THE BUTLER

181 souls on board

Everyone on our flight got along so well we all decided to hang out together after we landed.

We picked up our luggage, headed into the city of Florence and packed into a bar. We found we all had the same sense of humour and shared so much in common — most of us knew someone who had been to Italy before, for example. We recalled a funny moment on the plane when Geoff pretended to commandeer the drinks trolley, saying “I’ll take that!” and everyone laughed, including the cabin crew.

The lively conversation continued until closing time in the early hours. We agreed to spend the whole weekend exploring the city together. Elspeth made a phone call and the rest of us were good to stay in her Airbnb.

We had such a fantastic time. On the flight home, we discussed when and where we should meet next, and somewhere in that discussion Julia suggested going into business together. Everyone thought that was a great idea. Anton said he had always dreamed of opening a garden centre, which everyone agreed was a fantastic idea. We hashed it all out there and then — every single detail from the name (Excelsior Garden Centre) to the font for the menu board in the mini café (we would invent a new one).

The next day we all quit our jobs, or in some cases quit school and in one case, a cult. Within three weeks, preparations were complete and Excelsior was open and thriving. Everything went as smoothly as we hoped, and everyone had a role: Alastair on succulents, Reena on hydrangeas, Kelly on fertiliser, Quelntin on trowels, Daisy on lilies, Lily on roses, Rose on cleaning toilets, Maureen on security, and 80 of us on social media duty. It wasn’t long before our success was recognised with a nomination for a local newspaper’s business award.

But then Bill and Carol got divorced and things took a turn. She claimed he had had an affair with a woman from another flight. Bill denied it, and even accused Carol of being constantly critical of him and his Easter watering can display. The rift quickly spread beyond the couple and more or less split our group in two.

Many immediately sided with Carol. They said they could not in good conscience jointly run a garden centre with a man they met on a plane who had not been faithful to his wife. The Bill camp felt Carol was being unfair to him and also claimed they brought in most of the firm’s income.

Tensions rose and it started to affect the business. Some even tried to sabotage the other group by pretending to forget to reorder certain items of stock, intentionally directing customers to the wrong part of the store, or throwing trowels at their cars as they arrived in the morning.

The resentment and mistrust was hurting sales, and the business was rapidly losing money. We ended up losing the award to a go-kart track run by the audience of a 2:20pm Odeon screening of The Mummy Returns.

People started leaving the business shortly after, including me as I returned to the cult. The High Shepherd said no hard feelings. I never went back to the garden centre but I did drive past it some weeks later and saw it had been replaced by a Torture Museum.

Later that summer I boarded a flight to Barbados for a much-needed holiday. When I sat down and glanced around, I couldn’t believe it. It was them. The whole gang. Every single one of them. We all made brief eye contact and quickly looked away. I suspected we were all considering pretending we hadn’t noticed each other. Everyone seemed to be waiting for someone else to say something, but no one did. By the time the plane had taken off it seemed too late to start, so the rest of the flight continued in total silence.

After landing, we were all standing around the luggage carousel. When the first bag came through, Geoff pretended to grab it, saying “I’ll take that!”. Everyone laughed and it immediately brought the magic back. We were all chatting again and it was like old times! Bill and Carol seemed to be on good terms too.

After we’d caught up and the conversation died down, we all collected our bags, then took separate taxis to our hotels and never spoke to each other again.