Our Stop

The image Emma had photographed cleared into vision and Nadia saw that it said:

To the devastatingly cute blonde girl on the Northern line with the black designer handbag and coffee stains on her dress – you get on at Angel, on the 7.30, always at the end nearest the escalator, and always in a hurry. I’m the guy who’s standing near the doors of your carriage, hoping today’s a day you haven’t overslept. Drink some time?

Nadia stopped walking, causing a woman behind her to side-step and mutter, ‘Oh, for god’s sake.’

She reread the note.

The devastatingly cute blonde girl on the Northern line with the black designer handbag and coffee stains on her dress. She spun around to look back at the train she’d just disembarked. It had already left. She dropped her hand to run a finger over the brown mark on her dress. She looked at her handbag. She WhatsApped Emma back.

!!!!!!!!! she typed with one hand.

And then, Um … I mean, lol but maybe?!

After a beat she thought better of it: I mean, the chances are slim, right?

She mulled it over some more. She and Emma weren’t even sure that Missed Connections was real. It made her initial reaction seem increasingly off the mark. Nadia and Emma didn’t care one way or the other – if it was real or made up by the weekly intern at the paper as a creative writing exercise – it was the fantasy of a stranger searching for somebody they felt a fleeting connection to that was fun. It was like Savage Garden knowing they loved you before they met you.

It was romantic, in a you’re-a-blank-canvas-I-can-project-my-hopes-and-dreams-on sort of way.

In a fantasies-don’t-have-problems-so-this-is-better-than- real-life way.

An our-love-will-be-different way.

Missed Connections felt full of more romance than messing around on Bumble did. Although, any time either of them doubted that sort of love existed, the other would bring up Tim, Emma’s brother. He’d gone out to Chicago for a couple of weeks for work and used a dating app to meet a local who could show him around, maybe even partake in a fling. Through that app Tim had met Deena, and legend had it that when Deena went to the loo Tim pulled out his phone, deleted the app, and within three months had transferred out there to live with her. They’d got married that spring. Miracles do happen, Tim had said in his speech. I searched the whole world for you, and there you were, waiting for me in downtown Chicago, in a restaurant window seat.

Emma texted: Question: are you sporting a coffee stain this morning, and did you get the 7.30? It’s Monday, so I presume yes.

Nadia replied with a snap of her outfit from above – the splodge of butter-laden coffee clearly visible – very obviously on her way to work.

But, Nadia thought … surely there were a million women on the Northern line spilling coffee and carrying fancy bags that family members had sourced at discounted designer outlets. And nobody ever did things on time – not in London. Loads of cute blondes – devastatingly cute blondes – probably missed their intended train all the time. And yeah, she’d never really thought about how she instinctively always turned left at the bottom of Angel’s escalator and walked towards the end of the track there, but that was something she did. Who else did? Hundreds, surely. Thousands? It was the longest tube escalator in London, after all. It could hold a lot of people.

Right then, Emma sent back, love heart emojis before and after her text, I think we’ve got some investigating to do, don’t you?

I’m dying, Nadia wrote back. It’s totally not me. I’m grateful to all the other women out there who can’t take a coffee cup on a train without spilling it, though. Makes me feel better about myself, lol.

Could be you, though … Emma said.

Nadia considered it. I mean, there’s like a 2 per cent chance, she typed. And then: If that.

Then it hit her: the man by the train doors, reading the paper. There’d been a man there! Was that him? Men must stand by the door and read the paper all the time, what with being male and commuting and picking up a newspaper on the way being statistically quite high. Nadia looked around the station, to see if she recognized anyone as the man she’d been near. She couldn’t even remember what he’d looked like. Blonde? No. Brunette? Definitely handsome. Oh god.

A weird feeling of hope that it was her came over Nadia, whilst she simultaneously realized that hoping for that was kind of non-feminist too. She didn’t have to wait to be chosen by a mystery man to date and be happy. Did she?

But – also – in The New Routine to Change Her Life, Nadia was supposed to believe that luck was on her side. And if luck really was on her side, maybe this was for her, and maybe this guy wouldn’t be an insecure loser. Awful Ben, her last boyfriend, had had a weird fragile masculinity – he was emotionally manipulative and made her think she was in the wrong until he’d undone her confidence. And he did do that – he did undo her confidence. It had really bruised her, because for the six months they dated she almost came to believe there was something wrong with her. She still didn’t understand why somebody would do that: say they’d fallen in love with you and then decide to hate everything that made them say that in first place. She was only just starting to feel like herself again.

