London Tubes are no place for conversation. Commuters, flat-packed into carriages with barely room to breathe, rarely strike up conversation with the person whose armpit they're currently occupying. It's just not done. So Abbie was surprised when the buskers stepped on to the train.
She'd spent most of the journey attempting to read - no mean feat when her kindle was tilted so far upright that she practically had to contort herself to read it. There'd been a brief respite once they'd reached Victoria, but upon stopping at Sloane Square an entire band of buskers - complete with fiddle, banjo and tambourine - had taken up the remaining space.
The violinist started first. Some jaunty tune that wound itself up in Abbie's head until she found herself tapping along to it. The banjo and tambourine joined in and it was all she could do to stop herself from reverting to her five-year-old self and twirl around on the spot. Looking up, she noticed people looking up from their newspapers, and pulling headphones from their ears, smiling at each other and even - horror of all horrors - speaking! And then she looked at him.
Blue eyes darting beneath that mop of dark corkscrew curls and fiddle tucked beneath his chin, he didn't see her. Fingers darted up the neck of his instrument as the bow danced across the strings as if it were dancing a jig of its own. Just as she was about to look back down and resubmerge herself in her novel, his eyes met hers. He smiled. She smiled back and in that moment, those thirty seconds, Abbie spoke more to the busker on the underground than she had to anyone else that week.
South Kensington. The train stopped. The band left, taking their music and the fiddler's merry smile with them. And Abbie went to work.
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