Our Stop
Page 4
Had she been on the Northern line this whole time? (Yes.) Why was he only just noticing her now? (He had been in his own, grief-fuelled world.) He knew he had to do something about it. He hadn’t stopped thinking about her, and had even gone back to the same lunch spot the next week to see if she was a regular, which was a bit much but true nonetheless. She hadn’t been there, of course. It was a lot to expect she would be.
Seeing her on the train felt like being given a second chance at a first impression. He looked out for her the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that – greedily, he wanted his third chance, and his fourth. The tube trains were huge and there were so many people on the platform and he couldn’t be sure, obviously, that she hadn’t got on one of the others whizzing through the underground every morning. She could have been on the 7.28, or the 7.32, or the 8 a.m. or 6 a.m. People didn’t always stick to the same schedule like he did. Daniel was anally retentive in a lot of ways, and thrived off routine and certainty. But for Nadia to be on the same train as him, even that once? He decided to hold onto that as a sign.
In total he’d seen Nadia (though he actually couldn’t decide in his head what to call her. Nadia was her name, after all, but having not been formally introduced it seemed presumptuous, even in his imagination, to refer to her like that. But then, why would he call her ‘woman on the train’ when he knew her name? It was confusing, and mostly meant he just imagined her face and didn’t really call her anything) seven times, always around 7.30, always seeming a little frazzled in a ‘Working Woman with A Lot To Do’ kind of a way. Three of those times she’d been in his carriage, once he’d seen her on the platform at Angel, and three times he saw her on the escalator at London Bridge. Twice he thought he’d seen her in and around the general Borough Market area, but it hadn’t been her, it had only been wishful thinking.
When he did catch her, she always had her phone in her hand, but unlike a lot of other commuters, she didn’t wear headphones to listen to music as she travelled. Daniel knew if he spoke to her one day, out of the blue, at least she’d be able to hear him. But then, he didn’t want to screw up his one shot at getting to know her. He worried that simply striking up conversation on a crowded tube – a place notorious for how anti-conversation it could be, where even a smile could make you seem demented because it just isn’t the done thing – he’d seem slimy and pervy. A woman had every right to get to work without fending off advances from men who thought she was hot. He knew that. He wanted to give her a nod of encouragement so she could let him know if she was interested as well. It was Lorenzo who had joked that Missed Connections was the place to do it. Lorenzo was kidding around, but as soon as he’d suggested it, Daniel knew that was how he wanted to get this woman’s attention. He’d seen her reading the paper before. It could be just the ticket.
‘But why this woman?’ asked Lorenzo. ‘I don’t get it. You don’t know her!’
How could Daniel explain to Lorenzo that, above all else, he just had this feeling?
6
Nadia
‘Am I being crazy?’ Nadia asked. ‘I feel like I can’t put a message in as a response because it might not even be me. Can you imagine? He’s expecting bloody Daisy Lowe to respond, and he ends up with bloody ME?’
Emma was pushing a grilled peach around her plate, loading toasted hazelnuts and creamy goat’s curd onto her fork. She had summoned Nadia to In Bocca al Lupo because, yes, she had to review it imminently after an RnB star and her Saudi boyfriend were spotted eating at the bar two nights earlier and it had immediately become The Place to Be and her editor wanted it in Saturday’s paper, but also because, as she’d said in her text, In Bocca al Lupo means good luck! In Italian! And your grandmother was Italian and you need some good luck! It will be a good luck meal for love! It was a bizarre logic that suited only Emma’s mental gymnastics, especially because the restaurant itself wasn’t actually Italian, but Nadia couldn’t be bothered to go home and cook and, truly, if a singer with twelve Grammys and a sold-out arena tour was going to chow down on the wood-fired Torbay sole on a Friday evening, Nadia could sure as hell do the same thing the following Monday. Plus, Emma would be expensing it. It was something of a personal rule of Nadia’s to never turn down a free meal. In The New Routine to Change My Life she should, technically, have been at home with a face mask on, eating a salad and meditating, but that didn’t matter. She could do that tomorrow, and Monday had already been mostly a success.