Nadia shuddered at the bad memories. She thought about Awful Ben every day still, but when she did she always thanked the heavens that she was now out of that dire situation. She couldn’t believe what she’d let herself put up with. Occasionally she set her web browser to private and typed in his Instagram handle to check he was still as much of a difficult, pretentious arse as ever. He always was.

But now, months after their break-up, Nadia was equal parts bruised and in need of an emotional palette cleanser. A romantic sorbet. Somebody new to think about. A man to be a bit nice to her would do, as if that didn’t place the bar too low. Perhaps her own newspaper ad would read, Wanted, man: must actually seem to like me.

Oh, who was she kidding? Her advert would say: Wanted: man with strong sense of self, capable of having a laugh, healthy relationship with mother. Must love romance, reality television, and be ready to champion and cheerlead as a partner through life, in exchange for exactly the same. Also must understand the importance of cunnilingus and pizza – though not at same time. I cum first, pizza comes second.

Was she expecting too much? She thought of Tim and Deena. Surely she could have that too.

2 per cent is higher than 0 per cent, typed back Emma. So, game on.

Nadia laughed as she finally made her way to the escalator, emerging in the early-morning summer sun at the top. Whatever you say, she typed back. And to herself she thought, But I daren’t be too hopeful.

‘Emma has already texted me,’ Gaby said, catching Nadia as she headed down to the lobby for an 11 a.m. break. The coffee cart in their lobby served an amazing dark espresso blend. ‘And I reckon it’s you as well.’

Nadia was astonished.

‘Ohmygod. Worst thing I ever did was introduce you two to each other,’ she replied, laughing, before saying to the guy behind the counter, ‘double-shot espresso topped up with hot water, please.’

Gaby pulled a face. ‘What happened to a full-fat cappuccino as a political statement?’

‘I’m pivoting. I did one of those bulletproof coffees this morning, to see if it keeps my blood sugar regulated and also, have you seen this acne on my jawline? It’s a menace. I think it might be too much milk – like, apparently milk is just cow hormones not meant for people – so I’m giving up for a bit. These little fuckers hurt, you know.

Nadia craned to see her own reflection in the glass of the skyscraper they worked in. Having acne made her really self-conscious. When she was in the middle of a flare-up she tended to dress in darker colours, as if she didn’t want to be noticed. She needed a permanent filter to follow her around – it didn’t look half as bad when she was on Instagram Stories and could use the crown filter to smooth everything out. She’d try anything to get rid of the angry red boils under the skin of her jaw, including sacrificing her daily cappuccinos.

‘So,’ she went on, ‘I’m experimenting.’

Nadia thanked the barista and the pair walked from the lobby coffee stand to the lifts of RAINFOREST, home to two thousand Research and Development employees for a worldwide delivery service for everything from books to toilet cleaner to marble-top tables. This was where Nadia did her artificial intelligence work. Gaby was her work BFF. They’d met at the summer party two years ago and hit it off talking about AI and its role in a Good Future or Bad Future: what if they accidentally developed technology that turned on them, like in a horror movie? Gaby worked on what was called ‘cloud computing’ for the company, their biggest revenue-generator, selling pay-as-you-go data storage to everyone from start-ups to MI6. Nadia didn’t really understand it, but she knew Gaby was about thirty times cleverer than her, and scared half the people in her part of the office.

‘And, anyway – can I tell you about The New Routine to Change My Life?’ Nadia hit the lift button. ‘Because, I dunno. I guess I feel finally purged of Awful Ben and want to switch my energy up or something. I feel like I just came out of mourning. Like literally, this weekend I got my mojo back.’ The lift arrived. ‘And today I’m trying to be deliberate about keeping it. I’m taking my wellbeing and mental health seriously, beginning now.’

‘That’s great!’

‘Thanks!’ The lift button flashed ‘0’ and the doors opened. The pair got in and Nadia hit the buttons for their respective floors.

‘You know, if you want to get some endorphins going to keep your high, what about coming to spin before work tomorrow?’

Nadia rolled her eyes.

