Page 2 of A Cornish Winter’s Kiss

Emily defied anyone not to find Waterloo station romantic.

It had its fair share of stressed commuters, admittedly, as well as crying children and their frazzled parents, who were desperate to be almost anywhere else, but that could never tell the full story.

Waterloo also had trains bound for the southwest coast, the most beautiful part of the country in Emily’s opinion.

She could have gone from Paddington station and got the train direct to Cornwall, but there were two reasons she always went from Waterloo.

The first was that changing at Exeter gave her a chance to meet up with her sister, Charlotte, and the second was the huge station clock.

It was something that couldn’t be missed, and it had become the perfect meeting point as a result.

Sometimes Emily would get to the station early, just so that she could sit on a bench with a view of the clock to observe some of those ‘meet me under the clock’ moments.

She’d seen couples meet for the first time on blind dates, greeting each other with ‘It’s nice to meet you in person at last’ and sometimes even going straight in for a kiss.

She’d watched reunions she wasn’t ashamed had brought tears to her eyes, and had even witnessed a couple of proposals.

The clock had been there for over a hundred years, and who knew how many couples had experienced their own life-changing moment beneath it.

It was no coincidence that its hands were shaped like Cupid’s arrows.

There was no time to hang around today though.

She needed to be in Exeter by one o’clock to meet Charlotte, before heading on to Port Agnes to spend a week with her family.

A whole week where she wouldn’t have to wonder what the hell she’d done agreeing to take a job at the same firm where Jasmine worked.

Spending all day doing things with data that she still didn’t fully understand and which had never been part of the plan for her life.

It paid far better than her previous job had, although she’d never have taken it for that reason alone.

Emily had loved working in the city library where she’d got her first job after university, surrounded by books and kindred spirits who loved them as much as she did.

The library had hosted a wide range of regular events too, from book clubs to parenting groups, aimed at encouraging people to read to their children and build a foundation for a lifelong love of books.

It had made Emily feel like part of a real community, even in the midst of a city where she sometimes felt lost. When the local authority had announced it needed to make cutbacks in order to fill a ten-million-pound hole in its budget, Emily had feared that the library might close, and sadly she’d been right.

It had happened to so many libraries across the city and she’d known that finding another job like that would be hard, but it had proved to be impossible.

When Jasmine had urged her to apply for a post at her firm, just as a stop gap, Emily had decided to go for it, not intending to stay more than six months.

Now here she was, eighteen months into a job that was slowly sucking the life from her soul, one data entry at a time.

She’d thought about moving back to Port Agnes, but she’d been so certain that she’d find her purpose in London, and it would have felt like admitting defeat to move back home, no matter how much she sometimes wanted to.

‘Do you need a hand?’ The woman standing in front of Emily on the station platform looked seriously harassed. She had a baby and a toddler in a two-seater pushchair, with a large suitcase wedged underneath, half of it overhanging at the back and bashing her legs every time she tried to walk.

‘Thank you so much.’ The woman seemed to sag with relief.

‘My husband was supposed to be here, but he’s got the flu and I promised I’d go back home with the kids for my dad’s seventieth birthday.

I thought it would be okay, but I’ve got no idea how I’m going to get these two and our luggage on the train by myself. ’

‘I can put your case and mine in the luggage rack, and then come back and help you with one of the children, if you like?’ Emily smiled, but when she sensed a tiny bit of hesitation from the woman in front of her, she said the first thing that came into her head.

‘It’s okay, you can trust me. I’ve got a DBS check and I used to run a parent and toddler group at one of the libraries. ’

Emily flushed bright red. Why the hell was she talking about DBS checks? It made her sound as if she was a dodgy character trying to cover something up. The woman held her gaze for a moment and then started to laugh, lifting the last of the tension from her face.