‘Listen,’ Emma said, using her fork to gesticulate. ‘Awful Ben. What a bastard, yes?’
Nadia scowled at the mention of his name. ‘Yes,’ she said, slowly.
‘You deserve love, and happiness, and everything your heart desires. Yes?’
‘… Yes.’
‘Right then. You’ve got to make that happen for yourself. You’ve got to put yourself in the way of your own fate. You’ve got to write back – of course the advert was for you!’
They were interrupted by the delivery of a garlic, parsley and bone-marrow flatbread, from a waiter with dancing eyes and plucked eyebrows.
‘Compliments of the chef,’ he said, and Emma replied, ‘Thank you, darling.’
She only ever called service people darling, sort of as a way to ingratiate herself into their favour and because in the reviewing industry nobody wanted a reputation as a miserable or rude customer. But also, Nadia thought, you could tell a lot about a person by how they treated service people: waiters and cleaners and doormen. Emma’s manners were always impeccable, whatever the motivation, and it made Nadia like her friend even more.
‘Uh oh,’ Emma said. ‘You seem grumpy. Why are you grumpy?’ She used her hands to tear up the bread, and licked welts of seasoned oil off her fingers and wrists once she was done.
‘I’m not grumpy!’ said Nadia, too brightly. Emma raised her eyebrows, knowing the minor changes in her friend’s moods better than she knew her own.
‘I’m not grumpy! I just …’ Nadia took a big gulp of white wine. ‘Just don’t bring up Awful Ben that way, okay? I can. You can’t.’
Emma nodded. ‘Fair enough.’
‘And also, don’t talk to Gaby about me. It feels like you’re ganging up on me. I’m excited and I’m scared and I need to feel like you’re on my team, not a team together.’
‘Right,’ said Emma, wide-eyed. ‘I hear you. Though, let the record show we are all on a team together. Team Nadia.’
Nadia suddenly felt guilty that she’d said anything. That hadn’t been the right moment to bring up Emma and Gaby talking about her. The two women finished the flatbread and emptied their glasses in silence. Hats off to Emma, she knew when to shut up and let Nadia have a bit of a wobble. And, at some point – not now, but at some point – Nadia would probably have to mention to one of them that sometimes how close Gaby and Emma had become bothered her.
It had been cool that the first time Emma came to after-work drinks she’d taken to Gaby so well. Emma was typically the jealous one, wanting Nadia all to herself. A typical only child, unpractised at sharing. But it was like the phrase ‘house on fire’ had been designed especially for Gaby and Emma. Nadia had sat there more or less mute as the two swapped outrageous dating stories and entered into a flirting competition with the wait staff. They’d never graduated to hanging out without her, but every time Nadia invited one out, the first question would always be if the other one was coming. Nadia knew it was childish to feel envious over how they’d clicked, but … well. She was envious at how they’d clicked. She’d been trying to see them separately just lately. Not that she’d made that clear out loud or anything. She didn’t want to seem immature.
Nadia let her temper calm down so that by the time their starter plates had been cleared and Emma said, ‘I still think you should put an advert up in response,’ Nadia was able to relax into herself and smile. She knew her friend only wanted what was best for her.
‘No!’ Nadia said, laughing. ‘Oh god! I just don’t think I can!’
‘I don’t know! Maybe I don’t even want to find him!’
‘Well, that’s bollocks,’ said Emma. ‘You’re a shit liar and I can tell that’s a lie.’ She poured them both more wine. ‘I can tell you’re gagging for it to be you. Look at you! Texting all maybe it is me! all day and then being moody tonight. You’re afraid to be excited. I see you.’
‘Oh shut up,’ Nadia said light-heartedly.
‘You’re going to have to be on the lookout. Like, on that 7.30 train every morning, the end near the escalators. That’s where you should start. Stake the joint out a bit. If it is for you, surely there will be a guy hopefully looking at you, all “Notice me! Notice me!”’
Nadia giggled. ‘Well, yes. That I can do.’
She twisted at the napkin in her lap.
