Our eyes met as usual. And his dimples at such close range were enough to make me take leave of my senses. I nearly spoke to him. Thankfully I stopped myself at the last second because I hadn’t completely lost my marbles. But he nearly spoke to me too. In fact, we were barely saved from a lifetime of awkward conversation by arriving at a station – his stop today, but not his usual stop. Why is he getting off here when he doesn’t usually? Judging by the suitcase and array of bags, he’s obviously going somewhere, and judging by the panicked looks he keeps giving his phone, he doesn’t have much time to get there.
I don’t mean to watch him, but he’s tall enough to unintentionally draw the eye, and I’m short enough to be hidden by other passengers, so he can’t see me lurking behind him, watching the way long, sexy fingers wrap around the handle of his suitcase as he waits for the door to open. I see him give a final glance at his phone before he slips it back into his pocket. Except, he doesn’t slip it back into his pocket. He thinks he has, but I’m the only one who’s noticed that he missed, and in the clamour of the doors opening, he hasn’t heard it clatter to the floor.
I grab it before it gets caught in the stampede, and make a split-second decision to run after him to return it, but I may have been slightly lax on my gym visits lately, and he runs out of there at a speed that would make Sonic the Hedgehog jealous.
I don’t catch him. And I now I have his phone.
And I’ve managed to unlock it. I am inside the private life of Train Man. I’ve read his texts. I’ve seen his photos. I know what grocery shopping he bought last week and that he ordered a pizza last night. I know he likes the same things I like, that there are no texts to a significant other, and I’ve happened to notice on our shared journeys that he doesn’t wear a wedding ring.
Could a guy so friendly and gorgeous really be single? Could my silent flirtation with Train Man really mean something? Have we defied the laws of public transport because of a deeper meaning? Has the universe thrown us into each other’s path for a reason that we can’t yet see?
I have his phone. I have to get it back to him. But I have to find him first …
Daph warned me to only expect a response from Zinnia if she hates it, so I take the silence as a good sign and get on with fact-checking the stack of articles piled up in my inbox. Well, between obsessively refreshing the website to see when it goes live, obviously.
It’s not perfect; I know that. I’m sure it’ll fade into the depths of Maîtresse’s site and be read by approximately four people, three of whom will be me, Daph, and Zinnia double-checking ad placement, and any hopes of seeing my name in print and starting a real career will be gone forever. But it was fun to write, even if my promotion to features writer only lasts a morning.
I’ve just sat on the sofa and put Netflix on that evening, and I’m scrolling through the recently added things, having already watched pretty much the whole catalogue, when the phone rings. I’ve left Nathaniel’s phone on the kitchen unit next to mine, and as I shove my microwave meal onto the coffee table and run to get it, I notice it’s his phone that’s vibrating across the counter towards the sink. I grab it and slide the screen up to answer without even glancing at it.
‘Hi, this is Nathaniel’s phone.’
‘Hi, this is Nathaniel.’ He pauses and my heart jumps into my throat. I pull the phone away from my ear and look at the number onscreen, a mobile number that’s not saved in his contacts. It must be him on another phone. Maybe it’s just as well I didn’t know – he’d have rung off by the time I’d psyched myself up to speak to him.
‘No, wait, it’s Nathan. Only people who hate me call me Nathaniel. Where did you get that name from?’
‘I texted the first name in your directory.’
‘Who was … oh no, don’t tell me. Alan? I take it he gave a suitably charming response?’
‘He, er, didn’t seem to like you very much …’
‘The feeling’s entirely mutual.’ He sighs. ‘What did he say?’
‘Um …’ I don’t feel particularly comfortable repeating the nasty message. ‘You’ll see when you get your phone back.’
‘Don’t worry, “um” is more than descriptive enough.’ He lets out a sad laugh. ‘It’s actually nice of you not to tell me. You are planning on giving it back then?’
‘Of course I am! I have my own phone that I’d like to get away from half the time, I certainly don’t want yours as well. I saw you on the train this morning. I was behind you when we pulled into your stop and you went to put your phone in your pocket but you missed. I picked it up before it got trampled or stolen. I’ve been trying to find a way to contact you all day.’ You know, between writing an article about how pretty your eyes are and examining every inch of your phone.
‘You’re the girl I see sometimes, aren’t you?’ His breath catches in his throat and I get the sense that he’s holding it, waiting for an answer.
At that caught breath, all of my doubts slip away. He does know me. I haven’t imagined some connection between us. He smiles at me too. Whatever Sliding Doors magic Daphne keeps going on about, whatever else Zinnia wants me to write about him. It doesn’t matter. Maybe they’re right. Maybe this isn’t just coincidence.
‘We do see each other sometimes, yeah,’ I say, hesitating a little because I’m not quite sure how to describe it.
He lets out a long breath and warmth floods my insides. He must’ve felt something over the months of our silent flirtation too. Not just that I was a weird public transport starer.
‘What’s your name?’ he asks in a soft Yorkshire accent.
‘Ness. Well, Vanessa, but everyone calls me Ness.’
‘We have something in common then – full names we don’t get called by.’
The way he says it makes me want to smile but I still feel like I need to explain myself. ‘I tried to catch you, you know? But you ran out of there faster than the Road Runner.’
‘Beep beep,’ he says, doing a spot-on impression, and a giggle takes me by surprise because I used to love those cartoons.
‘Yeah, sorry, I had a connection to catch and about three minutes to make it between platforms and that was without the tube being a couple of minutes late. Trains to this part of the country only run once a day. I couldn’t miss it.’
‘What part of the country’s that then?’ I grew up in a little village where my parents still live. I remember the days of one bus an hour and being completely cut off from civilisation. The constant trains and buses were one of my favourite things when I first moved to London, but even that’s got old now. Sometimes I long for the days of one bus an hour and not being crammed into a tube train every morning like a limp flip-flop on a summer’s day.
‘A little village called Pearlholme. I bet you’ve never heard of it because it’s so small that even people who live five miles away from it have never heard of it. It’s on the Yorkshire coast, not far down from Scarborough.’
‘I always hear people saying they love that part of the country.’
‘It’s perfect here. The beach is amazing and the village is so tiny. It’s all cobbled streets and quaint cottages. There’s one combined shop and post office, a pub, and a couple of beach huts on the promenade, and that’s it. It’s the perfect antidote to London. I’ve only been here a few hours and I feel better than I have in