Consequently, the few trains that were running were heaving and there was no hope of securing the seat I had reserved or finding a spot for my bags. I ended up wedged by the steamy window with them piled on my lap and around my feet and next to a mum with a screaming toddler with a toy xylophone and opposite the ultimate manspreader who stared at me from the second the train set off to the moment I fought my way off at Peterborough.

Conditions there were little better. Rain was pouring from a slate-grey sky and the wind was roaring along the platform. It was all I could do to hang on to my luggage and stay upright as I made my way towards the taxi rank. I kept my head bent and pushed on, hoping the lift was working and I wouldn’t have to tackle the flights of steps to get out of the station. I could hear someone shouting ahead of me, but I didn’t look up.

‘Hey!’ bellowed the voice again. ‘Hattie!’

I risked a brief upward glance; my face was soaked in an instant and I found myself blinking at what appeared to be a human wall. The bitter wind stung my eyes and I just knew that my newest mascara had let me down every bit as spectacularly as the old one.

‘Sorry,’ shouted the man-wall. ‘Did I make you jump? I didn’t mean to. You are Hattie, aren’t you?’

‘That depends,’ I shouted back, the wind carrying my voice off and away as the rain ran down my face. ‘Who are you?’

‘I’m Beamish,’ the guy, who I guessed was about the same age as me, beamed.

Did he really say his name was Beamish?

From under the hood of his waxed coat, I could see his large brown eyes smiling into mine. His lashes were thick, long and dark and his jaw was covered in stubble. How he could even bring himself to think about smiling given the conditions was beyond me, but it was a great smile. In fact, given the bad mood my rotten journey had put me in coupled with the atrocious weather conditions, it must have been a spectacular smile for me to even notice it.

‘Dolly asked me to give you this,’ he said, pulling an envelope out of his coat pocket. ‘She’s asked me to come and pick you up.’

‘I wasn’t expecting a taxi to come out from Wynbridge,’ I sniffed, feeling a little wrong-footed and not only because of his unexpected presence.

I swapped one of my bags with him for the envelope and turned out of the wind before pulling off a glove so I could open it. My fingers were numb within seconds. The note confirmed what the block of masculine masonry, had said. His name was in fact Beamish and he was here to collect me.