Compartment 7, Lower Berth

Mara, a chronic insomniac, can only sleep on the Tuesday Caledonian Sleeper from London Euston to Fort William, so she pays for it every week and calls it 'work travel.' The man in the lower berth of compartment 7 talks in his sleep, and every Tuesday he picks up the same story where he left off: a lighthouse keeper who has lost the one key that turns the lamp on. Mara starts booking compartment 7 on purpose.

1. She records him on her phone so she can type up the chapters. Then she hears the story mention the name of her dead cat and the exact words of a fight she had with her sister that week. She never said either of those things out loud on the train.
2. Sure she's being stalked, she charms a steward into checking his booking. He's a hospice night nurse from Glasgow who also can't sleep anywhere but this train. He's been booking compartment 7 because the woman in the upper berth talks in her sleep, telling a story about a lighthouse keeper.
3. The steward confirms what the timetable already shows: they have never once been awake at the same time. He boards early and is asleep before Watford. She boards at the last minute and is gone by Crewe. Each has only ever seen the other's back under a blanket.
4. The Tuesday service is being moved to a new timetable, so this is their last shared run. Mara finally sits down and plays three months of recordings straight through, start to finish.

💡 A sleeper train is the only place strangers sleep side by side, defenceless, and this story takes that literally: two people who know each other deeply, but only in the one state where neither can lie.