Welcome to My World. Miranda Dickinson

a point.’

      ‘Her point being?’

      Harri sighed. ‘Alex is rubbish at dating. No, actually, he’s very good at dating, it’s just that he’s rubbish at finding the right sort of women to date.’

      ‘Or brilliant at finding weird and wonderful bunny-boilers,’ Stella suggested.

      ‘Yeah, absolutely.’

      ‘It’s quite a skill he has there. Maybe he could offer his services for rooting out strange women. He could make a fortune!’

      Harri grinned. ‘Honestly, Stel, I love Al dearly, but I’ve seen him devastated by his nightmare love life so many times . . .’

      ‘Usually at three in the morning, by the sounds of it.’

      ‘Don’t worry, after the last time he did that I made it perfectly clear that my emergency heart-to-heart service was only available during daylight hours.’

      ‘All the same, H, most people would’ve called time on him by now.’

      ‘Probably. But the problem remains that he doesn’t ever seem to learn from his mistakes. So maybe this crazy idea is worth a try. At least if Viv and I are vetting the candidates we can make sure the oddballs don’t get through.’

      Stella snorted. ‘Oh, Viv’s promised to help you, has she? Well, I’ll believe that when I see it.’

      ‘No, she will, it’s all sorted.’

      ‘Yeah, right. I think I just saw a pig in a Spitfire overhead . . .’

      Harri giggled. ‘You’re so cruel. I believe her this time.’

      ‘Good for you. But what happens if Alex – your Official Best Male Friend in the Whole Wide World – disowns you for nominating him in the first place, eh? I would be livid if I found out my best friend had put me up for a magazine love auction.’

      ‘I know. But knowing Viv she’ll concoct an even dafter plan than this if I don’t stop her. At least if I’m there to steer her I can protect Al from the wild vagaries of his mother’s imagination.’

      During the following week, Harri mulled the Big Idea over and over, as she sat behind her desk at Sun Lovers International Travel.

      The scratched metal name plaque on her MDF desk read ‘Travel Advisor’, but a more truthful (if prohibitively longer) description might have been ‘Travel Advisor Who Tries in Vain to Get Stone Yardley People to Visit Amazing Places She Longs to Go to Herself’.

      Sun Lovers International Travel was not as grand and corpor ate as its name suggested. In fact, SLIT (as it was affectionately known by its owner – and acknowledged with a whole different connotation by its staff) was a small, single-fronted shop in Stone Yardley High Street. In its only window, carefully placed posters promised exotic adventures across the globe: Australia, Thailand, India and the USA, by luxurious air travel; whilst the handwritten offer cards Blu-Tacked to the window suggested altogether homelier destinations: Blackpool, Weston-super-Mare and Rhyl – usually by coach.

      Business had been slow all week, and by Friday morning, with all of Harri’s jobs ticked off her list, she took the opportunity to lose herself in a glossy brochure for Venice.

      Venice. The place that had started it all . . . She smiled as familiar images of the city she’d loved from afar for so many years met her eyes. Grand palazzi, elegant buildings reflecting in the deep green-blue canals, brightly attired carnival-goers milling amongst tourists and city dwellers, as if being swathed head to toe in opulent velvet was as commonplace as buying your daily coffee . . . She could almost hear the sounds of the city wafting up from the brochure pages, almost taste the plates of delicious cicchetti snacks or the tangy limoncello . . . One day, she promised herself, as she had done a million times before, one day I’ll be standing there . . .

      She was brought sharply back to reality by Tom, SLIT’s trainee travel advisor and cultivator of some of the most impressive acne ever seen in Stone Yardley, who let out an enormous, adolescent sigh and flopped down on the chair opposite Harri’s desk.

      ‘Bored, bored, bored,’ he chanted, Buddhist-style, staring wide-eyed through his mop of oily, blond curls.

      Harri quickly closed the brochure and smiled at him. ‘Loving your work again, Tom?’

      ‘Oh, totally. “Come and work in the travel industry, Tom, you get to see the world!” Yeah, right.’

      ‘Welcome to Sun Lovers International Travel,’ Harri smiled, reaching across to pat his hand. ‘So tell me, what exciting destinations have you dealt with today?’

      Tom groaned. ‘Barmouth. Isle of Wight. And I almost sold a flight to Dublin.’

      ‘Dublin? Wow! What stopped the sale?’

      ‘Mrs Wetton didn’t realise it was outside England. She doesn’t believe in travelling abroad.’

      Harri laughed. ‘Hmm, well, Dublin, that’s almost another time zone. I mean, they have different money and everything.’ Tom shifted his lanky frame awkwardly in the chair. At six foot four, he was almost a foot taller than anyone else on the staff, so wherever he stood or sat he appeared to have outgrown his environment like Alice in her Wonderland.

      ‘Why do you do this, Harri? I mean, you’ve been here for – how long?’

      ‘Nearly eight years.’ She could hardly believe it was true.

      ‘Yeah, exactly. And in all that time what’s the most exotic destination you’ve sold a holiday to?’

      What was so sad about the question was that Harri didn’t even have to think about the answer. ‘Morocco. And the Harpers didn’t like it because it was “too foreign”.’

      ‘What is wrong with people in this town? If it isn’t a coach tour, they don’t want to know.’

      ‘Luxury coach tour, thank you,’ Harri corrected him with mock disdain.

      ‘Oh, yeah, luxury coach travel. Would that be Somers Travel Direct coaches, by any chance?’ Tom smirked. ‘STD coaches – they didn’t think about that one, did they?’

      Harri laughed. She was certain that Albert Somers, local businessman, who had run his family coach firm for forty-five years, had never thought twice about the unfortunate initials. Yet it was a constant source of amusement to the staff when prim and proper elderly residents of Stone Yardley said things like, ‘We love STDs,’ or, ‘I don’t know what we would have done without STDs all these years!’ or, ‘I just couldn’t imagine a holiday without STDs.’

      ‘I guess we’re just unfortunate to be working with the most unimaginative travellers in the entire world,’ Tom sighed, stretching out his impossibly long legs and knocking over a pile of brochures by a neighbouring desk. ‘Oh crap!’

      Harri left her chair to help him retrieve the brochures, casting a cursory glance across each shiny exotic cover as it passed through her hands: India, the Far East, the Caribbean, Hawaii . . . A brochure on Trinidad and Tobago fell open at a page of colonial houses surrounded by lush green palms and azure waters. Harri and Tom paused almost reverently and shared an unspoken moment of wistful awe.

      ‘I can’t understand why these people want to stay in the UK all the time when there’s this big amazing world out there,’ Tom said, shaking his head. ‘I just want to travel anywhere that isn’t here. So far, I’ve only managed Spain, Italy and France, but I’ve got so many more on my list that I want to see before I’m twenty-five. And I’m glad you understand, mate. I mean – case in point: you understand travel, right? So – where’s the most exotic place you’ve ever been?’

      Harri winced. She hated this question and she felt her heart sinking to her toes. Because despite being so passionate about travel, despite knowing all she knew about destinations across the globe, Harri had only once set foot outside