Summer Soap (Episode 1): A Cork rail trip... then Francis’s ‘ex’ boards!

Welcome to The Echo’s annual feature - Summer Soap. Now in its ninth year, Summer Soap is a daily fictional serial run over 12 parts, which starts today and runs till Saturday week. Called The Space Between Us, the story is about a man who bumps into an ex-girlfriend and discovers she can travel through time. It was written by Robyn Kelly, from the MA in Creative Writing Programme at UCC. Catch up with previous episodes at echolive.ie. In the first episode, Francis boards a train - and a date with destiny...

THE part Francis loved most about going home was the train. He’d bring whatever book at the time piqued his interest, (most recently Dune), turn up the volume on his headphones and get lost for approximately two hours and 30 minutes.

But of course, this day was to be different. He had jolted awake in his bed in a full body sweat from a nightmare he couldn’t seem to remember, only to notice he had slept through all three of his alarms.

“Mam will kill me if I’m late.”

The words like a siren in his head.

He tossed a handful of miscellaneous t-shirts and jeans into his bag and legged it to the station. To his surprise he had made it with minutes to spare. Enough time to realise he had forgotten all forms of entertainment and not enough time to go back. “F**k”, he let out in an exasperated breath.

He begrudgingly boarded the train and slumped into his seat, every now and again glancing above him to make sure his bag was stowed away correctly. An older woman in a seat across from him shot him a look over the brim of her glasses, pointed into the latest issue of Woman Weekly. His nan used to read those. He always found the headlines so bizarre, ‘I SHOT MY HUSBAND FOR SLEEPING WITH MY SISTER’, and ‘THIS WEIRD FETISH SAVED OUR MARRIAGE’ were some that came to mind. The one this woman appeared to be reading contained a story about a young boy who saved a baby from drowning at a neighbour’s party, slightly more wholesome, he supposed.

As the train began to chug through the fog out of Kent Station he retrieved his phone from his pocket, hoping he could at least watch some random video essay on Youtube. His battery was at 9%... better not. He decided to accept his fate and rested his head to the already misty window.

It had been raining non-stop in Cork since he had gone back to college, his runners had been permanently damp from the walk there and back each day. The view outside became boring after about ten minutes of staring. Grey skies blurred into mud-sludgy fields, and occasionally there was a cow or two.

He thought of how, despite being raised to the age of 12 without a computer or a phone, his attention span at 22 was non-existent.

 Although his life was full of distractions. he tried to make the best of this media-less pocket in his day.

The train was the only form of transport that didn’t bring on his travel sickness, there was an ease to how the carriages glided through fields, towns, and whistled past empty stations. The true liminal space, between any two places. Tightly packed and crammed with strangers all eagerly waiting to disembark and flood out onto the streets, unpausing life.

As he zoned in on this thought, he noticed the sun start to split the clouds like liquid running through a satin quilt. Beautiful green patchwork dotted grass as far as he could see. He saw the raindrops on the glass were chasing one another from the pane, before feeling the machine slow to a halt at Mallow Station.

The old woman across from him strategically placed her handbag on the seat next to her.

‘Not in the mood for company,’ he thought, trying to hide a slight grin. He mustn’t have hid it well because someone boarding saw it as a kind gesture to take the seat in front of him. He didn’t particularly mind, but like the old woman, he usually preferred his own company.

As the woman sat up from retrieving a book in her bag, he got a better look at her face.

“Oh god.”

He tried not to let the words spill out from him. It was his ex, Clara. What the hell was she doing in Mallow? She had lived with her nan in Dublin her whole life, and what was she doing sitting opposite him? She was the one to break the tension.

“Hi.”

“Hello.”

Francis scrambled his brain for something better to say, but it wasn’t exactly an easy task. The last time he had seen her was during their time as ungrads in Dublin, he broke up with her right before exams…

“You don’t have to be scared to talk to me, Francis. I won’t bite.”

His face slowly filled with pink. The train slowly began to pick up the pace. There was no jumping off now.