Meeting on a train

It was November 1962 and I was an officer in the Merchant Navy. When my ship had been unloading in Montreal, Canada, I met a Canadian person in a bar and made a friend during the few days we were there. Back in England I had a girlfriend who lived in London and would visit her at her flat and then leave using a taxi, with just enough time to catch the last train from Victoria to Brighton. The train invariably left from platform 15 which allowed me to get the taxi to use the side entrance to the station where I could leap out of the taxi and go straight across the platform and onto the train usually with a couple of minutes to spare. The train split at Haywards Heath station, the front half carrying on to Brighton while the rear section went to Lewis and Eastbourne. On this particular night I leaped out of the taxi and found that the train was on platform 14 with a set aof tracks between me and the train. I had to run down platform 15 for half the length of the train, around to the barrier on platform 14. As I raced for the train the guard was blowing his wistle and he pulled me into the rear of the end carriage. I was now in the section that would separate and go on to Lewis so I started to walk through the train to get into the Brighton section. While still in the Lewis section there sitting facing me was the person that I had made friends with in Montreal. I didn't even know that he was coming to England and had I not got into the wrong section of the train and had he been sitting the other way we would never have met. Just a very strange set of coincidences allowed us to renew our friendship.