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

About the Author

JAIMIE ADMANS is a 32-year-old English-sounding Welsh girl with an awkward-to-spell name. She lives in South Wales and enjoys writing, gardening, watching horror movies and drinking tea, although she’s seriously considering marrying her coffee machine. She loves autumn and winter, and singing songs from musicals despite the fact she’s got the voice of a dying hyena. She hates spiders, hot weather and cheese & onion crisps. She spends far too much time on Twitter and owns too many pairs of boots. She will never have time to read all the books she wants to read.

Jaimie loves to hear from readers; you can visit her website at www.jaimieadmans.com or connect on Twitter @be_the_spark.

Also by Jaimie Admans

The Château of Happily-Ever-Afters

The Little Wedding Island

It’s a Wonderful Night

The Little Vintage Carousel by the Sea

JAIMIE ADMANS

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019

Copyright © Jaimie Admans 2019

Jaimie Admans asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for 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 e-book 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: 9780008330866

E-book Edition © April 2019 ISBN: 9780008296964

Version: 2019-02-25

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Also by Jaimie Admans

Title page

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

Acknowledgements

Extract

Dear Reader …

Keep Reading …

About the Publisher

For Mum and Bruiser.

You will forever be my little family who I wouldn’t change for the world, now and always.

Chapter 1

Why does every man in London think that eight o’clock on a warm June morning is the ideal time to remove their shirt and get on the tube? I consider this as I peel myself away from a sweaty back and turn around to find myself face to face with someone’s wet armpit. There’s often a good time for shirtlessness, but the middle of rush hour on a crowded train is not it.

I sigh and stare at my feet. Every morning I get on this train and get off feeling like a floppy sardine that’s just been let out of a tin and probably smelling worse. All to go to the soulless office block of the women’s magazine where I work as a fact-checker, and then do the exact same thing at half past five with all the other sweaty, irritable commuters who would really love nothing more than to poke their boss in the eye and run away to a beach somewhere.

Someone stands on my toe and a handbag hits me in the thigh as someone else swings it over their arm. Ow. Only four more days to go until the weekend, and then I can have two whole days of not having to leave the flat and face the crowds of London. Two whole days of uninterrupted Netflix, apart from when Mum calls to update me on my ex-boyfriend’s latest news, which she knows because they’re still online friends even though I deleted him over two years ago.

I jump back as a briefcase threatens to take out my kneecaps. There’s got to be more to life than this.

I look up and my eyes lock on to a man near me. Train Man is going somewhere today. Usually he only has a backpack with him, but today there’s a huge suitcase leaning against his leg, rucksack straps over both shoulders, and a holdall bag hooked over one arm. He’s standing up and holding on to a rail like I am, his attention on the phone in his hand, the lines around his eyes crinkled up as he looks down at it, and the sight of him makes something flutter inside me.

I see him quite often, but he’s always already on the train when I get on, and we’re usually much further apart. Up close, he’s even more gorgeous than I’d always thought he was. He’s got short brown hair, dimples denting his cheeks, and the kind of smile that makes you look twice, which I know because he’s one of the rare London commuters who smiles at others.

The noisy tube train full of other people’s body parts in places you don’t want other people’s body parts, the noise of people sniffing and coughing, an endless medley of beeps as people play with their phones, snippets of conversation that aren’t meant for me … they all fade into the background and the world turns into slow motion as he lifts his head, almost like he can feel my eyes on him, and looks directly at me. If it was anyone else, I’d look away instantly. Staring at strangers on the tube is a quick way to get yourself punched or worse, but it’s like a magnet is holding me, drawing my gaze to his, and his mouth curves up a tiny bit at each side, making it as impossible to look away now as it is every other time he smiles at me.

I feel that familiar nervous fluttering in the deepest part of my belly. It’s not butterflies. My stomach must have disagreed with the cereal I shoved down my throat before rushing out of the flat this morning. Even though it’s the same fluttery feeling I get every time I see him and he sees me. Maybe it’s because I’m never usually this close to him. Maybe those dimples have magical powers at this distance. Maybe I’m just getting dizzy from looking up at him because I’m so short and he’s the tallest person on the train, towering above every other passenger around us.

His smile grows as he looks at me, and I feel myself smiling back, unable not to return his wide and warm smile, the kind of smile you don’t usually see from fellow commuters on public transport. Open. Inviting. His gaze is still holding mine, his smile making his dimples deepen, and the fluttery feeling intensifies.

