The Jacket That Came Back
“Ready for something a little hard to believe?”
It was a WhatsApp message from my husband who was working on a cruise ship which had just docked in Noumea.
Not given to hyperbole, for Jeremy this was the equivalent of, “Hold onto your hat because this is freaking incredible!”
Waiting for the photo to upload here in New Zealand, I wondered what the image from New Caledonia might be.
Noumea is a port we’re both familiar with, a regular stop on our comedy cruise circuit. We know where to find fresh sushi and where the good swimming spots are.
I’d been there myself just seven weeks earlier and had a terrific day in warm winter sunshine, enjoying coffee and pastries and a mooch around the shops. That was until I broke my own heart when I realised, just as our ship pulled away from the wharf, that at some point I had taken off my favourite jacket – vibrant blue with a dramatic floral heart embroidered on its back - and had forgotten it was there.
I stood on the promenade deck and watched miserably as we sailed further and further from the cafes where my jacket lay abandoned.
At home, I visited the Annah Stretton store where I’d bought it years before, but manager Faith explained they didn’t make that style now. I cheered myself up with a new jacket – dark denim, green flowers – to wear on stage in its place. The new jacket is divine, but it’s not the one I lost.
I searched second-hand clothing websites and set up alerts in the hope someone might have one they no longer wanted, though I couldn’t imagine why.
Eventually I settled into the idea that I’d had that blue jacket for a long time, and it was someone else’s turn to adore it now.
Besides, it wasn’t the worst travel disaster. Just yesterday, Jeremy had arrived at the ship in Noumea but his suitcase hadn’t. He’d faced the prospect of doing six shows that week in the same pants and socks he’d been wearing on his flight over.
Travel insurance, though – he was ashore today on a shopping expedition – toothbrush, shoes, shirts, undies, the whole nine yards.
Jeremy’s mother had suggested before he left on this trip to Noumea that he could pop into places I’d visited almost two months earlier to see if my jacket was in someone’s lost and found. This seemed unlikely to me, more likely that someone else was enjoying it’s second life.
But before heading back to the ship, Jeremy had popped into a café I’d described to him and ordered himself a coffee. This was where he was sending his WhatsApp message from.
Between his French and her English, he’d managed to describe the jacket his wife had maybe left outside on a chair two months ago? He watched the barista break into a huge smile, and reach under the counter.
“I don’t know who was more excited,” he wrote, “me, the couple from the ship who were there, or the staff of the café. They knew immediately what I was talking about.”
And there it was arriving on my phone, a photo of my favourite jacket. He said he’d almost not bothered, had been to the pastry place next door but it was too busy, but he’d needed a coffee and this place was quiet. “They were so happy to give it to me,” he wrote.
Prior to this, he’d also found a really good men’s clothing shop, and everything was half price.
It was an excellent day for both of us.