It all started with a glance out of the window, on a bus on a dusty highway. I was 18 and backpacking around Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, and as the Greyhound I was travelling on overtook another Greyhound going up the East Coast highway, I looked out of the window and saw a guy looking back at me from the other bus. It was a face I had already seen in three hostels in Australia, at the central Post Office in Christchurch, and on a flight from Fiji to Auckland. The coincidences were getting crazy. We’d never spoken, but gave each other a smile and a look of recognition. A little wave that said a friendly “hi”. These coincidences were spooky – so when I got to my destination and bumped into him again, in our hostel kitchen in Cairns, we decided to go for a drink.
The Night We Met
His name was Robert and he was from Holland – he was friendly and had a sweet face. We went for a drink, chatted, talked about our travels and laughed about the coincidences, and then we never saw each other again – he was heading back to Europe the next day.
There was no romance or thunderbolt moment in that one evening – but the coincidences of seeing him in the strangest of places on the other side of the world stuck with me and I had a slight pang that if only we had chatted earlier, if only he wasn’t going back to Europe the next day, something might have happened. There was such a feeling of serendipity, I vowed to act sooner on these things if they ever happened again in the future. I felt that life is too short not to take a chance on a chance encounter.
I remembered Robert when I fell for a handsome stranger on my daily commute: “Train Man” was reading books I loved; wore Converse in the colour I’d been browsing; listened to bands through his tiny iPod earphones that I’d seen playing at Brixton Academy the night before. He got in the same carriage on the 8.21 to King’s Cross as me and turned right out of King’s Cross heading on foot to Marylebone as I walked to Soho. These little signs reminded me to take a chance and speak up. I’m glad I did eventually ask him if he’d like to go for a drink, even if it took 18 months to pluck up the courage, because we ended up getting married and having kids. We’ve been together for 16 years.
But I remembered Robert from Holland again when I started writing my new novel, The Night We Met. Twenty five years later, I realised, these coincidences shape so many of us – what happens if we act? What might we miss if we don’t? It’s not unusual for a romance novel to have sliding doors and missed opportunities, but so much of that experience when I was 18 went on to shape my life that I wanted to write a story where the main characters get together in the way I might have with Robert.
Daniel and Olivia meet on the other side of the world and keep bumping into each other in the strangest of places, but unlike Robert and I, they are destined to be together – as I later was with the man on the train. And I hope that feeling comes through the book: that the universe conspires for things to happen to us, whether it’s for one friendly evening or a lifetime of love.
The Night We Met is out in paperback original format on 13th May. Published by Head of Zeus, an Aria book.
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My first book – The Note – was based on a true story. I loved a handsome stranger on a train from afar on my daily commute. It was excruciating, as no one talked on the train, so I never had a chance to strike up conversation with him, plus I was too shy to. After almost a year, I gave him a note asking him out for a drink. He said no at first, he had a girlfriend. But eight months later his circumstances had changed, and he asked me back out. We’re now married with two kids...
