most tray tables are back up. The baby and the toddler are asleep. So is the bride, while the groom taps at his phone. The unaccompanied minor energetically plays a game on his device. The frail elderly couple bend their heads over separate crosswords. The crew chats in low voices about weekend plans and next week’s roster.
People make use of the lavatories. They put shoes back on. They eat breath mints. They apply lip balm. They see the next steps of their journeys rolling out ahead of them: collect bag from baggage claim, line up for a taxi, order an Uber, text the person picking them up. They see themselves walking in the front door of their homes or hotels or Airbnbs, dropping bags with weary thuds. “What a nightmare,” they will say to their partners or pets or the walls, and then they will step right back into their lives.
The lady unbuckles her seat belt and stands.
She is a lady about to get something down from the overhead bin. Or a lady about to head to the toilet. She is of no consequence, no concern, no interest, no danger.
She bows her head and presses a fingertip to the tiny brooch pinned to her blouse.
She steps into the aisle and doesn’t move.
One person notices.
That person is a forty-two-year-old civil engineer with heartburn and a headache.
Leopold Vodnik, just Leo, never Leopold, to everyone except his maternal grandmother who is dead and an old university friend long gone from his life, is seated in 4C, directly across the aisle from the lady.
Theirs is the first row in the main cabin. They face a wall with a sign that declares Business Class Only past This Point. A curtain is discreetly drawn across the aisle to conceal the luxury lifestyle on offer just a short distance away.
Leo looks like he belongs in business class. He is an olive-skinned man of medium build, with a large, definite nose and a high forehead that ends abruptly in a shock of mad-professor gray-speckled dark curly hair. One of his sisters recently sent him an article about scientists discovering the gene for “uncombable hair syndrome.”
He wears a blue linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, gray chinos, and suede boots. His wife says he dresses better than her. (Not hard. Neve mostly dresses in the heedless, mismatched manner of someone who recently survived a natural disaster.)
Leo has spent the entire flight chewing antacids, massaging his forehead with his fingertips, and checking and rechecking the time.
It’s all over. He must face facts. His eleven-year-old daughter’s school musical is due to begin in five minutes. He will not be there because he is here: thirty-five thousand feet in the sky.
“Obviously I’ll be home in plenty of time for The Lion King,” he’d told his wife when he’d first raised the possibility of flying down to Hobart to take his mother to a specialist’s appointment.
“Unless your flight back is delayed,” Neve had said.
“It won’t be,” said Leo.
“Knock on wood,” said Neve, without knocking on wood.
It kind of feels like the delay is her fault. Why even mention the possibility? He is meant to be the pessimistic one in their relationship.
Who could have predicted a two-hour delay?
Neve, apparently.
Leo checks the time once more. Right now, he should be shivering in his daughter’s school hall, hissing at his teenage son to put away his phone and support his sister, exchanging good-humored banter about the arctic air-conditioning with the other parents, whispering to his wife to please remind him of Samira’s dad’s name, telling Samira’s dad they must have that beer soon, which they both know will never happen because…life.
His head pounds with remorse. The lights are going down right now. The curtains are opening right now. He leans so far forward in his seat he is virtually in the brace position.
There is no one to blame but himself. Nobody asked him to do this. His mother said, Please, Leo, don’t waste good money on a flight for just one day. His three sisters had not been grateful to him for taking on this familial duty. The opposite. They’d accused him of martyrdom on the family WhatsApp group.
But he’d had a strange strong feeling that something was not right with his mother’s health and that he should be there to hear what the specialist said.
When his dad first got sick two years ago, he’d been distracted. He’d just started at his current position and work had been all-consuming. It’s still all-consuming. He doesn’t know how to stop it from consuming him.
And then: the strident ring of his phone ripping him from sleep at five a.m. and his mother’s voice, so loud, assured, and awake. “You and your sisters need to get on a flight right now.” She the grown-up, he the mumbling, half-asleep kid. “What, Mum, what, why?” He hadn’t even properly processed the fact that his dad was seriously ill, let alone the possibility he might die, which he did, that day, while Leo and his sisters waited at the carousel for his middle sister’s bag: she’d checked a bag.
Ever since, he’s felt as though if he’d just concentrated more, if he hadn’t been so focused on his work, he might have saved his dad. He is the oldest child. The only son. He is determined to get everything right with his mother.
So much for strange strong feelings. The specialist took five minutes and charged three hundred dollars to announce that Leo’s mother was in perfect health.
Leo isn’t disappointed by his mother’s good health.
Of course not.
Look, truthfully, he is kind of annoyed by his mother’s good health. It would have been gratifying if she’d been diagnosed with something serious but curable.
Also, painless. He loves his mother very much.
“Oh, well,” Neve said when he called about the delay. At that point he’d still thought he’d make it, just a little late. He’d seen himself sprinting from the gate, line-jumping at the taxi stand—he would have broken his own moral code for his daughter! But then the plane continued to sit sullenly on the tarmac while the pilot made his infuriating intermittent “apologies, folks” messages and Leo lost his damned mind.
