Laura Williams - Our Stop

Published by AVON

A Division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2019

Copyright © Laura Jane Williams 2019

Cover design © Cherie Chapman 2019

Cover illustrations © Shutterstock

Image here Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом. © Shutterstock

Laura Jane Williams asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of 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 ebook 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: 9780008320522

Ebook Edition © June 2019 ISBN: 9780008320539

Version: 2019-05-30

For anyone who, like me, chooses to believe

(despite all the evidence to the contrary)

Contents

Cover

Title Page OUR STOP Laura Jane Williams

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

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

‘Shit. Shit, shit, shit .’

Nadia Fielding launched down the escalator of the tube station, her new sandals flapping with force underfoot. If people didn’t move out of her way because of the swearing, surely they would for the massive thwack she made each time a sole hit the step. She cursed ever having swiped up on the Instagram link, and she cursed the blogger who had made the black leather monstrosities look chic – and comfortable – enough to buy. They were giving her a blister already. Fuck you, @whiskyandwhimsies , Nadia thought to herself. I hope your next sponsored trip to the Amalfi Coast falls through.

Coffee held precariously in her hand, bag slipping from her shoulder, sunglasses beginning to slide off the top of her head, Nadia was a mess – but she’d be damned if she wasn’t getting the 7.30. Today was the first day of The New Routine to Change Her Life, and The New Routine to Change Her Life meant catching the train on time.

She struggled with this. Midnight bedtimes after a night out with Emma or Gaby (she was healing a dented heart! Wine is so delicious!) and a general tendency towards being more of a night owl than an early riser (to think she knew people who did Super Spin before work!) both conspired to intensify Nadia’s love affair with the snooze button. She only accomplished being on time for work about once a week, normally on a Monday. She thanked god she lived alone in a flat that technically her mother owned but that meant she didn’t need roommates – no matter what time she got up, at least there was never a queue for the bathroom.

Monday was a perpetual Fresh Start – but often by the time Nadia put a Netflix series on that night, little had changed. She was always very conscientious between getting up and just before lunch, though. It was Monday afternoons that undid her. It couldn’t be helped. The working week was just so agonizingly long, and she spent her whole life trying to catch up with herself. She was sick of being exhausted. A viral BuzzFeed article had called it ‘Millennial Burnout’. But, that’s not to say Nadia couldn’t achieve big things when she put her mind to it – recently she’d polished off all seven seasons of The Good Wife in little under three weeks. Unfortunately, however, there was no way to leverage her binge-watching-of-American-lawyers-in-impossibly-tight-skirts-with-bizarrely-sassy-retorts-to-chauvinism skill into a salaried position. And so, life went on in a muddle. Well, until today. Today was the first day of the rest of her life.