"The removed portion is gone," Lenora said. "It was unusable footage."
"Unusable because the pasta was in it?" Zire asked.
Lenora locked the phone. "I don't have to answer every theory you invent."
"No," Merrick said. "But there is now an unexplained promotional tray, and the existing video starts after it disappeared. That connection will be part of the report."
For a moment Lenora stared at the screen, then unlocked it again. A small thumbnail in the editing history still showed the first frame of the removed section. In that frame she stood beside the galley cart, holding the pasta tray and looking dissatisfied. Bria was just visible at the edge of the picture. It was not a complete recording, but it contradicted Lenora's statement that she had never seen the tray.
Zire said nothing. The proof was already there. Merrick leaned closer to confirm the thumbnail, and Orla photographed the separate complimentary tray for the station record. The neat fiction of a missing promotional meal had finally collapsed under the weight of the thing itself.
Lenora stared at the thumbnail for so long that Zire wondered whether she was seeing her own face for the first time. In the little image she was not the gracious traveler from her polished photographs. She was a dissatisfied woman holding something she had received for free and deciding that it was not good enough. The distinction was small on a phone screen, but it had shaped everything that followed.
"I moved it out of the shot," Lenora said finally. "That's what happened. I moved the pasta because it looked ordinary. It wasn't the experience we'd discussed."
"Where did you put it?" Roland asked.
"On the lower shelf at first. I told Bria we couldn't use it, and she opened the other cart. She said she knew where to find something better."
Bria's expression changed. She had been listening with her arms folded, as though she could make herself less visible by occupying as little space as possible. Now she looked directly at Lenora. "You told me nobody would watch a post about pasta. You told me it would make both of us look cheap."
"I said the presentation was disappointing. That is not an instruction to steal from children."
"You asked whose salmon meal it was, and I told you," Bria answered. "You said a child would recover from missing lunch. You said people would remember your review longer than they'd remember his complaint."
Lenora's mouth tightened. "You're trying to make your own decision my responsibility."
"Enough," Merrick said. The single word interrupted them more effectively than shouting could have. "We have statements to take, not a competition over which one of you can remember the more convenient version."
Roland opened a fresh incident form on his laptop and placed it on the galley counter where both women could see it. The form required him to distinguish firsthand observations, system records, passenger statements, and disputed claims. He explained that he would not record either woman's accusations as established fact simply because she said them forcefully. He would record the permanent meal code, the altered acceptance entries, the advance review, the cabin video, the promotional tray, and the statements from the people whose food had been taken.