The Cabin: Chloe's Story (Book Two) (The Cabin Novellas) by Natalie Stark

Prologue
     
    The train listed from right to left as it raced over track points, leaving London and the city behind for another day. For the last two years she had stood at the exact same spot on the platform at London Euston station and waited for her train. For the last two years she had fought for the same seat – the one by the window so she could watch the Hertfordshire hills roll past. The young woman would look at them and daydream – she liked to dream. She liked to dream about the guy who, for the last two years, had sat opposite her. The same seat, the same place for the last two years. Had that purely been by chance? She had often wondered, spying at his reflection in the glass. In all that time, only twice had he met her stare. This had happened as he reached up for his briefcase from the overhead rack, being mindful not to step on her dainty toes as he stepped from the train at his stop. Once or twice she had caught the faint scent of his aftershave. It was a musky smell, which made her stomach tighten with a twinge of nervous excitement. The young woman would look away, back out of the window. He would walk past along the platform, fishing his phone from his suit pocket and pressing it to the side of his face. Who was he calling? She wondered. His wife? Girlfriend? Lover? The train would ease out of the station, and the woman would snatch another fleeting glance of his smooth features, collar-length black hair and deep brown eyes. Then he was gone again, until the following day.
    She had lost count of how many times she had tried to think up an excuse to engage him in conversation, but what could she say? Talk about the weather? Predictable. The lateness of the trains? The overcrowding? Boring. She couldn’t think of anything. She had forgotten the art of flirting, and doubted she had really ever mastered it. So she sat, turned away from him, stealing glimpses of his perfect reflection in the window as the train rattled through the countryside, whisking her back to her boring home, marriage and life. Everything was just so predictable. Her life ran to a timetable just like the trains that sped her to and from her job in the city each day. Tomorrow she would risk sitting in a different seat – spice things up a bit. But what about the cute-looking guy with the smooth jaw, Superman black hair and dark, moody eyes? What about him? She scoffed at herself. He had glanced at her twice in two years – big deal! So what! Zippidee-do-dah! Life was boring – her life was boring – it sucked and she knew it.
    As the young woman, in her finely pressed suit jacket and skirt peered out of the window, the late afternoon sun sparkling through the train window and into her blonde hair, her monotonous routine was suddenly broken. The young man sitting opposite her suddenly stood up. But it isn’t his stop, the woman thought, surprised by this break in his routine.
    Turning her head ever so slightly, she watched him sway from foot to foot as he eased his way through those commuters unlucky enough to have not been able to grab themselves a seat before they were all taken. The train tilted violently to the right and she watched as his iPhone spilled from his trouser pocket and clattered to the floor.
    “Excuse...” she started, then stopped, realising this would be the first time she had spoken to him. Swallowing hard, she said, “Excuse me, you’ve dropped your phone.”
    The guy didn’t look back. Had he heard her over the clickety-clack of the speeding train? She wondered.
    Leaning forward in her seat, she plucked up his phone before it was trampled on. She looked down at the iPhone and felt that sudden twinge of excitement again at the realisation that she now had a perfectly good excuse to start a conversation with him. She played out in her mind how, on returning to his seat , she would smile sweetly at him and explain how she had rescued his phone from being crushed by the standing commuters. He would be