I will never forget the face of the woman who sat next to me on that flight from Sydney to Melbourne; pale, frantic, crestfallen. Her hands were shaking and her breath kept sticking in her throat. As a fear-of-flying veteran I thought I recognised the symptoms. I’d come prepared with remedies chemical and naturopathic. I offered her my goods.

But her anguish, it turned out, had another cause. While boarding the plane, she had received a phone call: her sister in Sydney had died suddenly in her sleep, and her sister’s wife had woken up next to the body. My seatmate was due in Melbourne to pick up her kids and in that moment – as the final boarding call sounded – she had no ability to process the news, let alone work out who to call for help. So she boarded the plane and had to turn off her phone. I hope to never know what that would have felt like: trapped in a plane flying away from a family that needs you, towards another that will never be the same.

The story rushed out of her as we taxied and took off, raw and unvarnished through her shock. And that’s when we hit the turbulence; the worst I have ever been through.

The plane was jumping and plummeting, jumping and plummeting; the tray tables shook and the seat-bound stewards looked shaken. All I wanted was to be there for the bereft woman but I was gripped by my own panic. The Rescue Remedy wasn’t cutting it, neither was the Ativan – and when she turned to me she saw my face, and offered me her hand.

We gripped each other tightly for 75 minutes, through the worst of the turbulence and the rest of the flight. When we landed, we compared the marks we had left on the other’s palms.

More than any of the drugs, any of the psychology, this is the flight that cured me of my fear. But the gift she gave me was greater than that: a reminder that there’s always someone going through worse, and that sometimes the best we can do in a crisis is to reach out and hold tight.