“There’s nothing you can do.” Neve didn’t say I told you so. She never did. That was her power move. “Bridie will understand.” He could hear Bridie in the background: “That better not be Daddy saying he’s running late.”
He has been helping Bridie rehearse for weeks. “It’s a small but significant role, Daddy,” she’d told him solemnly when she first came home with the script, and Leo had avoided Neve’s eyes because Bridie is sensitive to shared parental smiles. She is playing “Zazu” (now, right now). Zazu is “a prim, proper hornbill bird,” and the way Bridie instantly embodied the role was miraculous. She has gestures! Prim, proper gestures! She is Meryl Freaking Streep. She is that objectively good. Forget Mufasa. Forget Simba. Zazu will be the shining star of tonight’s performance. Leo fully expects Bridie to receive a standing ovation. And he is missing it.
This is the sort of mistake people regret on their deathbeds.
He exhales noisily, sits back in his seat, and clicks the buckle of his seat belt open and shut, open and shut. The woman next to him lifts her head from her magazine and Leo locks his hands together. He’s being annoying. It’s the kind of thing his fourteen-year-old son would do.
His heart jerks at the thought of his son. For months now, he’s been promising Oli they will do that beautiful national park walk they love, next Sunday, but it’s always “next Sunday” because Leo so often needs to work on weekends, and this Sunday he’ll need to catch up on everything he missed doing today, which does not, by the way, make him a “workaholic,” just a guy with a job.
His boss believes it’s important to achieve a healthy work-life balance. “Family always comes first, Leo,” she said, when Leo mentioned he’d be taking today off, but one of Leo’s key performance indicators is his “utilization rate.” This is a measure of how many billable hours he logs each week compared to how many hours he has worked. His utilization rate is always in his thoughts: it’s a buzzing mosquito he’s not allowed to kill. Sometimes he works a fourteen-hour day but only bills eight. It’s tricky. Life is tricky. He just needs to get a handle on time management. His boss, who has an interest in the topic, gives him book and podcast recommendations as well as useful tips. He’s been working for Lilith for three years now. She’s an impressive, inspirational woman in a male-dominated profession and he’s trying to learn from her the way he learned from his very first boss, who would return Leo’s drawings covered in red ink, which drove Leo crazy but ultimately made him a better engineer. Lilith recently told him the first step to improving productivity is a “comprehensive time audit,” but Leo hasn’t had time to do one.
Oli doesn’t even look disappointed anymore each time Leo says, “Maybe we’ll do the walk next weekend.” He just responds with a cynical thumbs-up like he’s dealing with a retailer’s recurring broken delivery promises.
The woman in the middle seat clears her throat delicately and he realizes his left leg is jiggling up and down as if he’s been electrocuted. He puts his hand on his thigh to still it.
He hears his wife’s voice: Do not spiral, honey.
He couldn’t believe it the first time she called him honey. The sweet feeling of that moment.
He smiles tightly in the vague direction of his seatmate, which he hopes she will take as an unspoken apology but not an invitation to chat.
Her name is Sue and her husband, in the window seat, is Max.
Leo knows this, and a lot more about them, because during the delay on the tarmac he had no choice but to overhear as the pair made an astonishing number of phone calls: “Wait, Sue wants a word!” “Let me give you back to Max!”
Max and Sue are a jolly, exuberant middle-aged couple just back from a trip driving a camper van around Tasmania. It was a blast! Sue is tiny, rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed, and big-bosomed. A silver bracelet loaded with charms jingles as she gesticulates. Max is tanned and white-haired, with a big firm proud tummy. Like Santa Claus back from his summer break. He has the same confident masculinity as the foremen Leo works with: strong, loud men who know what they’re doing and have no difficulty managing their time.
At first, Sue tried to chat with Leo but gave up when he answered in barely polite monosyllables. He knows he could have told her about missing Bridie’s concert, and he knows she and Max are the type to have offered instant sympathy and interest (he gathers from all the calls that they have grandchildren—“Grandpa and I can’t wait to see you!”), but he’d been too tightly wound up to chat.
He looks again at the time. Bridie is onstage right now.
Stop thinking about it.
His stomach growls. He is starving. He refused the “light snack,” because—and this is so stupid—he didn’t want to slow things down. He’d been irrationally annoyed by all those people happily snacking on their nuts and pretzels. He wanted everyone to focus on getting to Sydney.
The lady across the aisle from him unbuckles her seat belt.
She stands.
Until now, she has been a blurred figure in his peripheral vision. If asked, he could have described her as a small lady with silver hair, but there is no way he could have picked her out of a lineup of small silver-haired ladies.
She moves into the aisle, right next to him, facing the back of the plane.
She doesn’t move.
What’s she doing?
Leo keeps his eyes politely on the seat pocket on the wall in front of him. He reads the top line of an advertisement on the back cover of the in-flight magazine: What are you waiting for? Book your Jewels of Europe River Cruise today! “We’ll know we’re old when those river cruises start to look attractive,” Neve always says. Leo has not confessed that the idea of a river cruise already seems attractive to him.
The silver-haired lady is still not moving. It’s been too long. She’s kind of crowding him. Kind of bugging him.
