Loe raamatut: «Our Stop»

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

1
Nadia

‘Shit. Shit, shit, shit.’

Nadia Fielding launched down the escalator of the tube station, her new sandals flapping with force underfoot. If people didn’t move out of her way because of the swearing, surely they would for the massive thwack she made each time a sole hit the step. She cursed ever having swiped up on the Instagram link, and she cursed the blogger who had made the black leather monstrosities look chic – and comfortable – enough to buy. They were giving her a blister already. Fuck you, @whiskyandwhimsies, Nadia thought to herself. I hope your next sponsored trip to the Amalfi Coast falls through.

Coffee held precariously in her hand, bag slipping from her shoulder, sunglasses beginning to slide off the top of her head, Nadia was a mess – but she’d be damned if she wasn’t getting the 7.30. Today was the first day of The New Routine to Change Her Life, and The New Routine to Change Her Life meant catching the train on time.

She struggled with this. Midnight bedtimes after a night out with Emma or Gaby (she was healing a dented heart! Wine is so delicious!) and a general tendency towards being more of a night owl than an early riser (to think she knew people who did Super Spin before work!) both conspired to intensify Nadia’s love affair with the snooze button. She only accomplished being on time for work about once a week, normally on a Monday. She thanked god she lived alone in a flat that technically her mother owned but that meant she didn’t need roommates – no matter what time she got up, at least there was never a queue for the bathroom.

Monday was a perpetual Fresh Start – but often by the time Nadia put a Netflix series on that night, little had changed. She was always very conscientious between getting up and just before lunch, though. It was Monday afternoons that undid her. It couldn’t be helped. The working week was just so agonizingly long, and she spent her whole life trying to catch up with herself. She was sick of being exhausted. A viral BuzzFeed article had called it ‘Millennial Burnout’. But, that’s not to say Nadia couldn’t achieve big things when she put her mind to it – recently she’d polished off all seven seasons of The Good Wife in little under three weeks. Unfortunately, however, there was no way to leverage her binge-watching-of-American-lawyers-in-impossibly-tight-skirts-with-bizarrely-sassy-retorts-to-chauvinism skill into a salaried position. And so, life went on in a muddle. Well, until today. Today was the first day of the rest of her life.

Nadia’s New Routine to Change Her Life wasn’t to be confused with a Fresh Start, because obviously The New Routine to Change Her Life would not fail, like previous attempts. This time it would be different. She would be different. She’d become the woman one step ahead of herself. The sort of woman who meal-prepped for the week in matching Tupperware, who didn’t have to renew her passport at exorbitant cost the week before a holiday but instead recognized the expiration date with a three-month lead time and didn’t get frustrated at the confusing form at the Post Office. She was to become the kind of woman who had comprehensive life insurance and a closet full of clothes already ironed, instead of crisis-steaming wrinkled & Other Stories dresses five minutes before she had to run for the bus. Nadia would become, when her new plan became her new reality, a beacon of Goop-like organization and zen. More Namaste than Nama-stay-in-bed. She’d be the Gwyneth Paltrow of Stamford Hill, with slightly wonkier teeth.

‘Excuse me! Sorry!’ she screeched, to nobody in particular and everyone all at once, as she approached the platform at speed. She normally hated the people that shoved her out of the way in tube stations and at bus stops, as if they were the only folks with anywhere important to be. On more than one occasion she’d shouted after an elbow-barger, ‘EXCUSE YOU!’ in pointed frustration. But today, this morning, she was the selfish oaf pushing through the commuting crowds, and she didn’t have time to be embarrassed about it. The new Nadia was perhaps a little ruder than her old self, but goddamnit she was also more punctual. (She suddenly had an echo of the shrill soprano of her GCSE English teacher, who would intone, ‘To be early is to be on time, to be on time is to be late … and to be late is absolutely unacceptable!’)

‘Wait! No!’ she squealed. Nadia was four quick steps away from the train, but at the speed she was hurtling was about to go face-first into closed doors unless somebody defied Transport for London’s rules and held them open. ‘Waitwaitwaitwaitwait!’ Her voice reached a pitch only dolphins could hear. As if in slow motion, a hand reached out and pinned the door back, meaning that Nadia could stumble aboard just as her knock-off Ray-Bans hit her face and she was temporarily blinded by their darkness. The doors snapped shut behind her. She’d made it. Just.

With a bit of practice, Nadia thought, suddenly smug, muttering a thank you and grabbing the only free seat to sit and slurp at her coffee, I might be able to nail this new routine. It had taken cajoling and effort, but so far, in the whole hour and half she’d been up, she was impressed to reflect that she’d stuck to her self-imposed rules. Ninety minutes on plan was better than ninety minutes off-plan, after all.