‘Well, how can I say no to that? Thank you so much. My name’s Bella, the baby is Max and this little madam’ – she gestured towards the toddler, who at that moment was attempting to chew her way through the straps of the buggy – ‘is Maple. She’s three but acts like she’s thirteen most of the time.

I’ve never been bossed about so much in my life as I have since she learned to talk. ’

‘Great to meet you all. I’m Emily. Shall I get the luggage loaded on the train? We’ve still got fifteen minutes until it’s due to leave, so there’s plenty of time to get settled.’

In the end it took less than ten minutes for them to all get onboard and settled.

Bella’s little family were seated at a table on one side of the carriage, and Emily took a seat on the opposite side, not wanting to sit down with them and seem like the weirdo she’d painted herself to be, with her earnest assurances about DBS checks.

‘Thanks so much again, Emily, I don’t know what I’d have done without you.’ Bella let go of a long breath, the baby held against her chest as Maple sat in the seat next to her, busily colouring. ‘If I wasn’t already married, I might have had to propose!’

Bella had a contagious laugh, and Emily couldn’t help joining in.

If this had been the plot of one of the books she loved so much, Emily would have offered to help Bella when she got off the train, and her handsome, single brother would have been waiting to pick her and the children up.

He and Bella would invite Emily to join them at their father’s birthday celebration, and it would be the start of her very own happily ever after.

But this chance meeting with Bella and her family wasn’t going to be the moment that changed her life.

It was just one of those moments that helped solidify what she already knew – that brightening someone else’s day invariably brightened hers too.

When she eventually worked out what she wanted to do with her life, that was an aspect it needed to contain.

She just had no idea how to make it happen yet.

Emily had always quite enjoyed train journeys, at least when she wasn’t wedged on to a packed carriage with no available seats, desperately trying to avoid nestling her face into someone else’s armpit.

That was what came of being five feet one and a half; when you could still shop in the children’s department, that half an inch definitely counted.

Thankfully, on this occasion, the train was relatively quiet and it wasn’t until they reached Salisbury that someone sat in one of the spare seats close to Emily.

The woman who sat across the table from her was beautiful, in a way that could only be achieved by winning the genetic lottery.

She was probably in her late fifties, or early sixties, although it was hard to tell, with thick, silver-grey hair cut into an immaculate bob and blue eyes that sparkled when she greeted Emily.

‘Good morning, is anyone sitting here or is it okay if I take the seat?’

‘Please do.’ Emily returned her smile and held up the book she’d been reading. ‘This book is the only company I’ve got today.’

Emily regretted the words the moment they were out of her mouth.

The woman seemed very nice, and Emily had a feeling she’d be an interesting person if they sparked up a conversation, but you could never tell.

She’d given this stranger an open invitation to talk to her, and it would be almost impossible to cut her off even if she turned out to be an over-sharer with no sense of personal space, who wanted to spend the entire journey to Exeter discussing the problems she was having finding the right wormer for her cat.

It might seem unlikely, but it was a conversation Emily had been caught in with a man called Graham, on the way back from her last visit home, which had lasted all the way from Exeter to Basingstoke.

‘Good book, is it?’ The woman raised her eyebrows as she took her seat, and Emily braced herself for a lecture about wasting her time reading stuff like that.

She’d had that from strangers before too, and she deliberately kept her expression neutral, despite the fact that she was loving the book and could have waxed lyrical about it for the entire journey if she was given the chance.

‘It’s great, but I love everything by Sophia Wainwright.’

‘Really? Me too.’

‘She’s brilliant, isn’t she?’ Emily leant forward in her seat, instantly forgetting her fears about getting embroiled in a boring conversation, delighted to have found a fellow fan.

‘I buy every book she writes, as soon as it comes out, and my friend, who works in a bookshop, says she’s writing a series set in Cornwall next.

I’m so excited that my favourite author is going to be writing a series about my favourite place. I can’t wait.’

‘I should imagine Cornwall inspires lots of writers, so it’s probably no surprise that?—’