“Uh, yes, I think so. That sounds right.” She nodded again.
“Cool. You’re gonna want to pack a few things that won’t be on your list.” Big Sister Sarah kicked in and I retrieved a pen and paper to take notes as she dictated. Insider info is the best.
***
Two days later, at a ridiculous hour of the morning—7:00am—I was standing on the footpath outside a large inner-London hotel amid the bustle of travellers lugging their luggage. Peering at my phone, I re-read the confirmation email for the tour, which included the tour code. I looked along the line of identical buses—I counted eight—and back at the tour code. How was I supposed to know which one was mine?
“Hi. Can I help?” said a friendly Australian voice to my left. I looked up to see a guy in his mid-twenties wearing a shirt with the Ventureseek logo embroidered on the pocket.
“Uh, yes, please. I’m not sure which bus I’m on. Here’s my tour code.” I showed him the screen of my phone and he read it, his head at an awkward angle.
He lifted his eyes to meet mine. “You’re in luck. That’s my tour. I’m the driver—Tom—and this is our coach.” He indicated the closest bus and I made a mental note to call it a ‘coach’. “Here, let me take that,” he said, indicating my case. I passed over the handle and he expertly retracted it and slid the case into the hold under the bus—sorry, coach. When he turned around, he pointed to the leather messenger bag slung across my body. “That one stays with you.”
“Oh, lovely. Thank you.” The coach thing sorted, my mind leapt to caffeination—I am next-door-to-useless without my morning tea and it was excruciatingly early for a Saturday. “Uh, do you know where I can get a cup of tea?” I also needed a wee, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.
“There’s a café in there. It has decent tea.” He pointed towards the hotel lobby, then checked his watch. “You’ve got about twenty-five minutes.”
I had a sudden thought. “Oh, can I bring tea on the coach?” I said, prouder than I should have been for calling it by the right name.
“Of course! But if you spill, you’ll be on coach-washing duties,” he deadpanned. I wasn’t sure if he was serious until the smile broke across his face. “Kidding, mate.”
Several other people were now waiting for him to take their cases, so I skedaddled. I found the toilets, then got myself some tea and a giant gooey brownie. I am not usually a cake-for-breakfast person, but my only other choices were a ham and tomato sandwich, which had seen better days, or a floppy croissant. I was going to be in Paris that afternoon; I could wait for a decent croissant.
When I left the lobby, the coach was filling up and I climbed aboard, holding my tea steady. I walked down the aisle and a few faces looked up and smiled. I smiled back and kept going, passing up several empty aisle seats.
You might not guess this about me—even if we met in person—but I don’t like people very much. I don’t mind my friends or my family or a small portion of the people I work with, but strangers and crowds, and most people in general, irk me. So, I avoid them. It’s a flaw, I know, but it keeps the extroverted introvert in me sane.
When I got to two empty seats about a third of the way along the coach, I scooted in next to the window, tucking my bag under the seat in front of me.
I sipped my tea and regarded the brownie. I didn’t want it, and I wished I’d said yes when Jane offered to make me some toast for the ride into the city. She’d been an absolute gem and had driven me. Granted, it was in my car and I was letting her drive it while I was away, but we’d had to leave home at the ungodly hour of 6:00am—on a Saturday.
I wrapped the brownie up and put it in my bag just as a tall woman stopped in the aisle next to me.
“Hi, is this seat taken?” she asked in an American accent, or it could have been Canadian.
She had a pretty, approachable face which made me like her instantly—a rare occurrence—and knowing I’d have to share my row with someone, I replied, “No, go ahead.” She pushed a large floppy bag onto the parcel shelf above us and sat down heavily with a sigh.
“Gosh, I’m so glad I made it. I came straight from the airport.”
“This morning?”
She nodded and tucked her short blonde bob behind both ears. Her hair was the kind of naturally sun-kissed blonde that screams of good genes and makes you turn an ugly shade of green.
“Yep. Just arrived from Vancouver.” She’d flown internationally and was getting straight on a bus tour—sorry, coach tour? I figured she wouldn’t want to hear me moan about waking up at 5:00am.
“I’m Catherine—Cat,” I said instead.
“Louise—Lou,” she replied.
“Well, we’re clearly destined to be friends, Lou, because your name is my middle name.”
“No way.” She chuckled.
“Way. Catherine Louise Parsons.”
“Louise Eva Janssen.”
We shook hands to formalise our budding friendship, then sat in easy silence as we watched the coach load up with pairs and singles and a four-pack of Kiwi guys who made their way noisily to the back of the coach.
We exchanged a look as they passed by us, only Lou’s look said something quite different to mine. “They seem fun,” she said brightly.
They seem like trouble to me. My teacher senses tingled.
Or perhaps it was being a thirty-five-year-old on an 18-35s tour that had my hackles up. What the hell was I doing? I should have booked a Trafalgar tour where I’d be the youngest person on the coach. I’d get to spend two weeks travelling across Europe with people my grandparents’ age, being fawned over and called “love” and “dear”.
I shook the ridiculous thought from my mind. This tour was going to be a blast and by the time I got back to London, Alex would have realised his feelings were nothing more than a silly crush. Then we’d go back to being normal flatmates, who barely saw each other and squabbled over whose turn it was to take out the recycling.
The large red numbers at the front of the coach showed 7:26am when an attractive woman with shoulder-length brown hair stepped on board and called out above the hubbub of chatter, “Good morning, everyone.” The whole coach quietened down immediately, which impressed me. I wondered if she’d ever been a teacher—she had that air about her.
“I’m Georgina, your Tour Manager, and this is our driver, Tom.” Tom turned around in his seat and waved to us. We waved back like a bus full of schoolchildren on our way to an excursion. “If you do not have a British or an EU passport and haven’t checked in with me yet, come up to the front now so we can get away on time.”
I did have a British passport—thank you, Dad, for being born a Brit—so I stayed seated as two people moved along the aisle, passports in hand. Lou answered my unasked question with, “I saw her when I got here.”
“Oh, good. You know,” I said, changing tack, “I only just booked this tour three days ago—the last seat, apparently.” I figured if Lou was going to be my bus bestie, I might as well fill her in on why I was there.
“Oh yeah? Me too! Well, not the last seat, obviously, and it was Monday when I booked—Monday West Coast time—so what’s that? Five days ago.”