probably kill me for being late for work, and I’m still a few stops away from where I usually get off, but I don’t have time to wait. I follow the swarm as seemingly every other person in our carriage floods out, and I pause in the middle of them, aware of the annoyed grunts of people pushing past me as I try to see where he is. I follow the crowd off the platform and up the steps, straining to see over people’s heads and between shoulders.
I’m sure I see his hair in the distance as the crowd starts to thin out, but he’s moving faster than a jet-powered Usain Bolt after an energy drink.
‘Hey!’ I shout. ‘Wait up!’
He doesn’t react. He wouldn’t know who I was calling to, if the guy I’m following is even him.
‘Hey! You dropped your—’
Another passenger glares at me for shouting in his ear and I stop myself. I’m already out of breath and Train Man is nothing more than a blur in the distance. I rush in the same direction, but those steps have knackered me, and the faraway blob that might still be the back of his head turns a corner under the sign towards the overground trains, and I lose sight of him.
I race … well, limp … to the corner where I saw him turn, but the station fans out into an array of escalators and glowing signs and ticket booths, and it’s thronging with people. I walk around for a few minutes, looking for any hint of him, but he’s nowhere to be seen. In the many minutes it’s taken me to half-jog half-stumble from one end of the station to the other, he could be on another train halfway across London by now.
I pull my own phone out and glance at the time. I’m twenty minutes late for work, and still three tube stops and a ten-minute walk away. Zinnia is going to love me this morning. I put my phone back in my pocket and slide his in alongside it.
I’ll have to find another way to get it back to him.
I could just hand it in at the desk in the station, but he’ll probably never see it again if I do that. If I dropped my phone, I’d like to think that a stranger would be kind enough to pick it up and attempt to reunite it with me, rather than just steal it. Why shouldn’t I do that for Train Man?
There’s something about him, there has been since the first time I saw him standing squashed against the door of a crowded train, right back in my first week at Maîtresse magazine. I know Daphne’s going to say that this is the universe’s way of saying I’m supposed to meet him after all the smiles we’ve exchanged, although she regularly says that when she’s trying to set me up on dates, if she’s not too busy reminding me of how long it’s been since my last date.
But it doesn’t mean anything. He isn’t even going to know that I’m the girl he smiles at sometimes. I’m sure I can just get an address and pop the phone in the post to him.
Simple as that. It won’t be a problem.
‘Let me get this straight,’ Daphne says as I sit in her office at Maîtresse, mopping sweat off my face from the rush to get here just-regular-late instead of monumentally going-to-be-fired late. ‘A stranger made eye contact with you, on public transport, in London?’ She screws her face up. ‘What kind of weirdo is this?’
By the time I’ve finished recounting my tube journey, she’s leaning over her desk, one hand rubbing her pregnant belly and one fanning her face. ‘Oh my God, Ness, I take it all back, he’s not a weirdo at all, he’s Train Man.’ She elongates the middle of both words to make it sound like she’s swooning.
It might not be the first time I’ve mentioned Train Man to Daphne.
‘This is like the start of a chick flick. I’d force you to watch this with me if it came on TV.’
‘And I’d humour you and spend the whole film picking apart the inaccuracies, because we all know that happily-ever-afters don’t happen in real life, and those daft romantic films are pure escapism, a million miles away from anything that could ever happen in reality.’
Daphne is so pregnant that she can barely get comfortable and she shifts in her chair again, still fanning a hand in front of her face, and I’m unsure if it’s because she’s getting hot flushes or because she thinks my morning is so swoonworthy. ‘The universe wants you to meet this man.’
I knew she’d say that.
‘No, it doesn’t. He doesn’t deserve to get his phone crushed by a stampede of people, but that’s as far as it goes. This is not one of your romantic stories.’
‘It could be like Sliding Doors.’ She ignores me. ‘Maybe you split in two as the train doors closed and there’s a whole alternative universe where you did catch up with him and—’
‘I could definitely do with splitting in two. Would the other one take half my body weight so I’d never need to go to the gym again?’
‘You don’t go to the gym, Ness, you just feel guilty for not going to the gym.’ She points a swollen finger at me. ‘And don’t try to divert the conversation. This is something special. In the other universe, the one where Gwyneth Paltrow cuts all her hair off and tells her cheating boyfriend where to go, your fingers could’ve brushed as you handed his phone back and he could’ve halted his plans to immediately take you on a date, and …’
I glance at the time on my phone again. ‘Well, my alternative-universe self works a lot faster than me. I went down the wrong escalator and got stuck for ten minutes trying to get back up. I bet she didn’t get her toes run over by three separate suitcases either.’
‘Your alternative-universe mum is probably already buying a hat. Can you imagine what your mum will say when you tell her about this? She’ll start a national campaign to find this man.’
‘That’s why no one is telling my mum in a million years. If she finds out—’
‘She’ll love it, just like all our readers will,’ Zinnia says, appearing in the doorway of Daphne’s office. I hadn’t even realised she was listening. ‘I was about to tell you off for being late, Vanessa, and then you come in with an incredible story like this.’
‘It’s not a—’
‘This is just like Sliding Doors, but it’s real,’ she says, her face lighting up as much as the Botox will allow it. ‘It’s just the sort of romantic story our readers would fall head over heels for.’
‘The romantic tale of soulmates torn apart by closing tube doors.’ Daph sits up. ‘What if now you have to find him in this universe and catch up with the other universe or you’ll be torn apart forever?’
‘I think that’s pushing it a bit, don’t you? There were no magical sliding tube doors. I’m just not fit enough to chase someone through a train station.’
‘Oh, don’t talk about pushing.’ Daph groans and rubs her belly again. ‘And everyone wants love like in the movies, but you never try to find it. Movie characters don’t just sit around expecting love to find them in the most romantic way—’
‘Unrealistic way,’ I cut in. ‘Although I wouldn’t mind my hair
