Lost in Transit

Pedro and Marta had planned their last morning in London down to the minute. Breakfast at the hotel in Bloomsbury, one final walk along the river, then the Tube to Heathrow in plenty of time for their evening flight to Lima. It had been a wonderful two weeks, and for once nothing had gone wrong.

At half past one, back in their room, Marta zipped up the last suitcase and said, "Passports?" Pedro patted his jacket, then his trousers, then his jacket again. "You've got them," he said. "In the blue bag." Marta looked at the blue cotton bag on the bed. It contained two guidebooks, a packet of biscuits and a souvenir mug with a picture of a red bus on it. It did not contain any passports.

For the next ten minutes they turned the room upside down. They emptied both suitcases onto the floor, looked under the beds and even checked the minibar. Nothing. Pedro sat down heavily and tried to think calmly, which was not something he was famous for. "Let's go back over the morning," he said. "Step by step."

They had definitely had the passports at breakfast, because Marta had taken them out to check the flight times on the back of her booking. After that, they had walked to the British Museum to buy a present for Marta's sister, then taken the number 38 bus towards the river. Marta suddenly went pale. "The bus," she said. "I put the passports in the small gray bag so they would be safe. I put it on the seat next to me when I was looking at the map." Neither of them could remember picking it up.

Pedro called the hotel reception, and the receptionist, a calm young man called Kwame, gave them the number of the lost property office for London's buses. A recorded message informed them that items found on buses were usually taken to the bus garage first and could take several days to reach the central office. Their flight left in five hours.

"Which garage?" Pedro asked Kwame, who had by now come up to the room with a printed map and an expression of professional concern. Kwame looked up the route on his phone. "The 38 finishes in Clapton, in the east," he said. "If the driver found your bag, it will probably be there. But you'll have to get a move on."

They set off at a run. The nearest Tube station was crowded, and the first train they tried to get on was so full that the doors closed in their faces. On the next one, they stood squashed against a man carrying a cello, while Marta studied the map and Pedro counted the stops out loud. They had to change lines twice, and at the second change they took a wrong turning and ended up on the platform for trains going in the opposite direction. By the time they came out into the daylight, it was nearly three o'clock.

The final part of the journey was by bus, which felt almost like a joke. The bus crawled through traffic, held up by roadworks at every corner, and Pedro kept looking at his watch as if staring at it could slow down time. When they finally arrived at the garage, a long building full of sleeping red buses, a woman in a high-visibility jacket listened to their story and disappeared into an office.

She came back holding a small gray bag. "Driver handed it in at lunchtime," she said. "He noticed it when he got to the end of the line. We were going to send it to the central office tomorrow." Marta opened it with trembling hands. Two passports, two boarding passes and a lip balm. She was so relieved that she hugged the woman, who seemed used to this kind of thing and patted her on the back.

There was no time to lose. They jumped into a black cab outside the garage, and Pedro explained the situation to the driver, who took the challenge personally. He knew every shortcut in east and west London, and he took most of them. He also gave them a long and detailed opinion on football, the weather and the price of petrol, none of which they really heard.

They checked in eleven minutes before the desk closed. As the plane finally took off over the gray roofs of the city, Marta took the passports out of the gray bag one more time, looked at them carefully and then put them in the pocket of her jeans, where she could feel them. "Next time," Pedro said sleepily, "we're taking a tour."