I feel like I could lean across the carriage and say hello to him, start a conversation, ask him where he’s off to. Although that might imply that I’ve studied him hard enough on previous journeys to work out that he doesn’t usually have that much luggage. And talking to him would be ridiculous. I can’t remember the last time I said hello to a stranger. It’s considered weird here, not like in the little country village where I grew up. People just don’t do that here.

He’s wearing jeans and a black T-shirt, and he tilts his head almost like he’s trying to hold my gaze, and I wonder why. Does he know that I spend most journeys trying to work out what he does, because there’s no regularity to his routine? I’m on this train at eight o’clock every morning Monday to Friday, I look like I’m going into an office, but he’s always in jeans and a T-shirt, a jacket in the winter, and sometimes he’s on this train a couple of times a week, sometimes once a week, and other times weeks can pass without me seeing him. I don’t even know why I notice him so much. Is it because he smiles when our eyes meet? Maybe it’s because he’s so tall that you can’t help but notice him, or because London is such a big and crowded place that you rarely see the same faces more than once.

His dark eyes still haven’t left mine, and he pushes himself off the rail he’s leaning against, and for a split second I think he’s going to make the move and talk to me, and I feel like I’ve just stepped into a scene from one of my best friend Daphne’s favourite romcom movies. The leading couple’s eyes meet across a crowded train carriage and—

‘The next station is King’s Cross St. Pancras.’ An automated voice comes over the tannoy, making me jump because everything but his eyes has faded into the background.

I see him swear under his breath and a look of panic crosses his face. He checks his phone again, turns around and gathers up his suitcase, hoists the holdall bag higher up his arm, and readjusts the rucksack on his shoulders.

I feel ridiculously bereft at the loss of eye contact as the train slows, but I get swept along by the crowd as other people gather up their bags and make a mass exodus towards the doors. He glances back like he’s looking for me again, but I’m easy to miss amongst tall people and I’ve moved from where I was with the crowd. He looks around like he’s trying to locate me, and I want to call out or wave or something, but what am I supposed to say? ‘Hello, gorgeous Train Man, the strange short girl who’s spent the entire journey staring at you is still here staring at you?’

I’m not far behind him now, even though this isn’t my stop and it’s clearly his. I can see him in the throng of people, his hand wrapped around the handle of the huge wheeled suitcase he’s pulling behind him as the train comes to a stop.

As if the world turns to slow motion again, I see him glance at his phone once more and then go to pocket it, but instead of pushing it into the pocket of his jeans, it slides straight past and lands on the carriage floor at the exact moment the doors open and he, along with everyone else, rushes through them.

He hasn’t noticed.

Without thinking, I dart forward and grab the phone from the floor before someone treads on it. I stare at it for a moment. This is his phone and I have it. He doesn’t know he dropped it. There’s still time to catch up with him and give it back.

Zinnia will probably kill me for being late for work, and I’m still a few stops away from where I usually get off, but I don’t have time to wait. I follow the swarm as seemingly every other person in our carriage floods out, and I pause in the middle of them, aware of the annoyed grunts of people pushing past me as I try to see where he is. I follow the crowd off the platform and up the steps, straining to see over people’s heads and between shoulders.

I’m sure I see his hair in the distance as the crowd starts to thin out, but he’s moving faster than a jet-powered Usain Bolt after an energy drink.

‘Hey!’ I shout. ‘Wait up!’

He doesn’t react. He wouldn’t know who I was calling to, if the guy I’m following is even him.

‘Hey! You dropped your—’

Another passenger glares at me for shouting in his ear and I stop myself. I’m already out of breath and Train Man is nothing more than a blur in the distance. I rush in the same direction, but those steps have knackered me, and the faraway blob that might still be the back of his head turns a corner under the sign towards the overground trains, and I lose sight of him.

I race … well, limp … to the corner where I saw him turn, but the station fans out into an array of escalators and glowing signs and ticket booths, and it’s thronging with people. I walk around for a few minutes, looking for any hint of him, but he’s nowhere to be seen. In the many minutes it’s taken me to half-jog half-stumble from one end of the station to the other, he could be on another train halfway across London by now.

I pull my own phone out and glance at the time. I’m twenty minutes late for work, and still three tube stops and a ten-minute walk away. Zinnia is going to love me this morning. I put my phone back in my pocket and slide his in alongside it.

I’ll have to find another way to get it back to him.

I could just hand it in at the desk in the station, but he’ll probably never see it again if I do that. If I dropped my phone, I’d like to think that a stranger would be kind enough to pick it up and attempt to reunite it with me, rather than just steal it. Why shouldn’t I do that for Train Man?

