Our Stop(41)

Nadia nodded. ‘I know. Every morning I get on that train and I think, “Is it you? Is it you? Or you?” And honestly, he could be any of them. But that’s part of the excitement. And, you know. How bad could he end up being?’

Gaby shuddered. ‘That would give me the creeps, knowing that I’m being watched.’

Emma hit her shoulder. ‘She isn’t being watched! Don’t say that! Some commuter has noticed her a few times and thought she was cute. That’s all.’

‘Devastatingly cute,’ interjected Nadia.

‘Devastatingly cute. Fine. It’s not like he’s following her to work or back home and spying at her from the bushes.’

Nadia’s eyes widened. ‘Oh my god – do we think that could happen?’

Gaby gave a pointed silence.

‘Absolutely not,’ said Emma, shooting her daggers. ‘And look. You are so smart, and so aware. You can get a read on people’s energy like that.’ She clicked her fingers as she said ‘that’. ‘And we’ll call you so you have an out if you need it, which you won’t, but if you do, then … well. You can leave and then move house and jobs and start wearing a wig and you’ll never have to see him again!’

Gaby laughed in spite of herself, and the waiter came over with more wine. He asked if he could get them anything else.

‘Yes,’ Nadia said. ‘Some new best friends, please.’

The waiter smiled and walked away.

‘You’re going to be fine,’ Emma said. ‘Isn’t she, Gaby?’

Gaby smiled, not quite enthusiastically. ‘Sure you are,’ she said. ‘And if you’re not, I’m at the MoD on Friday. I can arrange to have him killed.’

Emma poured more wine into their glasses, even though she was the only one who had emptied hers. The three of them cheersed again.

At home, Nadia sat down with a blank piece of paper, a pen, and another glass of wine. At the top of the paper she wrote ‘Pros and Cons’. On the left side, she wrote, ‘Everything That Could Go Wrong If I Meet The Guy From Missed Connections’. Under it, she put:

Potentially all a big catfish.



Potentially he thinks he is writing to somebody who Is Not Me, and will be totally devastated and insulted when I turn up, and won’t be able to hide the look of disappointment on his face. Will be like when food comes out of the kitchen at a restaurant and you’re starving and you think the waiter is coming over to you and so you sit up straighter and bite your bottom lip in anticipation, but then it goes to the table next to you and you look like an arse.



I will think we are getting on, and when I go to the bathroom he will pull out his phone and play on Tinder and I will see over his shoulder when I come back and be too polite to say anything. (Thus wasting a further two and a half hours of my life when I could be at boxercise, or with Emma – who says she is much better, but I am still worried about her.)



My picture will end up in the paper, because I will go missing on the way home from the date, and he will be the prime suspect. Picture will be from my twenty-eighth birthday when I tried to save money beforehand by waxing my own eyebrows and had to draw them back on, and everyone will think any woman who looks as mad as I do probably brought it all on herself.



I will find him dizzyingly charming and the chemistry will be undeniable and I will go home with him and won’t realize he’s put Rohypnol in my drink and I wake up to see he has covered the whole bedroom in cling film and has a very sharp knife and I only just manage to escape before he starts carving me up into pieces to fry up and eat for breakfast each morning.



I actually won’t wake up from the Rohypnol and so will get carved up and nobody will ever find me and my mum will be really upset and won’t know I’m dead – she’ll just think I’m being selfish and have skipped the country for a laugh.



He won’t show up after all, and I’ll have write to the newspaper to shout at him. (NB if I do that, I will do it very calmly and sensibly, in the manner of that nineteen-year-old on The Lust Villa who got dumped and gave a very rousing speech about loyalty, and not like when Sharon Osbourne stormed off The X Factor that time, ripping off her fake eyelashes and screaming at everyone uncontrollably.)





In the other column, she wrote: ‘Things That Could Go Right If I Meet The Guy From Missed Connections’. Underneath it she wrote:

I could meet the love of my life.





21


Daniel


Daniel paced up and down outside the bar, mentally talking himself through what was about to happen. Come on, he told himself. This is no big deal. It’s just a date.

He forced himself to breathe in and out through his nose, doing the ‘victorious breath’ his mum had learnt at the one yoga class she’d ever done, twenty-five years ago. It was a loud and deliberate noise, like trying to steam up a mirror but with the mouth closed. The one and only thing she’d learned that day was that if you can control your breath, you can control anything. It had been the soundtrack to his teenage years, that saying, even though a nasty flatulence incident had meant she’d never done yoga again. (‘It was your dad’s braised bloody cabbage that did it – I made the loudest chuffing noise as I went into a forward fold! I can control my breath, Daniel – but I dare anybody to retain full sphincter control after his buttered bok choy!’) For every knee scrape and heartache and exam stress, it always came back to: If you can control your breath, you can control anything. Breathe, Daniel.