‘No!’ Gaby continued. ‘Don’t pull that face! It’s so good. It’s really dark in there and the instructor says positive affirmations and you get to scream because the music is so loud nobody can hear you.’

Nadia shook her head, watching the lights of the different floors ping brightly as they passed through. Spinning was her worst nightmare. She’d done exactly one SoulCycle class when she went to LA for work and spent forty-five minutes on a bike next to Emily Ratajkowski, wondering how a woman so tiny could peddle so fast. She’d hated it.

‘Absolutely not. I don’t do morning workouts. I’m happy with my evening body pump class, back row, two left feet but doing my best. Only psychopaths work out before noon.’

‘Urgh. Fine. Also – we’re getting sidetracked.’

‘I’d hoped you hadn’t noticed.’

‘It really does sound like you, you know.’

Nadia raised her eyebrows, partly amused, partly sarcastic.

‘It does! Literally you are cute and blonde and chronically late and you spill stuff. And –’ Gaby suddenly seemed to connect some mental dots ‘– and today is the beginning of your New Routine to Change Your Life! So, energetically speaking, the exact day something like this would happen. It’s like the stars have aligned. Today would be a great day to fall in love.’

‘I can’t tell if you’re being earnest or teasing me.’

‘Both,’ Gaby deadpanned.

Nadia rolled her eyes good-naturedly again, afraid to give herself away.

‘Emma says you might write an advert in response.’

‘I’m toying with it, yes. If I decide the advert is really meant for me. Which … I’m not sure. I half want it to be. And I half think I’m insane for giving this more than two seconds’ thought.’

‘Do you have any idea who he could be? If it is for you? Is there a cute man on your train every day?’

Nadia looked at her friend. ‘This is London! There are hundreds of cute men, everywhere, all the time. And then they open their mouths and become 200 per cent less cute because … men.’

‘Ever the optimist, I see.’

‘I’m just being realistic.’

‘Never met a woman protecting her heart who didn’t claim the same,’ said Gaby, smirking.

Nadia said nothing, knowing full well that Gaby was right. She found herself doing that a lot: making sweeping statements that damned men to their lowest denominator, acting as if she didn’t need or want one. She was protecting herself, she supposed, at least out loud. Of course, her friend could see right through that. Because Nadia was, in the same breath as saying all men were pigs, hoping that this one, the Train Guy, wasn’t. Or, at the very least, that one guy, somewhere out there, wasn’t. All morning she’d been having little fantasies about the advert being for her, and seeing him on the train, and falling in lust and love somewhere on the Northern line between home and work. She wanted that for herself. She wanted it for herself so hungrily that it scared her a bit, truth be told.

The lift arrived at Gaby’s floor, and like they did whenever they rode the lift together, Nadia stepped off with her to finish the conversation.

‘There is this one thing, though,’ Nadia said. Gaby turned and looked at her, willing her to go on. ‘Well. The thing my brain can’t understand is that if a guy sees me on the train every morning, why wouldn’t he just say hello?’

Becky from admin walked by on her way to the photocopier, and Nadia interrupted herself to throw up a small wave and say, ‘Hey, Becky!’

‘Nice shoes!’ Becky said, as way of reply, disappearing around a corner.

Nadia continued: ‘Why concoct some elaborate plot that involves a newspaper and relying on me – or, whoever, because it might not be me, like we’ve established – actually seeing it?’

‘It’s fun!’ Gaby said. ‘Cute!’ She thought about it some more and then added, ‘Plus, if some rando came up to you on your commute, would you honestly even give him the time of day?’

Nadia smiled. ‘No. I’d think he was a creep.’

‘Me too.’

‘Urgh!’ Nadia exhaled. ‘I’m just trying to manage my romantic expectations, you know? I don’t even know if I could stand another first date …’

Nadia made a noise that was like a gag of repulsion, summing up the many emotions of a serial dater in as succinct a way as any. But, even as she did that, her heart skipped a little beat. When a first date went right, it was the most magical, hopeful feeling in the world. A feeling of the gods smiling on her, of recognizing herself in somebody else. She once heard that love shouldn’t be called ‘falling’, because the best love roots you, and makes you grow upwards, taller and stronger. She’d seen that happen with her mum and step-dad, after her biological father had left. Her old colleague and friend Naomi and Naomi’s husband Callum embodied it. Her direct boss in her first job, Katherine, was the most charismatic, well-adjusted woman Nadia had ever had the honour of being mentored by, and Katherine often said she had got to be where she was at work because of the team she was part of at home. All of them said they knew early on that they’d met the person they wanted to spend their lives with, and committed, together, to making it work. Tim had said that about Deena, too.