‘And – I’m sorry for snapping about Ben. He really was just … awful. He used such horrible mind games to make me doubt myself, and make myself smaller. I lost myself to him. I’m glad that relationship happened because fucking hell I learnt so much, but …’ She absentmindedly fiddled with the cloth. ‘He ruined me. My head knows love is real and not all men are so horrible, blah blah blah. But my body. It’s like muscle memory or something. I get tense just hearing his name.’
Emma nodded, understandingly. ‘That’s a thing, you know.’
‘Getting tense at somebody’s name?’
‘Yeah. Muscle memory is a thing. We store trauma in our muscles and that’s why we get pain in our bodies sometimes: it’s old wounds in the fibres of our being.’
Nadia didn’t really understand. Trauma in the fibres of her being? It wasn’t like Awful Ben had hit her or anything; although, one night, in a rage, he had hit himself, and the sound of it – thwack – had scared Nadia into knowing that if she didn’t leave she could be next. It started out as words, accusations and little niggles, but within a few weeks Nadia found she couldn’t breathe properly around him, and yet still felt like she couldn’t end it, that she was somehow bound to him. She was terrified to stay, but even more terrified to leave. She never thought she would be one of ‘those’ women, but it turned out there are no ‘those’ women – only ‘those’ men.
‘Yeah, I know it sounds crazy, but there’s stuff you can do to let your body release like, bad memories. Really, really!’
Emma was exposed to all kinds of stuff through the paper she worked for. She’d once been silent speed dating where she had to do a slow dance to classical music, with a stranger, the only points of their body touching being one finger and with eye contact unbroken. She said it was the most erotic three minutes of her life. Or, another time, she’d ended up at a New Year’s Eve party with an ex-footballer who now sold bagels on the TV, and he offered her a threesome with his fiancée. Emma had said yes.
‘Emma, if this involves a woman fingering me in front of an audience I will actually kill you.’ That was another thing Emma had done – a Yoni love class that meant everyone had their vulva massaged by a teacher wearing a beaded kaftan and latex gloves. It was supposed to cleanse their energy and encourage deeper orgasms. Emma had orgasmed in front of an audience of six other women who’d paid £350 for the half-day workshop and who then afterwards took it in turns to hug her in congratulations.
‘Oh god,’ said Emma, ‘I’d never do that again. I think it was her herbal steam that gave me that recurring thrush, you know. No. This is just lolling about on mats in our Lululemon, but it works! Denise at work did it and said she cried in class and then got on with her life. That she really felt her energy shift. In fact – let me text her for the name.’
Nadia had never known anybody as interested in the ridiculous and the sublime as much as Emma. That was probably why they got on – Emma encouraged Nadia to experiment more, to be a little braver, and Nadia made Emma a little more thoughtful. She smiled at her friend as she texted, and looked out across the restaurant. It was almost full, and she lingered her gaze on a table of City boys across the room. It could be any one of them, she thought, surprising herself in her hopefulness. Literally, if it is for me, the guy who wrote it could be in this very room.
‘That guy could literally be anywhere, couldn’t he?’ she said, as much to herself as to Emma.
‘I’m telling you,’ Emma said, setting her phone back down on the table, screen-side down. ‘Write him back! You’ve got nothing to lose.’
Nadia hesitated. She didn’t. There was nothing to lose. Because if she wrote back and it actually wasn’t meant for her, the only person who would know was him. And they were strangers. Nadia could even laugh it off and say she thought she was writing to somebody else too. And if the guy turned out to be an axe-wielding serial killer who lived with his mother and had voted LEAVE, Nadia could simply deny she was the author of any return note. She could blame Emma. Feign total ignorance.
Emma bent down to her bag. ‘Hold on,’ she said, rustling through her stuff. ‘I’ve got an idea.’
She resurfaced with a notebook and two pens, victorious. Nadia watched her open it on a fresh page, and write in loopy cursive: ‘TRAIN GUY ADVERT’.
‘You’re really going to make me do this, aren’t you?’
‘Yup,’ said Emma, pen poised above the page. A waiter came and topped up their glasses. ‘We’ll have another bottle, please,’ Emma said to him. ‘I think my friend is going to need it.’ Nadia smiled at him weakly.