There’s something about him, there has been since the first time I saw him standing squashed against the door of a crowded train, right back in my first week at Maîtresse magazine. I know Daphne’s going to say that this is the universe’s way of saying I’m supposed to meet him after all the smiles we’ve exchanged, although she regularly says that when she’s trying to set me up on dates, if she’s not too busy reminding me of how long it’s been since my last date.

But it doesn’t mean anything. He isn’t even going to know that I’m the girl he smiles at sometimes. I’m sure I can just get an address and pop the phone in the post to him.

Simple as that. It won’t be a problem.

Chapter 2

‘Let me get this straight,’ Daphne says as I sit in her office at Maîtresse, mopping sweat off my face from the rush to get here just-regular-late instead of monumentally going-to-be-fired late. ‘A stranger made eye contact with you, on public transport, in London?’ She screws her face up. ‘What kind of weirdo is this?’

By the time I’ve finished recounting my tube journey, she’s leaning over her desk, one hand rubbing her pregnant belly and one fanning her face. ‘Oh my God, Ness, I take it all back, he’s not a weirdo at all, he’s Train Man.’ She elongates the middle of both words to make it sound like she’s swooning.

It might not be the first time I’ve mentioned Train Man to Daphne.

‘This is like the start of a chick flick. I’d force you to watch this with me if it came on TV.’

‘And I’d humour you and spend the whole film picking apart the inaccuracies, because we all know that happily-ever-afters don’t happen in real life, and those daft romantic films are pure escapism, a million miles away from anything that could ever happen in reality.’

Daphne is so pregnant that she can barely get comfortable and she shifts in her chair again, still fanning a hand in front of her face, and I’m unsure if it’s because she’s getting hot flushes or because she thinks my morning is so swoonworthy. ‘The universe wants you to meet this man.’

I knew she’d say that.

‘No, it doesn’t. He doesn’t deserve to get his phone crushed by a stampede of people, but that’s as far as it goes. This is not one of your romantic stories.’

‘It could be like Sliding Doors.’ She ignores me. ‘Maybe you split in two as the train doors closed and there’s a whole alternative universe where you did catch up with him and—’

‘I could definitely do with splitting in two. Would the other one take half my body weight so I’d never need to go to the gym again?’

‘You don’t go to the gym, Ness, you just feel guilty for not going to the gym.’ She points a swollen finger at me. ‘And don’t try to divert the conversation. This is something special. In the other universe, the one where Gwyneth Paltrow cuts all her hair off and tells her cheating boyfriend where to go, your fingers could’ve brushed as you handed his phone back and he could’ve halted his plans to immediately take you on a date, and …’

I glance at the time on my phone again. ‘Well, my alternative-universe self works a lot faster than me. I went down the wrong escalator and got stuck for ten minutes trying to get back up. I bet she didn’t get her toes run over by three separate suitcases either.’

‘Your alternative-universe mum is probably already buying a hat. Can you imagine what your mum will say when you tell her about this? She’ll start a national campaign to find this man.’

‘That’s why no one is telling my mum in a million years. If she finds out—’

‘She’ll love it, just like all our readers will,’ Zinnia says, appearing in the doorway of Daphne’s office. I hadn’t even realised she was listening. ‘I was about to tell you off for being late, Vanessa, and then you come in with an incredible story like this.’

‘It’s not a—’

‘This is just like Sliding Doors, but it’s real,’ she says, her face lighting up as much as the Botox will allow it. ‘It’s just the sort of romantic story our readers would fall head over heels for.’

‘The romantic tale of soulmates torn apart by closing tube doors.’ Daph sits up. ‘What if now you have to find him in this universe and catch up with the other universe or you’ll be torn apart forever?’

‘I think that’s pushing it a bit, don’t you? There were no magical sliding tube doors. I’m just not fit enough to chase someone through a train station.’

‘Oh, don’t talk about pushing.’ Daph groans and rubs her belly again. ‘And everyone wants love like in the movies, but you never try to find it. Movie characters don’t just sit around expecting love to find them in the most romantic way—’

‘Unrealistic way,’ I cut in. ‘Although I wouldn’t mind my hair being as good as a Nineties Gwyneth Paltrow.’

‘Yes!’ Daph says. ‘But that’s how it is when you find “The One”. The universe rearranges itself to throw you into each other’s paths. Just like when I met Gavin. Ridiculous, inconvenient, all-consuming love, in the words of Carrie Bradshaw. This could be your chance.’

Zinnia points a bony finger at Train Man’s phone, which is still sitting in the middle of Daphne’s desk like it might burst if someone pokes it. ‘Can you get into that?’

‘No, 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.