A wrong train, a right person

We met because Tom got on the wrong train. He was meant to be going to Exeter for a job interview and instead found himself on the 07:42 to Paignton, sitting opposite a woman doing the crossword in pen. Ella has always maintained that doing the crossword in pen is a personality test and that he passed it by not saying anything about the pen.

He missed the interview. She gave him half a flapjack and the last four across. By Newton Abbot he had her number written on the corner of the crossword, which he then left on the train, which meant an extremely undignified week of him standing on the same platform at the same time hoping.

On the fifth morning she was there. She said she had been getting the earlier train all week for exactly no reason. That was March 2021.

Four years later, on a filthy wet Tuesday in October, Tom proposed on the coast path above Soar Mill Cove with a ring he had been carrying in a coat pocket for eleven days waiting for decent weather that never came. Ella said yes before he had finished the sentence, largely, she says, because she was cold.

We are getting married about a mile from that spot. Please come. Bring a coat.

— Ella & Tom