Fiona S

I used to work at a Bible College in St Petersburg. After a short break in the UK one year, I was in Stanstead Airport, preparing to fly out to Russia again.

I’m very meticulous about my passport and other documents and I tend to know where they are. I checked my luggage in, stowed my passport and boarding pass in my handbag, and went off to the Body Shop in the departure lounge to pass some time. I had to show my boarding pass in order to buy things and I remember checking again that I still had my passport. Then I headed to a café to get some lunch.

Finally, I was standing in the queue in Departures to show my boarding pass, when I heard a malicious, mocking voice inside my head. ‘Ha ha – you haven’t got your passport!’ it said. I had never heard anything like it. I scrabbled in my bag, though, just to reassure myself, and found that the voice was right. The passport had gone.

I should have prayed at this point, I suppose, but of course I just panicked. I raced back to everywhere I had been – the check-in desk, the Body Shop, the café; I tried Lost Property; I told airport security, and they joined in the hunt – but no-one could find it. It looked like I was going to miss my flight and I was nearly hysterical. At that point, a nondescript elderly man approached me.

‘My dear,’ he said, smiling, ‘I do believe you are looking for this.’ Then he handed me my passport.

I turned my head to say to one of the security people, ‘Look, I’ve got it,’ turned back again to the old man, and he had gone. We were in the middle of an open space, and there was no shop nearby for him to dart into. I had a quick look around for him but he was just as invisible as my passport had been minutes earlier. I rushed back to Departures and made it onto the plane just in time.

That was strange enough in itself but the story wasn’t over. Having got back to St Petersburg, I was due to go to a conference in Moscow two days later. I was booked onto the sleeper train with my friend Marianna. The day we were travelling she tried to give me my ticket. I don’t know why, something to do with the passport incident perhaps, but I said, ‘You keep it for me. I’ll lose it.’

After a nap I made my usual elaborate arrangements for Russian train travel. I hid most of the money I was taking inside a bundle of clothes in a large bag, which I could stow under my bunk on the train. Then in a small handbag I put $75, my passport, credit cards, lipstick and a tiny bottle of anointing oil which I use when I pray for healing. I also had a third carrier bag for the rest of my things.

The trip to the station involved first my car then a taxi. I drove to the taxi rank and got out of the car, putting my handbag over my shoulder first and then the large bag on top so that its strap secured the smaller bag. I put the carrier bag over my other shoulder and locked the car without putting any of the bags down. I found a taxi quickly, again not putting any of the bags down, and got in.

As I sat in the taxi I heard that malicious voice in my head for a second time. ‘Fiona,’ it smirked, ‘you don’t have your handbag!’ And I didn’t. Again, I panicked. I made the taxi driver go back, I retraced my steps, I looked everywhere – the handbag was gone. I was risking missing my train. We rushed to the train without the handbag, and I ran up the platform with my bags flapping around me. My friend Marianna was in the furthest carriage, of course, and the whole time I was running up the platform she was laughing at me in my panicked state. She had persuaded the guard not to close the door until I came so the train couldn’t leave – as soon as I jumped on board the door was slammed and the train moved off. Thank God that she had my ticket.

In Moscow you can’t book into a hotel without a passport, so when we arrived I had to get a special declaration from the police. There was nothing else I could do to recover my possessions because it was the weekend. I decided to leave the whole problem in God’s hands, and enjoy the conference.

Back at home in St Petersburg on Monday, I picked up a message from the American Medical Centre, where I was a member. Someone had found my membership card and other belongings – I was given the name of a boutique in a hotel where I could pick them up. When I got there, a girl working in the shop had my handbag. She told me that her father had been walking the dog when he saw cards scattered in the grass. He picked them up and made a careful search of a wide area, finding all my cards, my lipstick, my passport, even the bottle of oil – everything except for the $75, which seemed unimportant in the circumstances. I was very grateful to this man who helped me, a complete stranger, to get back almost everything I’d lost.

I wonder if he was an angel. Probably he was just a kind-hearted Russian, but the old man in the airport..? I wonder.