The Girl On The Train (Reprise)

I love it when the internet gives back to you. I got an email today from someone asking me if I was going to be 'spending Christmas at a quiet Oxfordshire hotel' and, if so, if I was intending on 'travelling there by train'. Thank you to that person for their dedication to the cause and making me smile. This may not mean much except to those with good memories, or those who troll through the Calendar every year looking for some obscure track; but this reference is to a Christmas Ghost story that I wrote that appeared on the 2015 Calendar, although I originally had it published in a magazine in 1997. Anyone reading the story now will recognise the 'Woman on the Train' and, although a few years out in age, the traveller. It feels very weird to be reading this now, although it does impact on another, happier memory. I went to a Christmas literary evening in a Colchester pub a couple of years ago. The idea of the evening was that you sat in an old English setting, in front of a roaring log fire in a room lit by candles and read out your favourite Yule related stories and poems. Most read from Dickens, Thomas and Larkin etc. which was wonderful, but I decided to read 'The Girl on the Train' because I wanted to see how it went down. I remember hearing Gail say 'My God' as I read out a description of the girl as she knew who I had based it on. Well, it went down very well indeed with many coming up and saying how much they loved the story although I didn't tell anyone I wrote it as, frankly, I felt embarrassed to say. Not so Gail. She made sure everyone knew her 'husband had written it' and insisting it was the best thing of the evening (which was flattering but better than Dickens, Thomas and Larkin? I don't think so!). I loved the evening, but what stuck with me was Gail being so proud of me and her passion in telling everyone something I couldn't say myself. God, I miss you so much Pet. I was just as proud of you as you were of me; I loved the way you were quite happy to go in to bat for me and I adored the way you dealt with the organiser of the event who got sniffy with me because I had the temerity to read out something I'd written myself and usurp his little fiefdom when I got more compliments than he did for his own tedious story from his childhood.
Anyway, you can read - or re-read - the story by clicking on the link below. I'd like you to do that; not for the sake of the story that's over 20 years old now anyway, but because I'd like to associate the story with that evening in the pub and the wonderful memory I have of my gorgeous Gail; the real Girl on the Train.. Oh, by the way, I am NOT spending Christmas in an Oxfordshire hotel but I will be travelling home alone on a train...

Girl On The Train