скачать книгу бесплатно
Our Stop
Laura Jane Williams
‘LJ’s honesty and style are unique’ Stylist What if you almost missed the love of your life?Nadia gets the 7.30 train every morning without fail. Well, except if she oversleeps or wakes up at her friend Emma’s after too much wine.Daniel really does get the 7.30 train every morning, which is easy because he hasn’t been able to sleep properly since his Dad died.One morning, Nadia’s eye catches sight of a post in the daily paper:To the cute girl with the coffee stains on her dress. I’m the guy who’s always standing near the doors… Drink sometime?So begins a not-quite-romance of near-misses, true love, and the power of the written word.A fabulous feel-good romance for fans of Holly Bourne and Dolly Alderton.
OUR STOP
Laura Jane Williams
Copyright (#uaea375e5-4d46-5ca8-988b-51eb1b2fd1e4)
Published by AVON
A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Copyright © Laura Jane Williams 2019
Cover design © Cherie Chapman 2019
Cover illustrations © Shutterstock
Image here (#litres_trial_promo) © Shutterstock
Laura Jane Williams asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008320522
Ebook Edition © June 2019 ISBN: 9780008320539
Version: 2019-05-30
Dedication (#uaea375e5-4d46-5ca8-988b-51eb1b2fd1e4)
For anyone who, like me, chooses to believe
(despite all the evidence to the contrary)
Contents
Cover (#u5531a506-ed04-5e12-80c8-2ed64a5bf9c8)
Title Page (#ubcfc797b-a230-55ea-b4d9-876e3fe2c343)
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 (#uaea375e5-4d46-5ca8-988b-51eb1b2fd1e4)
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.