He glances down. Her shoes are small, brown, well-polished, and neatly laced.
She says in a quiet, clear voice, “On the count of three.”
Chapter 3
Well, I once loved a very tall, skinny boy with the most vulnerable of necks who gave me the courage to go to parties and dances when I thought I might pass out from shyness.
“On the count of three,” he’d say while my heart pounded and my vision blurred, and he’d take my hand in his. “One. Two. Three.”
And in we’d go.
That could explain why I counted myself in: I was thinking of him.
Chapter 4
On the count of three, what?
Leo studies the lady. Her face is pale and blank. She seems bewildered. Possibly distressed. It is hard to be sure. He checks over his shoulder to see if people are blocking her way, but the aisle is clear.
He looks back up at her. She is the same age, height, and body type as Leo’s mother except that Leo’s mother would not be seen dead wearing sensible shoes. (Literally. Leo’s mother wants to be buried in her Jimmy Choos. Leo’s youngest sister said, “Sure, Mum, we’ll do that,” while mouthing No way at Leo and pointing at her own feet.)
Leo’s mother doesn’t like it when people “patronize” her. Would it be patronizing to ask this lady if she needs assistance?
He notices a silver brooch pinned to her shirt.
His parents ran a jewelry store in Hobart for forty years, and although neither Leo nor any of his sisters had any interest in carrying on the business, everyone in the family automatically clocks jewelry. The brooch is small, possibly antique? It’s a symbol of some kind. An ancient, old-world-y symbol. He can’t quite see it without leaning forward, which would be inappropriate, but something about the brooch is distractingly familiar. It is somehow strangely related to him. It gives him a sense of…ownership. Vague pleasure? It must be something to do with Vodnik Fine Jewels, but what?
Or is it the symbol itself that means something? Wait, something to do with school? No. University? Thoughts of university lead inevitably to one of his most painful memories, himself on a street, outside a pub, shouting like he’d never shouted before or since, nothing to do with this symbol, although, wait, he nearly has it—
“One,” says the lady.
Will she burst into song on the count of three? Is she in pain, perhaps? Trying to psych herself up to take a step forward? Neve’s grandmother suffers from terrible foot pain, poor thing, but this lady is much younger than her.
Leo’s dad always said that after September 11 he was “ready for trouble” whenever he traveled. “I crash-tackle anyone who behave even a little suspicious,” his dad would say in his Eastern European accent, so earnestly, even though he was a five foot four, benign, dapper-looking city jeweler, a sweet man who never did crash-tackle anyone in his life. “I not hesitate, Leo.”
Would his dad have crash-tackled this woman by now?
I not hesitate, Leo.
Jesus, Dad. She’s a harmless lady! You would so hesitate!
“Two.”
She’s harmless! Of course she’s harmless.
You can’t get weapons through security anymore.
And women don’t hijack planes.
Is that sexist? He hears his youngest sister: I could hijack a plane better than you, Leo.
No doubt about that.
Leo clears his throat. He is going to ask the lady if she’s okay. That is the correct, most appropriate action.
“Excuse me,” he begins, “are you—”
“Three.”
The lady turns, stretches out one arm, and points directly at the passenger seated in the window seat of her own row, a wiry fiftyish man hunched over a laptop, pounding the keyboard with two fingers.
“I expect,” says the lady. She pauses, still pointing straight at the man. It’s as though she is accusing him of something.
She expects what?
“I expect catastrophic stroke.”
The man looks up with a distracted frown and cups a hand to his ear. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that?”
“I expect catastrophic stroke,” she says again, diffident but definite, still pointing. “Age seventy-two.”
The man’s eyes dart about. “I’m sorry, catastrophic…? I don’t…How can I help?”
The lady says nothing. She drops her arm, pivots, and turns to face Leo’s row.
The man meets Leo’s eyes across the aisle. His mouth turns downward in faux alarm to indicate Bit weird! Leo grimaces sympathetically. The man shrugs and returns to pummeling his laptop.
Leo is calm now. No need for crash-tackling. He understands dotty old ladies. She is a welcome distraction from his misery over missing the musical. He knows how to handle this.
Leo’s grandmother suffered from vascular dementia in the last years of her life and the family was advised to play along with her alternate reality wherever possible and safe. For someone as “uptight” as Leo apparently is (that word gets thrown his way a lot, thrown quite hard), he was unexpectedly flexible when it came to going along with his grandmother’s delusions.
He will play along with whatever role this lady requires. “Catastrophic stroke”: Did that mean she’d once been a doctor or a nurse? He remembers hearing about a retired doctor with dementia who spent his days diagnosing his fellow nursing-home residents. He walked around with what he thought was a prescription pad, efficiently scribbling out the same prescription for antibiotics.
“I expect,” says the lady. She points at Leo’s seatmate, Max, who is busy taking a photo out the window of the airplane.
Max turns from the window, grins, ready for a chat. “Eh? What’s that, love?”
“I expect heart disease,” says the lady. “Age eighty-four.”
Max frowns. “Heart…? Didn’t quite catch that, love. Hard to hear over the engine!” He nudges his wife for help.