‘No – you couldn’t stand another bad first date,’ said Gaby. ‘But what if this was the last first date you ever had, because it was so good?’

Nadia was grateful that Gaby was playing to her more romantic inclinations, because she was enjoying imagining what would happen if she met the love of her life through a newspaper ad. How they’d laugh about it, and be forever united in their appreciation of big gestures and taking chances. But Nadia was suddenly suspicious too: Gaby was usually sceptical and pithy about love, priding herself on dating man after man but not needing any of them. It wasn’t like her to coax anyone into believing fairy tales were real.

‘What’s made you such a romantic all of a sudden?’ Nadia asked, eyes narrowed. ‘You’re supposed to be my cynical friend.’

Gaby shrugged, non-committal. ‘What are you working on today?’ she said, by way of reply.

‘Now who’s changing the subject!’

‘Don’t get smart with me, Fielding.’

Nadia made a mental note to follow up with Gaby later on her sudden softening. Something was different about her, now she thought about it. Nadia was a tart for her work, though, and so was seduced by her own vanity into talking about it.

‘It’s crunch time on the prototypes for the fulfilment centres soon. That newspaper exposé really damaged the stock price and John wants actual humans out of the role as soon as possible to get the whole thing boxed off as an HR issue. Which sucks for the thousands of people who don’t know they’re going to be unemployed by Christmas …’

‘Oh, that’s hard. That’s really hard,’ Gaby said.

‘I feel bad, yeah. I’m building robots to replace humans, and … well. It’s so conflicting, you know?’

The lift pinged back open, and seeing that it was going up, Nadia stepped in.

‘To be continued?’ said Gaby.

‘To be continued,’ said Nadia. ‘I’d like to maybe brainstorm ideas about making sure everyone gets jobs elsewhere? I’d like to help.’

‘Sure!’ Gaby said, adding: ‘Maybe over lunch this week? Wednesday? I’ve got a lunch meeting tomorrow. We’ve not been across to Borough in ages. And we’re not done talking about this missed connection.’

‘Stop talking to Emma about my love life!’

Nadia could hear Gaby giggling even as the lift went up.

4

Daniel

‘You’ve been infatuated with her for months, mate. Today is a big day!’

Lorenzo had called him at work, despite being asked not to. But Lorenzo hated his job and got bored easily and liked winding up his flatmate and also feigning busyness at his own desk, at a publishing house north of the river. Plus, he was charming enough to persuade the receptionist, Percy, to connect the call, even though Daniel had given Percy numerous and explicit instructions not to. Lorenzo enjoyed practising his charm and getting his own way. Reaching Daniel at his office was another way for him to show off.

‘She’s not bloody seen it, though,’ Daniel hissed down the phone.

‘Can you change the adjectives and send it again, for somebody else you’ve spotted? Throw enough shit and something will stick,’ Lorenzo said, and Daniel was about 70 per cent sure he wasn’t joking. Lorenzo said he wanted a relationship, but from what Daniel had seen his requirements for dating were that she had a pulse, and didn’t talk too much. It was very Lorenzo of him to suggest simply trying the same tactic with another woman.

‘Go and sell some books,’ Daniel retorted.

‘Can’t be arsed, mate. Still on a comedown.’

Daniel hated that Lorenzo did coke Thursday through Sunday. He never did it at home, Lorenzo promised, but Daniel was still the one made to put up with his mood swings as he scaled the walls and then festered on the sofa for the first half of the week – even if he did watch great telly as he did it. Lorenzo was a good bloke, but didn’t half make some choices that Daniel couldn’t help but think weren’t exactly sound. It was so frustrating to be witness to. They’d ended up living together through a SpareRoom.co.uk advert Lorenzo had put up, and Daniel had his suspicions from the beginning that they were a bit chalk and cheese, but the location of the flat and the rent price were basically perfect, so Daniel had made a decision to largely overlook their differences, not quite becoming friends, but certainly becoming more than just strangers who lived together. They had forged their own, very particular, double act, and until Daniel had a place of his own, it did the job.