‘So. I’m thinking you should be direct about this,’ Emma said. ‘His advert contained a compliment, but wasn’t too sickly, and that was cute, right? That hit the right note?’
‘If it was for me,’ Nadia said.
‘If it was for you, his tone was just right, right?’
‘Well, we’re here still talking about it and thinking of writing back to him, so … yes. The boy did good.’
‘The man did good.’
‘Man, yes,’ said Nadia, not realizing how good it felt to make the distinction between man and boy. She was twenty-nine. She should be dating men. ‘And listen, I don’t want to sound too desperate or anything, though, you know? That’s important.’
‘Well, you’re not desperate, is the thing.’ Emma seemed to have a flash of inspiration, and she held up a finger as if to say, hold on! ‘What about …’ Emma started to scribble something down, smiling to herself. The waiter delivered a new bottle and asked if they wanted fresh glasses. Nadia said no, eager to get rid of him, in the nicest possible way, so she could see what Emma was writing. Emma passed the paper over to Nadia, who silently read:
Hey sexy papa, your advert hit my heart so hard it hurt, and I can’t wait for you to hurt me a little more. I’ll bring the whips and chains, and you bring your dazzling charm. Friday night work? Love, the devastatingly cute blonde on the 7.30.
‘Close,’ said Nadia, laughing. ‘Definitely a great start.’ She took the pen and paper off her friend and turned to look out through the window for inspiration. She watched a couple a few years older than her, maybe in their mid-thirties, making out against a lamppost like teenagers. Summer did that to people. Made them act like they did the first summer they realized they fancied someone and that swapping spit could be a fun pastime. Summer released inhibitions.
‘Hello? Earth to Nadia?’ Nadia’s gaze refocused on Emma. ‘You’re supposed to be writing, remember?’
‘Yes. Sorry. I was watching those two people make out. They seem to like each other.’
Emma peered over her shoulder and said, ‘Jesus. I want what they’re having.’
‘Hey,’ Nadia said. ‘Are you seeing anyone? What happened with that Tinder guy? I feel out of the loop. I haven’t had an update in ages.’
‘Dead in the water,’ Emma said. ‘Why do all men want a mother and a therapist and a best friend and a cheerleader, all wrapped up in the body of a Kooples model, and at best what they bring to the table is, like, they’ve never killed anyone and maybe they know how to make chicken in mushroom sauce?’
‘Should I put that in my ad?’
‘Your guy seems romantic! Or at least minimally above average. He’s the one in fifty who are worth the effort, because he is making the effort. I think that’s the ratio. For every fifty men, one is worth the hassle.’
‘Okay, okay, I’m writing something back. What about:
I’m shy, and I’m often late, but I make great coffee and I think it’s me you wrote to, to call cute? I can’t figure out who you are on my train, but come talk to me! I won’t bite. At least not at first.’
Emma laughed. ‘That’s … kinda fun!’ she said.
‘I am not actually serious.’
‘You could be though! Or, what about:
Wine me, dine me, sixty-nine-me, train man: just let me know who you are by saying hello, first? Love, the devastatingly cute blonde with the amazing hair (you forgot to say about my amazing hair in your advert, but that’s okay. Just remember it next time.)’
‘You make me sound self-obsessed! OMG!’
Emma shrugged. ‘I mean, you are, a bit. At least with your hair.’
‘This hair costs me two hundred and ten pounds every twelve weeks. I think it would be a crime against hair if I wasn’t proud of it, don’t you?’
‘Very true.’
‘This is hard,’ complained Nadia. ‘What if I reply, and it’s shit, and he loses interest?’
‘Woah, woah, woah, friend – stop that before it starts! It is NOT your job to seduce him. It is his job to impress you. Whoever the next guy is, he has to break the cycle, okay? No more simpering, pliable Nadia. Date like the Nadia we know! And love! Literally your state of mind cannot be to impress him. He’d be lucky to have you. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘And if he is the one in fifty who is worth being bothered about, you’ll be lucky to have him too. And together, it will be lovely.’