The New Routine to Change Her Life comprised several things besides making sure she was on the platform at exactly 7.30 a.m., to catch the tube from Angel to London Bridge. The other rules included:

 AT LEAST seven hours of sleep a night, meaning bed at 11 p.m. LATEST – and that meant lights out and eyes closed at 11 p.m., not getting to bed at 11 p.m. and spending three hours doggedly refreshing the holy trifecta of Instagram, Twitter and email and then wondering why it was so difficult to get up when the alarm went off the next day, whilst also fuelling the suspicion that everyone else’s life was far easier and more beautiful than hers.

 Up at 6 a.m., to meditate for fifteen minutes, then lighting a soy-wax scented candle as she got ready for work with calmness and serenity, in the manner of Oprah, or perhaps the Duchess of Sussex.

 Swapping a station-bought, triple-shot, extra-large cappuccino that Nadia was sure gave her spots – she’d seen the trailer for a documentary about the hormones in milk – to make a bulletproof coffee in a reusable cup for the commute. She had heard about bulletproof coffees via a Hollywood star who documented her life and workouts on Instagram in real time and who added unsalted butter to her morning espresso to regulate her energy levels and poop schedule. (‘That’s like making a green smoothie with vanilla ice cream,’ her mother had suggested in an email, which Nadia had, regretfully, no scientific retort for. ‘At least I’m doing it in an environmentally friendly KeepCup,’ she’d settled on, wondering if, actually, her mother was right.)

 Keeping faith in romance: just because her ex Awful Ben was, indeed, awful, it didn’t mean she had to think all men were, and it was important to keep believing in love.

Nadia also planned on getting to the office before everyone else each morning. She worked in artificial intelligence, developing technology that could think for itself and replace basic human activities like stacking shelves and labelling boxes, with a view to eventually making the warehouse arm of her company totally AI-run. She intended to always get a head start on reviewing the previous day’s prototype developments, before the inevitable meetings about meetings began, interrupting her every six to nine minutes and destroying her concentration until she wanted to scream or cry, depending on where in her menstrual cycle she was.

Her morning’s self-satisfaction didn’t last long, though. The train stopped in a sudden, jerky movement, and hot brown liquid hurled itself from the lip of her KeepCup, soaking into the hem of her light-blue dress and through to her thighs.

‘Shit,’ she said again, as if she, a woman in charge of a team of six, earning £38,000 a year and with two degrees, didn’t know any other words.

Her best friend Emma called Nadia’s coffee addiction an attitude adjustment in a cup. She needed caffeine to function as a human. Groaning outwardly, pouting at the blemish she’d have to wear on herself all day now, she chastised herself for not being more sophisticated – she’d never seen Meghan bloody Markle covered in her breakfast.

Nadia pulled out her phone and texted her best friend Emma, wanting a bit of Monday-morning cheerleading.

Morning! Do you want to go see that new Bradley Cooper film this week? I need something in the diary to be excited about …

She sat and waited for her friend’s reply. It was hot on the train, even this early, and a tiny bead of sweat had formed at the nape of her neck. She could smell BO, and instantly worried it was coming from her.

Nadia tried to surreptitiously turn her head and pretend-cough, bringing her shoulder up to her mouth and her nostrils closer to her armpits. She smelled of antiperspirant. She’d read about the link between deodorant and breast cancer and tried using a crystal as a natural alternative for three weeks a few summers ago, but Emma had pulled her aside and told her in no uncertain terms that it was ineffective. Today, she was 100 per cent aluminium – and sweat-free – in cucumber and green tea Dove.

Relieved, she looked around for the culprit, clocking a group of tourists arguing over a map, a nanny with three blonde children, and a cute man reading a paper by the doors who didn’t look unlike the model in the new John Lewis adverts. Her gaze finally landed on the damp patches under the armpits of the guy stood right in front of her, his crotch almost in her eye. Gross. The morning commute was like being on Noah’s Ark – wild animals cooped up, unnaturally close, a smorgasbord of odours akin to Saturday afternoon in Sports Direct.

She waited for her stop, staring idly around the carriage, trying not to inhale. She glanced lazily back at the man by the doors – the one with the newspaper. Just my type, she couldn’t help but think, enjoying the way his tailored trousers danced close enough to his thighs to make her cheeks blush. Her phone buzzed. She pulled her gaze away to look at Emma’s text, and forgot about him.

2
Daniel

Daniel Weissman couldn’t believe it. As they’d pulled up at Angel she’d skidded around the corner and he’d held his breath as he’d held the door, like a Taylor Swift lyric about an innocuous beginning and a happy ending and love that was always meant to be. Not that Daniel meant to sound soft that way. He just got weird and jittery and soppy when he thought about her. She had that effect on him. Daniel found it hard not to let his imagination get carried away.