‘I’m going now,’ Daniel said. ‘I’ve got actual work to do. I’ll see you at home.’

Lorenzo was still talking as he put the phone down. Not seconds later, Daniel’s mobile flashed with a message. It was Lorenzo.

Well done on having the balls, mate, it said. That was Lorenzo’s way of saying, I know you hate it when I’m a twat but I can’t help it. Daniel double-tapped it and gave it a thumbs-up.

Daniel resumed idly scrolling through the emails on his desktop, trying to focus on the day ahead and not on the morning that had been. He couldn’t. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. He couldn’t stop thinking about the day they first met.

Not long after Daniel’s father had died, just after Easter, Daniel had begun to force himself to leave his desk whenever he felt claustrophobic, or uneasy, or like he might cry. In his grief – the word ‘depression’ still sort of stuck in his throat a bit, sounded a bit wet – his therapist had said that being outside, in nature, would always help.

Christ. He couldn’t believe he had a therapist.

‘Keep using your body, make sure you engage with the world, take a stroll around the nearest park, even, just to get the energy moving differently,’ she told him at one of their first sessions together, when he’d said about panic attacks that grabbed him by the throat and made him feel like he couldn’t breathe.

He’d had to pay sixty-five pounds an hour to go private because the NHS waiting list was too long, his situation too dire to wait because he could barely function, and he wondered, not unkindly, if this was the kind of advice he could expect for two hundred plus quid a month. Anyway. Walk he did, at the very least to feel like he was getting value for money, and she’d been there, Nadia (of course, he didn’t know that was her name then), in the courtyard tucked away off Borough Market. A random Friday. Poof. At his lowest, in a moment of pure emotional desperation, this positive, engaged, clever woman had appeared and her verve – her very essence, her aura – was like sunshine, solar-powering everyone around her. It had knocked Daniel sideways.

Daniel knew exactly which day he’d first seen her because it was two weeks after the funeral, and five weeks after he’d started his six-month consulting contract at Converge, a petroleum engineering firm. It was the day his mother had rung when he was in a meeting about the design flaws of a submersive drill, and he’d excused himself in time to pick up in case it was urgent.

She’d said, ‘He’s here.’

‘What do you mean, Mum?’ Daniel had replied. ‘Dad’s … Dad died, remember?’

He’d held his breath as he waited for her to realize she’d used the wrong word, said the wrong thing. He held up two fingers to the guys on the other side of the glass partition, signalling two minutes. He just needed two minutes. They were impatient, needing his sign-off before lunch, and suspicious of an outsider coming in this late in the project and pissed off that he’d been pushing for a pivot on the next steps. He didn’t care. He wanted to make sure his mum was okay. He wouldn’t be able to handle it if she had dementia or memory loss or something. He’d just lost his dad – he couldn’t lose her too.

‘Daniel,’ she’d replied, level-headed. ‘I know he’s bloody dead. It’s his ashes. They’ve just been dropped off.’

Daniel exhaled loudly in relief. She wasn’t crazy. Well. Any crazier.

‘But it’s a bloody bin bag’s worth! He’s so bloody heavy I can’t shift him anywhere. So he’s just here. In the kitchen with me, by the back door. All his ashes in a heavy-duty bag that I don’t know what to do with.’

Daniel closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, stunned. His dad’s ashes. Because his dad was dead.

‘I’m having a coffee and telling him – your dad – about Janet Peterson’s new Vauxhall Mokka – they had it in gold, can you bear it! Gold! And you know, I say new but obviously it’s good second-hand. Cars lose money as soon as you drive them off the forecourt – but anyway, it’s a bit creepy. Your dad. Can you come by after work and help me?’

Daniel could almost have laughed. In fact, he did laugh, and told his mum he’d be across to Ealing Broadway at about seven, and in the meantime to go hang out in the living room to watch Loose Women instead. She’d been so strong since the funeral that it made him feel ashamed to be the “weak” one. He was about to go back into the meeting – literally had his hand on the door knob to push back through – when his throat closed up and his shirt collar felt tight and he had a vague notion that he might be sick, because his body was remembering, all over again, that his dad was gone. His best mate. His loudest champion. Dead from a ruptured brain aneurysm.