Our Stop(39)

On Monday, Nadia started again with The New Routine to Change Her Life. She spent Sunday evening doing what she thought of as a ‘Big Shower’. A small shower is like what her mother would ashamedly call a sailor’s clean – a quick splash of warm water upstairs and down, and on occasion a hair wash. A Big Shower is dry body brushing and a teeth-whitening sheet, a deep cleanse and exfoliation and double shampoo and hair mask. A Big Shower is shaved legs and armpits, a body oil on damp skin, followed by separate face masks for the T-zone and chin area, collagen under-eye mask, and actually using a hairdryer to keep the frizz at bay for the morning. By the time Nadia had soaked off the masks, used a midnight oil, hyaluronic cream, moisturizer, exfoliated her lips and dabbed under-eye cream on with the third finger of her right hand, like she’d seen on YouTube (apparently that finger has the most nerve endings, so applies the least amount of pressure), she was so exhausted that it wasn’t a problem to be asleep by 10 p.m. She woke up before her alarm, the summer sun bright through the gap in the curtains, and was up, dressed, and out of the flat by 6.45 a.m.

She sat on the 73 bus to Angel, firing off a text to check on Emma, and it occurred to her that she’d be earlier than her normal 7.30 train, and it was the 7.30 train she needed to be on if she wanted to see Train Guy. She had twenty minutes to kill.

Coffee, she decided. I’ll go get coffee.

By the station there was a small cart – a sort of van that doubled up as a coffee station once the back doors were opened and revealed an espresso machine and milk frother. The owner, a squat man with no hair who had a friendly smile and called everybody ‘love’, had a few short stools and tables out, so Nadia took a seat and put on her sunglasses and enjoyed feeling, if only briefly, like she was in the piazza of a European capital instead of a roadside overlooking what was technically the A1.

She had a sudden pang for her mother in that moment – the last time she’d seen her was on a girls’ trip to Rome they’d had over Easter weekend. Nadia plugged her headphones into her iPhone and hit the icon to call her.

‘Well, look who it is!’ her mother laughed down the line, after only two rings.

‘I know, I know,’ Nadia said. ‘I’m a disappointment of a daughter who doesn’t call enough.’

‘You are darling, yes. But as long as you’re busy having fun instead of calling, your old mum doesn’t mind.’

Nadia smiled. She loved how kind and forgiving her mother was, and how she accepted others exactly as they were. ‘I am, Mum. I just got back from a weekend at Soho Farmhouse with Emma, and I’ve got a good feeling about this week. How are you?’

Nadia and her mum chatted about the dog, and Nadia’s work, and, bizarrely, considering it was not even August, what their Christmas plans might be, when suddenly Nadia realized the time. She hit the screen of her phone. It was exactly 7.30. She’d missed her train.

‘Darling?’ her mother said. ‘Are you still there?’

‘Yes, Mum,’ Nadia said, ‘I’m still here. I … I didn’t realize the time.’ She hung up not long after and slowly made her way to the station.

Dammit! She chastised herself. Goddammit!

Tomorrow, she promised herself. I’m going to bloody well make that train tomorrow. Train Guy will just have to wait.

She idly picked up a discarded newspaper on the platform and checked the paper to see if her advert had run, and to her surprise – wasn’t it only twenty-four hours ago she’d sent her submission in? – it had. It calmed her nerves. She didn’t have to be on time tomorrow, or even the day after – as long as she made it to the platform for 7.30 on Thursday, she’d be fine.

If he turned up, of course.

It was Gaby who texted her a photo of Missed Connections the next day, where Train Guy had written back. Nadia didn’t understand – her adverts before were taking at least a few days to get published. She wondered if there was somebody on the news desk of the paper giving them a helping hand to write to each other faster. The notes were becoming daily, now.

His letter said:

Morning coffee? How about evening drinks? I once overheard you talking about your work, with a colleague, and you, Devastatingly Cute Blonde, are really smart. And your messages back to me make you smart, and a flirt. We could have some fun together, not to mention good chat. What do you think? If I say 7 p.m. on Thursday, at the bar opposite where you got your charity investment, will you say yes? I think this is our stop.

Yes! thought Nadia. Yes, Yes, Yes! She bobbed up and down on the spot, her whole body shaking with excitement. I’m going to meet him! she thought, I am actually going to bloody well bloody meet him! She knew it. She’d known all along this is where it was heading, even when she hadn’t wanted to admit it. She was about to meet a funny, charming, romantic man who had already done all the right things and in the space that she had only just cleared in her heart she felt it: it was going to be brilliant. She pulled up the submission box for Missed Connections as soon as she had Wi-Fi signal on her phone, and sent back:

Train Guy: You’re on. 7 p.m., Thursday. I think I know where you mean. And, for what it’s worth, I’m excited. See you then, Train Girl.





20


Nadia


‘The only thing I can think,’ Nadia said, pouring the bottle of Albari?o into the three glasses evenly, ‘is that he means The Old Barn Cat. The day I convinced Jared to believe in my non-profit idea, we went to the courtyard there. I just … I don’t understand how this guy knows about it?’