The Wrong Train

Pablo Ruiz had planned everything. His interview at a technology company in Cambridge was at eleven. The fast train left King's Cross at nine twelve and arrived at ten. He had ironed his shirt the night before, printed his portfolio twice and set three alarms. "Nothing can go wrong," he told his flatmate, "unless the trains stop running altogether."

The trains did not stop running. What happened was much simpler. Pablo slept through all three alarms, and at nine ten he ran into the station, saw a train on platform eight with its doors open and jumped on just as the whistle blew. He sat down, caught his breath and looked out of the window with a satisfied smile. It was only when the conductor announced, "This is the nine ten service to York, calling at Peterborough and York only," that the smile disappeared.

He stood up so fast that he hit his head on the luggage rack. The train was already moving. Peterborough was almost an hour away, and from there he would have to come all the way back. He did the maths and felt sick: there was no way he would reach Cambridge by eleven. He called the company, but the phone went straight to voicemail. He left a message that sounded, even to him, like a man who had lost his mind.

The woman sitting opposite had watched the whole scene over the top of her laptop. She was about forty, with short gray hair and a coffee cup covered in stickers. "Wrong train?" she asked. "Wrong train, wrong day, wrong life," Pablo said, and then, because she seemed kind, he told her everything: the interview, the portfolio, the three alarms.

Her name was Fiona, and she ran a small business in York that made educational games for children. When Pablo explained what was in his portfolio (a series of apps that taught maths through puzzles), she asked if she could see it. He handed it over without much hope. She turned the pages slowly, saying nothing, and then she closed it and looked at him for a long moment.

"Here's the thing," she said. "I've been looking for someone like you for two years. My games are good, but they're stuck in the last decade. You could fix that." She paused. "I can't pay what a big company in Cambridge would pay. But you could have a share of the business, as long as you're willing to move to York."

Pablo laughed, because it seemed ridiculous. He had gotten on the wrong train less than an hour earlier, and now a stranger was offering him a job. He said he would think about it, and he meant it politely. But they spent the rest of the journey talking, and by the time the train passed Peterborough without him getting off, he had stopped thinking about Cambridge altogether.

That was six years ago. Today, Pablo and Fiona run the business together from an old printing house near the river in York. They have fourteen employees, a cat called Algorithm and games used in schools in nine countries. Their most popular app, a puzzle adventure about a lost train, was Pablo's idea.

He often thinks about that morning. If he hadn't overslept that morning, he wouldn't have been running. If he hadn't been running, he would have checked the departure board. If he had checked it, he would have caught the right train, done the interview and probably gotten the job. He would be living in Cambridge now, working for someone else, and he would never have met Fiona.

"Do you ever regret it?" a journalist asked him recently. Pablo shook his head. "If I had been more careful that day, I would have a more sensible life," he said. "But I wouldn't be half as happy. Unless you count the bump on my head, that train was the best mistake I ever made."

The company in Cambridge, by the way, did eventually call him back. It was three days later, and they apologized for the delay: the person who was supposed to interview him had been on a train to Edinburgh that morning. Apparently, he had gotten on the wrong one.