Business as Usual

The shop starts filling up instantly with people looking for late-availability trips.

We’re unlikely to make up the money lost during the sunny months but at least the final part of the year should be rosy; the outlook is good – as they’d say on the weather reports while pinning a smiling sunshine on the board.

This extended staycationing has also made customers hungry for a little bit of excitement, so as well as selling the sunshine they ask for, we’re also making great headway on the New York bookings. I can legitimately call our Mercury Travel Club members and tell them that Christmas is booking up quickly and ask them if they want to put a deposit down.

For the first month since starting the Mercury Travel Club we exceed our targets. Charlie and I have a very quick glass of fizz to celebrate, I buy myself a box of pralines from our local chocolatier and Socks gets a fresh salmon fillet.

It’s the simple things in life that keep you sane.

The next day, and in fact every day of the next few weeks, we’re flat out and fortunately for us, the instant surge in demand means that no one is discounting too heavily. It’s perfect for us; one visit and we can get your holiday sorted much more quickly than many evenings spent hunting online. The more time people have, the longer they procrastinate, but if you need something for your family within the next fortnight then you want us to tell you you’ll have a wonderful time, read a couple of customer reviews and just get it booked.

After the bookings we’re busy with insurance, visas and currency; it’s hectic and I love it. Customers come in tense with worry and leave with big summer-holiday smiles on their faces.

Then, rather strangely, it happens: the world becomes deserted, or at least my corner of it does.

When you have children, you don’t realise this. For you, the summer holidays are chaos, confusion and cacophony as you try to balance your job with the childcare arrangements. Then you brave family-weary airports to whisk them all off somewhere far too sunny for two weeks where at least one of you will be badly burned and one will get diarrhoea. So somewhere in the world (usually Spain), the noise levels have risen in inverse proportion to the drop in the UK.

However, right here, right now in the last two weeks before school restarts, there is a bizarre tranquillity. Shops and restaurants are quiet, which I know isn’t great for them, but this is the calm before the autumn and Christmas frenzies so they may be quite pleased to have the time to think; I know we are.

Charlie’s thoughts aren’t solely on the business though. ‘Will you want to go on the eighties cruise with Patty?’ he asks me.

I’d always presumed that I would be going, but of course someone has to look after the business.

‘It would be nice,’ I say trying to be blasé, ‘but if you’d rather go, I’ve seen her onstage a hundred times.’

‘I was thinking that I’d rather go with the wine tour. Well both of us; Peter’s quite keen.’

Uh-huh. Why won’t Charlie make eye contact when he says all of this? He’s only dividing up the work and pleasure after all. Play it casually.

‘No problem; it’s far more you – South Africa, delicious wines, safari, gorgeous sunsets. Quite romantic,’ I say.

‘I know.’

This man is nervous. I need to find out what’s going on.

‘Is there something you’re not telling me?’ I ask.

‘You’re going to say that I’m mad,’ he starts.

‘We all are,’ I say, ‘come on spill.’

‘I think he might be the one,’ he says. ‘I know it’s only been a few months but I can’t imagine being without him now.’

I can’t either. Since the day they hooked up, they’ve been Charlie and Peter; Cheter as Josie calls them. I tell him this and he loves it.

‘You do seem to just fit together,’ I say.

‘I think so, too, and I want our first holiday together to be something really special.’

‘And you’re telling me Patty belting out “Relax” won’t do that? That’s where I’ve been going wrong with my relationships? I wish you’d told me sooner,’ I laugh.

He smiles and I let him pause thoughtfully before he speaks again.

‘Here’s the thing – he takes a very deep breath – ‘I think I might propose.’

I look like a happy version of Edvard Munch’s most famous painting.

‘Oh my God, Charlie, I don’t know what to say. That’s amazing, incredible. Are you sure? Does Peter feel the same? I’m rambling now; tell me what you need me to say.’

‘I guess those are the questions I’ve been asking myself,’ he says. ‘Am I sure? I think so. When we were laughing about the compatibility shelf, all I could think about was spending a lifetime doing all of those things with Peter. I know there’d be no hysterics – he’d help me through anything.’

‘Wow, you are smitten.’

‘And does he feel the same?’ he continues. ‘He comes home to me every night as if he’s always done it and always will. There are two pairs of shoes kicked off in the hall now and it seems ridiculous but I love that.’

‘It’s not ridiculous at all,’ I tell him. ‘I used to love the three pairs of wellies stacked up on the garden step, a black pair, green pair and a little yellow pair with a bee face on the nose. I know what you mean, they say home.’

‘So I’m as sure as I can be and I thought if we have one wonderfully romantic trip together, things might just happen naturally.’

‘I hope they do Charlie,’ I say, and I truly mean it.

I text Patty to let her know that I’ll be coming with her on the cruise and then get on with planning our next travel initiatives; autumn means long haul and then winter sees the flight of the sun-bird. I need to develop a big Mercury Club adventure for the first quarter. I can’t believe I’m planning next year already. I gaze across at Charlie as I work and wonder whether he’ll be married by then.

What a year this is turning out to be.