Maya pretends to read One Hundred Years Of Solitude in the hope of making a connection, in case Train Man looks up and recognises that same cover of that same book. Perhaps he’ll be impressed that Maya’s edition is older, more dog-eared and loved. Her hot face is flushed with fear and excitement on a cold morning, her ticket lies on the train floor. Angry Man has just huffed off, marching up the train, nearly knocking the delicate box of macarons nervously resting on Maya’s lap as he created a mini tornado in his wake. Stamping a heavy footprint onto Maya’s ticket as he left this irksome carriage.
Well Angry Man clearly doesn’t fancy me.
Maya laughs on the inside. Anticipation giving her tummy ache. After the Superior Train stopped to pick up the Unfortunate commuters from their Unfortunate town and everyone was present and correct, Maya heeded Nena’s advice. Nena was right. Why hadn’t Maya thought of this before? So simple! So telling! And now, she and Train Man happen to be sitting diagonally on a set of four seats, him facing backwards reading Harper Lee with nothing but a dirty little table jutting out in front of him, her facing forwards. Maya had no choice, this seemed like too happy a happenstance. Edge, edge, drop. Off her knee, making sure she didn’t throw the macarons down onto the floor too. Now the plastic wallet that contains Maya’s ticket is slightly soiled by Angry Man’s tread, but she hopes that won’t stop Train Man from picking it up.
Maya turns down the music in her ears in preparation because if, out of the three people around her, Train Man is the one to pick up her ticket, the one to speak to her, she will need to drink in his voice. Maya puts on her best reading face while the ticket on the floor in her peripheral vision calls her; calls him. The large woman sitting opposite Maya, next to Train Man, is chewing her nails in ignorance – blissful ignorance to Maya. The small man, who Maya imagines might be a jockey in another less nine-to-five life, is asleep on her left.
The ticket has been on the floor for eleven excruciating seconds. In his peripheral vision, James saw it fall. He saw the angry man with the goatee tread on it, half deliberately, half accidentally, and he can see that its owner, the girl with the pink coat, the pink cheeks and the brown hair, hasn’t yet noticed that it fell. He puts a thumb between two pages to stop Atticus Finch in his stride and leans down, uncomfortably close to the large woman chewing her nails.
‘Excuse me, you dropped this,’ James says, proffering the ticket.
A heart soars.
Maya is finally able to look at Train Man. Maya could melt and disappear, through the seat, through the floor, into the scorching rails on a freezing February morning. She is elated. She fumbles to take silent earphones out of her ears.
‘Sorry?’ Maya says, pretending she didn’t hear him, so she can reabsorb his calm and cautious voice.
‘You dropped your ticket.’ James looks up from where he has leaned down to pick it up. Wide, lovely eyes.
‘Thanks,’ squeaks Maya as she takes it. And that is all that she can manage to say.
I am on his radar.
*
‘I made these for you!’
Maya hands the pristine oblong box over the great divide of the desk. Pride fills her.
‘What are they?’
‘Open them and see.’
Emma unties the apricot-coloured ribbon.
‘You made these?’
Maya nods.
Alex turns around from his seat back-to-back with Emma’s by the window. His strawberry-blond whip bounces perkily.
‘O.M.Gee. No way, Maya!’ he says, looking over Emma’s shoulder.
A row of six pastel yellow, pink and orange macarons alternate gleefully.
‘Where are mine?!’
‘You’re next, Alex, one at a time though, I only just mastered them last night. While all you loved-up losers were out having fun with your special someone, I was tearing it up in the kitchen. On my own.’ Maya is good at laughing at herself.
Emma looks sad.
Other members of the team start to arrive for a full-on day ahead. Chloe’s corkscrew curly mane wobbles through the glass door, Liz has a red face from cycling in the cold and Sam saunters in wearing flip-flops.
Emma walks around to Maya and Olivia’s desks.
‘You are lovely, thank you,’ she says, wrapping wispy arms around Maya. ‘I needed a little pick-me-up today.’
‘Are you OK?’
Eyes well up but Emma brushes it aside. ‘I am now, look at these, Sam!’
Maya has a thought and lowers her voice. ‘Hey, Emma, what are you doing next weekend?’
‘Not sure, why?’
‘Well don’t tell Lucy, but how about you take this?’ Maya rummages in her bag and pulls out the envelope with Cypress Manor Hotel & Spa written on the front in a frou-frou font.
‘Maya it was for you, Lucy was really happy with your work. And you worked so hard!’
‘It’s wasted on me. You take Paul. You could have a dirty weekend and some pampering. A couple’s massage isn’t much use for one. Besides, we’re a team, FASHmas wasn’t just down to me.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Wow,’ says Sam, peeping into the box of macarons in Emma’s hand and looking at Maya in awe. Sam has a bit of a sweet tooth himself. ‘You made those?’
Maya smiles at Sam, who starts up his many machines, and turns back to Emma.
‘I can’t go anyway,’ Maya lies, in hushed tones.
‘Thank you.’
Emma rushes back around to her desk to grab her phone and call Paul.
Maya slinks into her chair. She’s desperate to tell her friends that she spoke to Train Man this morning, but she’ll save it for lunchtime; Emma is already walking out of the office with a phone clutched to a rosy face. Eyes shining like sapphires again.
Maya hears Paul’s voice on the other end of Emma’s mobile as she walks through the doors and tries to remember what Train Man’s voice sounded like sixty-seven minutes ago.