He tried to catch sight of her from his position by the doors – she’d snaked around to the middle of the carriage. He could just about make out the top of her head. She always had hair that was messy, but not like she didn’t care about herself. It was messy like she’d just come from a big adventure, or the beach. It probably had a name, but Daniel didn’t know it. He just knew that she was very much his type. It was so embarrassing, but in the sponsorship advert in between every ad break for The Lust Villa, there was a girl who looked just like her, and if Daniel hadn’t seen her in a while even that – a bloody advert! – could make him nostalgic and thoughtful. It was shameful, really.

The Lust Villa was Daniel’s summer reality TV fix, full of romance and seduction and laughing. Daniel acted like it bugged him that the TV had to be on at 9 p.m. every evening for the show, but he was always in the living room at 8.58 p.m., as if by accident, just settling down to his cup of tea in the big armchair with the best view of the widescreen. His flatmate Lorenzo pretended that he didn’t notice the coincidence, and they happily watched it together every night. Neither said it out loud – and nobody would guess it from Lorenzo’s behaviour – but they were both looking for somebody to settle down with and it was quite informative watching what women liked and didn’t like via a daily show that featured genuine relationships. Daniel used it as a way to get his confidence up, taking notes and learning lessons; last night, the bloke that was obviously there as a bit of an underdog had finally found his match, and now here Daniel was in this moment, today. He didn’t want to be the underdog in his own life. That show made him feel like he owed it to himself to at least try with this woman. Just to see.

Daniel couldn’t help but admire the serendipity of the morning. What were the chances she’d stagger right past him on the morning the advert got published? They’d only been on the same train at the same time on a handful of occasions, including today. He forced himself to breathe deeply. He’d done it – sent off the Missed Connection – to maybe, hopefully, finally get her attention, but he was suddenly terrified she’d know it was him. What if she laughed in his face and called him a loser? A dreamer? What if she told everyone at work – her work, or his work – how he was pathetic, and had dared to think he was good enough for her? Maybe she’d go viral on Twitter, or post his picture on her Instagram. On the one hand, he knew she was too nice to ever be so awful, but on the other, the tiniest voice in the back of his mind told him that’s exactly what would happen. He shook his head to try and rid himself of the thought. Love was sending him crazy. Or was it that he was crazy in love?

‘Mate, this isn’t love,’ Lorenzo had told him, not even taking his eyes off the telly to issue his damning verdict. ‘You just wanna bang her.’

Daniel did not just want to ‘bang her’. That wasn’t it at all. He probably shouldn’t stare at her silently and from afar, though. That was a bit weird. It was just – well … The politics of hitting on a woman seemingly out of the blue were so blurred and loaded. He could hardly approach her cold, like some train psychopath she’d have to shake by ‘pretending’ they were at her stop and then slipping out and onto a different carriage. But he also knew that if any blokes in his life told him they were trying to seduce a woman they’d never directly spoken to by putting an advert in the paper and then staring at her stealthily somewhere beyond Moorgate, he’d gently suggest that it probably wasn’t the most ethically sound plan. He was trying to be romantic, whilst also saving face. He hoped he’d got the balance right.

In his head, the fantasy went like this: she’d read the paper and see his note and look up immediately and he’d be right there, by the doors, like he said, and they’d make eye contact and she’d smile coyly and he’d go, simply, ‘Hello’. It would be the beginning of the rest of their lives, that ‘Hello’. Like in a movie. And in that movie there wouldn’t be five Spanish tourists in between them, crowded around in a circle, looking at a map, an indistinguishable babble punctuated occasionally by the mispronunciation of ‘Leicester Square’. Fuck. Where was she? Oh god, this was awful.

The train pulled into London Bridge and, after finally locating her as she steamed ahead through the crowds and towards the exit, the moment he thought might happen disappeared before his eyes. There was no bolt of lightning. No world slowing as their eyes met, not so much as a question but as an answer. She had barely acknowledged him when he held the doors and helped her get on the train – she’d been in a rush, and distracted, and her ‘thank you’ was more of a breathy ‘ta!’ as she passed by. As he tried to keep pace with her, Daniel realized he was disappointed in himself, and in the situation. He’d imagined this for weeks, and now … nothing.

She suddenly stopped in the middle of the departing commuters to read her phone, but it wasn’t like he could slow down as well, let alone stand beside her, could he? So he kept walking and then waited by the exit. He wasn’t sure what for. Just to see her, probably. To see her on the day he’d put himself out there, to remind himself it was real, that she was real, even if it hadn’t gone to plan.

Later, when Daniel told Lorenzo how the morning had played out, he’d miss out this part – the part where he waited for her. What was he doing? He wasn’t going to actually go up and talk to her. Again, she had a right to exist without him bothering her. He shook his head. Come on mate, get a grip, he told himself. He headed towards his office, his heart beating loudly and rapidly and disruptively in his chest.

He’d screwed it up.

He was gutted.

She hadn’t seen it.

What a wasted gesture.

You bloody idiot, he muttered to himself, unaware that seeing the advert was exactly what was holding Nadia up back on the platform.