Are you sitting comfortably?
Then we’ll begin!
Back in the mists of time A-M decided to return to commuting to work in Liverpool, as she had once done when she was weekend staff. At first she booked her tickets in advance on thetrainline but after a particularly unfriendly wrangle with their customer “service” one morning she ventured into the ticket office at her local station and vented her frustration at the young man on the counter.
Over the next few months A-M would chat with Stuart each morning before getting her train, she even began leaving the house a little earlier so the chats lasted a bit longer. Slowly both parties developed unspoken crushes on the other as their friendship blossomed.
When the Pandemic struck in Spring 2020, the realisation hit that once the world went back to normal there was a chance that Stuart could have moved to another station, as job opportunity he had been waiting for had arisen. The day everything locked down, A-M had left on the train for work but ended up on the next one back. Passing the ticket office on her way to walk home from the station, she insisted Stuart find her and add her on Facebook, and they would chat on messenger everyday for two months, till Stuart’s birthday rolled around and A-M walked the three miles to the station for her daily exercise to drop off a present and bag of Opal Fruits. The walk became a daily ritual, and on A-M’s birthday there was even a socially distanced picnic in the station carpark. Before that though, A-M had to go back to work as the first lockdown lessened. Timing was terrible as Stuart was due to start his annual leave the same day. As she anxiously waited on the platform, chatting to one of the trainspotters on the platform opposite, A-M spotted Stuart in his biker gear striding along her platform like a big damn hero. He’d come to make sure she was okay getting on the train.
It would take another nine months and two more lockdowns for them to realise they were a couple. In fact, among their friends, they were last to know! At a belated family birthday party, with some restrictions still in place, a wonderfully awkward conversation was had in A-M’s garden, driven by a relative assuming Stuart was already “the boyfriend” (Thanks for the shove in the right direction Barbara!). The conversation led the conclusion that they had a really great friendship and perhaps anything else would endanger that friendship. Stuart went home, and a text conversation followed that same night which reversed that cautious decision!
And the rest is history. The great friendship is still foremost in the relationship, storms have been weathered and delirious happiness still ensues.