Paula Binici, a thirty-six-year-old contract lawyer on extended maternity leave, is traveling with her toddler Willow and baby Timmy on the delayed Hobart-to-Sydney flight. She is heading to her sister's wedding the following Saturday, where Willow will be a flower girl. The flight has been harrowing: both children had meltdowns on the tarmac, and a kind stranger calmed Timmy by lending him his car keys. Paula sits in the middle seat with Willow on the aisle and a distinguished Scottish man—a professor of psychiatry specializing in sleep and chronobiology—beside her at the window.

As the mysterious gray-haired woman works her way down the aisle delivering predictions, Paula and the Scottish professor observe with amused curiosity, treating it as entertaining spectacle. They watch as she tells nearby passengers about heart failure, diabetes, snakebite, heart disease, dementia, and a skiing accident. The Scottish man jokes that the woman might be sponsored by the Heart Foundation. Paula feels she recognizes the woman's face but cannot place her.

When the woman reaches their row, she tells the Scottish professor he will die of pneumonia at age ninety-one, which he accepts with equanimity, calling pneumonia "the old man's friend." Paula tries to refuse a prediction but is told she will die of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at eighty-four. Paula protests mildly, noting her family's longevity. The woman then predicts Willow will die of pneumonia at one hundred and three, which Paula finds acceptable.

However, when the woman notices baby Timmy, her demeanor shifts dramatically. She pauses, her breathing quickens, and she appears visibly pained. She predicts Timmy will die by drowning at age seven. Paula is devastated and furious, feeling the prediction like a physical blow. The Scottish professor immediately reassures Paula that the woman is a charlatan and regrets having encouraged the spectacle. He firmly tells the woman to move along.

The woman stares at Timmy with an expression of naked pain and whispers, "But you see, fate won't be fought"—echoing the phrase associated with her own mother's fatalism. Paula, now in tears of anger, calls after the retreating woman that it is a terrible thing to say to a mother. Both children wake distressed as the encounter ends.