Halloween 2024: selected horror stories from the life of Katerina Perez

Constant travel is essential to my work. As I embark on my next business trip, I recall several extraordinary things that have happened to me while I have been on the move over the past decade. I thought I would share three of them this Halloween season, a time for sharing scary stories. In retrospect I can see the funny side and I would like you to laugh with me! At the times in question though I had a total sense of humour failure.

My friends and family are always surprised that I keep finding myself in some kind of drama, but if you count the number of trips I take each year (I go on business trips at least twice a month), then the percentage of crazy adventures is not that high, and when they happen I have something to talk about! So, adventure lovers, let’s go!

Story 1 – December 2019

In 2019, my husband and I celebrated the New Year alone for the first time, without our son; we took him to his grandparents. We were still living in London at the time and had invited two couples from Russia to spend New Year’s Eve with us (the day which, in my home country, is the big holiday of the year that everyone celebrates!). However, right before that I had to go to St Petersburg on business.

So, picture the scene: the business trip came to an end, I packed my suitcase to return to London and my mother took me to Pulkovo airport on 29 December, just in time to return to the British capital a couple of days before my friends arrived. I go to the check-in desk and, as always, hand over my Russian passport, which I usually use to enter Russia, along with my British one, my “key” to Britain. The officer looked at the first passport and handed it back to me before moving on to the second and saying: “Madam, you do realise you can no longer travel with a child’s passport.”

I look at her in disbelief. What does she mean “with a child’s passport”? My photo is far from being that of a child. Astonished, I take a look at the passport, and there I see… a photograph of Sasha! I had mistakenly taken my son’s British passport instead of mine because they have the same cover. To fly into Russia you need a Russian passport and I had checked that I had the right one, but my British passport I took without checking from the place I had always kept it. I just didn’t think that my husband had also put Sasha’s passport in the same place.

Then came a moment of panic and realisation that I might not get to London at all for New Year’s. My St Petersburg friends were supposed to fly the very next day! Do you see the irony? They will celebrate the holiday at my place, but without me.

I start calling FedEx, DHL and every other delivery service I can think of to get the document in my hands within a day or two before I fly off. But postal services cannot help me due to weekends and holidays! What was I supposed to do? On social media I am trying to find out if any of my London friends are flying to St Petersburg for the New Year. Friends begin to respond, but they are flying on either 31st December or after 1 January. I then suddenly remembered that one of my Russian clients was in London. With the last of my hope, I call him. It turns out that he is packing his things as we speak to go to the airport and catch his flight to Moscow in just a few hours. This is my chance!

But there is one problem: who will get the passport to him in London? My husband was in France with his parents at that time! I then realise that my house in London is being cleaned at that very moment. I write to my assistant and yes, sure enough, she has just arrived at the apartment. I tell her where the passport is, order an Uber and half an hour later she is already driving to the client’s hotel with only a matter of minutes before he was due to leave. Fortunately she made it in time and now the client is already on his way to the airport with my passport.

There is, however, one more BUT: he arrives at 1am in Moscow and I am in St Petersburg! Like something out of an adventure blockbuster, I race from St Petersburg airport to the Sapsan high-speed train so that while my client is in the air I can get to the capital. The train ticket is insanely expensive but that does not matter anymore because what is at stake is the first party in four years with friends and without a child to look after (you mothers out there will understand!). To the dull sound of the train’s wheels, I book a new plane ticket to London, but this time from Moscow on the morning of 30 December and reserve a hotel at the airport for the night.

I arrive in Moscow at 9pm, at 10pm I still have time to have dinner with my friend Liza Borzaya before I rush to the airport to meet the client at 1am. He comes out and hands me my passport with a smile. This is now the second time in my life that I have been so happy to have that passport in my hands. From that point, everything goes to plan: I spend the night in a hotel, fly to London and land just a few hours after my friends arrive. Everything is ok. We then spent the New Year together, playing computer games, going out for walks and dancing at a live Craig David concert.

