The Cruise That Never Left the Car Park

How it begins

Diana Brooks announced the third delay in her best cruise voice.

'Ladies and gentlemen, we appreciate your patience.'

The coach had not moved for two hours. Outside, the terminal café had begun selling lunch to people promised breakfast by the sea.

The brochure called the journey a cruise on wheels. Diana called it a forty-eight-seat vehicle with a transmission warning and a passenger who had already asked whether the toilet counted as a port.

Arthur Dean sat in the front row, studying a luggage label.

'This bag has arrived,' he said.

'No bags have arrived anywhere.'

'Mine has.'

He showed her his telephone. A message from the destination hotel confirmed delivery of one brown suitcase to his room. The photograph attached showed the case beside a window overlooking a harbor Diana had hoped to see before noon.

She looked through the windscreen at the car park.

'Another case?'

'It has my wife's ribbon on the handle.'

Arthur had worked in luggage services for thirty years. He said the word ribbon with the respect other people reserved for official seals.

Diana checked the compartment below the coach. The space where his bag should have been was empty. Nobody had unloaded. She had stood beside the hatch herself when they closed it.

Behind her, passengers began gathering at the window. A delay was unfortunate; a disappearing suitcase offered participation.

She asked Arthur to remain beside her while she called the hotel. The receptionist confirmed the delivery and added that Mr Dean had signed for it.

Arthur looked at his own hands.

'I haven't left this seat.'

From inside the coach came a small, deliberate cough. A woman in row five lowered her magazine too late.

Diana ended the call and picked up the passenger manifest. For the first time that morning, a vehicle that had traveled nowhere seemed to have taken somebody a considerable distance from the truth.