The Little Vintage Carousel by the Sea: A gorgeously uplifting festive romance!. Jaimie Admans

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СКАЧАТЬ it’s locked.’

      ‘Well, get it unlocked, woman. How else are you going to get it back to him and feel the sparks of your fingers brushing as you stare deeply into his eyes and fall in lurve?’

      Zinnia is probably a typical magazine editor; picture Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada, but with more hair product and brighter clothes. Thankfully she’s a bit nicer than Miranda Priestly, and she runs a fortnightly women’s magazine instead of a haute couture fashion mag, but she only employed me because Daphne persuaded her I had all the qualities needed in a fact-checker, like being fastidious and meticulous, when the only thing I’m fastidious about is making sure there’s not a scrape of Nutella left at the bottom of the jar and I’m definitely not meticulous about setting my alarm in the mornings, and the more days that I underestimate the amount of time it takes to commute through London, the more likely Zinnia is to realise that Daphne was just trying to help her best friend get a job and I’m not actually that good at being a fact-checker. Or at getting here on time.

      ‘You’ve got articles to check piling up on your desk, Vanessa. You could’ve finalised three stories in the time you’ve spent running around train stations this morning. Either get that unlocked and give me something that Daphne can write about, or forget it and get back to work.’

      I should forget it. I should’ve handed it in at lost property in the station and been done with it. I lean over and pull the flat, black phone towards me. ‘I suppose I could ask the IT guy to look at it.’

      ‘Gosh, this is so romantic.’ Zinnia clasps her hands together. ‘Maybe you’ll have some sort of spiritual connection and you’ll just subconsciously know his password.’

      ‘Oh come on, it’s asking for a four-digit code. There are endless possibilities and the phone will probably lock us out after three attempts.’ I pick it up and run my fingers across the blank screen. I would love nothing more than to have a look through it and prove to them both that he’s undoubtedly married and his best quality is probably trying to pick up women on trains that his wife doesn’t know about. I need to forget all about Train Man and his phone. Besides, he was around my age and gorgeous, there’s no way he’s going to be single too. I don’t know what they’re expecting to come out of this.

      Daphne gets up and waddles around the room in another attempt to get comfortable. ‘Try 1234,’ she says with a laugh.

      I type the numbers in. ‘As if anyone would be that stup—’

      The phone makes a jingling sound and pings into life.

      Daph bursts out laughing. ‘Seriously? The man deserves to have his phone stolen just for that. What’s his credit card PIN – 5678?’

      I suddenly feel really bad. Whoever Train Man is, this is his private phone. He wouldn’t want a random stranger going through it, and I feel like some kind of criminal mastermind to have managed to unlock it. I’m going to be hacking the government next. Even though the government’s security systems are probably slightly more complex than 1234.

      ‘What did I tell you?’ Zinnia sounds gleeful. ‘Get into his pictures, quick. I want to see this dashing romantic hero.’

      ‘What’s that?’ Daph peers over my shoulder.

      ‘A train timetable,’ I say, looking at the jumble of numbers and times still onscreen from the last time he looked at it. ‘And not for the tube.’

      ‘So he was catching another train. Maybe that’s why he ran off so quickly.’

      ‘He did look worried about something. And he did keep checking his phone. Maybe he was looking at the time. Probably to check that his wife wouldn’t be home before his latest bit on the side left.’

      ‘Nah,’ Daph says. ‘Things like this don’t just happen. He’s obviously single and looking, just like you.’

      ‘I’m not looking.’

      ‘I’m looking for you,’ she says with a shrug. ‘Same thing.’

      ‘Anyone would think you didn’t have enough on with swooning over your own husband and a baby on the way.’

      ‘Girls, pictures,’ Zinnia says before she can respond. It’s not like it’s the first time we’ve had this conversation anyway. It always goes the same way. Daph says I’m over the hill, I tell her there is no hill to be over because whether I’m thirty-four or fifty or seventy, I’m not interested in another relationship, and she says she thought the same thing until she met Gavin, and if I’d just put myself out there and give it a chance, I might surprise myself and meet someone. I tell her how much I enjoy my own company and how nice it is to be single after spending so many years in a loveless relationship, and she tells me that was just one relationship and others will be different, ad infinitum. I can finish the conversation in my head without Daph saying another word, until she walks off muttering things like ‘spinster’ and ‘cat lady’.

      I’m obviously not moving fast enough because Daphne plucks the phone from my fingers and starts playing with it. ‘I hope he takes a lot of selfies. I’m desperate to see this guy.’

      ‘We shouldn’t be going through his phone,’ I try to protest.

      ‘We’re not. We’re looking for a way to get it back to him. Via his photos. Ooh, and his notes. Oh, and we have to check his messages because there might be some vital bit of contact information in there.’

      ‘And we’re just nosy,’ Zinnia adds.

      Like I hadn’t figured that one out for myself.

      ‘Like you don’t want to know too,’ Daph says.

      ‘Nope. I’m not looking. I’m not interested. I just want to get the phone back to him.’

      Daphne makes various noises as she fiddles with the phone and I fight the urge to see what she’s doing.

      ‘Okay, well, he’s not big on selfies, but we’ve got bigger problems than making eye contact on public transport. Are you sure he didn’t strike you as a bit of a weirdo?’

      ‘No, why?’ I instantly imagine she’s found a folder full of dick pics ready to send to unsuspecting women or something. No wonder he smiles at people on trains – he’s probably assessing them for how happy they’d be to receive an unsolicited photo of his manhood.

      ‘Nothing about him screamed weird fetishist or anything?’

      ‘No. Why, Daph?’ All pretence of not being interested falls away as I jump out of the chair and try to see over her shoulder.

      ‘Well, he’s got a real thing for wooden horses. Look at this. His phone is absolutely full of photos of bits of wooden horses. That’s a bit weird, isn’t it?’

      ‘They’re carousel horses.’ I peer over one shoulder and Zinnia peers over the other as Daphne scrolls through his photos at the speed of light, each one showing similar pictures of wooden carousel animals in methodical stages, from perfectly painted to varying states of decay.

      ‘And what’s that? It looks like parts of a rollercoaster, and what the— Ooh, is that him?’ She shoves the phone at me, showing a picture of Train Man in the distance, his arms outstretched on a sparkling carousel.

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