Story 2 – 2013

I will never forget buying my first serious piece of jewellery: a teardrop diamond pendant. My whole family had saved up to buy it for me as a special 30th birthday present. I travelled from London to Antwerp to get the stone of my dreams but not without incident. I remember putting all the cash that had been saved into a washbag and keeping it safely in my handbag at all times. I had never handled several thousand pounds in cash before. Shortly before arriving in Belgium by train, I went to the bathroom to put on lipstick, spent a long time looking for what I needed in my make-up bag, put on lipstick and returned to my seat. When we arrived in Brussels, while I was waiting for the car, I sat down in a café to drink tea, opened my bag to pay and – oh, horror! – the washbag had disappeared! I think you can imagine the full range of my emotions I was feeling at that moment.

Luckily, I am by nature “programmed” not to panic in moments of stress, but rather to throw all my strength into solving the problem. My brain began to replay everything that had happened since boarding the train and it became clear that I had left my washbag on the Eurostar. The most logical thing was to go to the company office at the train station and find out if they had found my precious washbag. As they say, hope dies last, and it was nothing but hope that brought me to the Eurostar counter.

What colour is your washbag? Lilac, I said, and judging by his glance I realised that I had not turned to him in vain. He proudly brought out my washbag and I beamed from ear to ear! Opening the zipper slightly, I saw that the money remained untouched. I still remember that moment of relief and happiness and sometimes it seems to me that the emotions I experienced from it were even stronger than those I experienced when I finally bought the diamond!

Story 3 – December 2021

Here is another story about New Year’s. In 2021, I was invited to a special gala evening in my hometown of St Petersburg, an awards ceremony hosted by St Petersburg’s top glossy magazine: the DC Awards. I had to go on stage and present an award in the jewellery category. Delightful. I selected clothes and accessories for the evening in advance because we arrived on a Saturday and the ceremony was supposed to take place on Monday, meaning there would be no time to look for an outfit.

Just in case, we arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport three hours before departure and there were no signs of any difficulties. My suitcase was overweight but we quickly paid for it and went to check our passports. It was there that an unpleasant surprise and an hour and a half of stress awaited us – an endless line that for some reason did not move! 10-20-40 minutes passed and we did not move. When we started asking what was happening and how we could get through passport control, the airport workers told us, rather aggressively, to stand and wait like everyone else because the plane would wait for us. I wasn’t convinced.

We moved forward at a glacial pace. I started to look for ways to get through passport control. As a result, 2 hours later (15 minutes before departure) we crawled to the passport control desk and at last found ourselves on the other side of immigration. BUT! Our plane was due to take off from another part of the terminal and we had to get there by train. Our train left almost immediately though and it seemed as if we could breathe a sigh of relief.

Not so! Upon arrival in the right part of the terminal, we still had to go through a baggage inspection, and, despite the fact that our plane was about to take off, no one would let us go jump the queue! We waited our turn but then the inspector decided to double check my husband’s backpack. I didn’t wait for him: I took my son by the hand and we ran as fast as could to hold up the plane. Just so you understand: I had to run at least 500 meters to get there, with a bag in one hand and my son in the other. Despite our efforts, my husband got ahead of us and was standing at the counter in dismay – everyone else had boarded the plane and they had not waited for us.

It is at times like these that one of my qualities comes in handy: I am a Taurus, and therefore by nature a very patient and calm person. BUT! If you upset me terribly, hold on to your hat because I will headbutt you and hit you with my hoof. In the face of such injustice (the airport workers did not let us go jump the queue and had promised that the plane would wait), a fierce Russian woman was awoken within me and to my mind there was only one possible outcome: we would be escorted onto the plane. We had to make a bit of a fuss (in France this is often the only way to get anywhere), but it worked and we were ushered on board.

We eventually landed in St Petersburg, went through passport control and were waiting for our luggage. You are probably already expecting a happy ending, but… we have not gotten to it yet! Our huge suitcase with all our clothes did not arrive, and neither did our clothes for the awards ceremony! It turned out that the flight attendants had given the order to remove our suitcase from the hold before we boarded the plane, promising to deliver it on the next flight – two days later, on the day of the award ceremony!

I understood that there was no way I could pick out a new dress, bag and shoes in one day. Happily for me, my friend, a stylist, was in town and took me to rent a dress. She picked out a tight red sequined dress for me that I would never have worn on my own. However, with hair and makeup it looked so impressive that the resulting image was more advantageous than the original one and I simply shone at the ceremony!

As they say, every cloud has a silver lining. Whenever I find myself in a scary, stressful situation, I visualise the best possible outcome and that helps me to achieve it.