I sat in front of a blank computer screen, deadline ticking away.

There were only several months left before my next book was due to my publisher. My friends and family kept asking where I would set my new novel and I felt stalled, uncertain after several years spent in one place because of the pandemic, unable to imagine writing about places that I had once visited but which now seemed far away. At that point, I had already written a draft and placed it aside, knowing it wasn’t right, when the idea came to me:

I would write a novel set on a train.

The idea was appealing for many reasons. A fear of flying meant that I had experienced my fair share of train travel over the years. From the good (the scenic views on the train from Oslo to Bergen) to the inevitably not-so-good (overflowing toilets on an overnight train from Marrakech to Tangier) and those in between, each journey unforgettable, in its own way. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I realised that I could remember the bus rides, the train journeys, the ferries just as much – and sometimes more – than the destination itself.

I began writing and before I knew it, my characters were in Spain. As I wrote, I began to recall one particular journey that my partner and I had taken there, years before, which found us arriving to the bus station in Granada, late at night. It had been a particularly long and arduous route, originating from some now forgotten starting point, though the small towns, the unrelenting heat, the cockroaches crawling in the bathroom of a rest stop bar, remain seared in my memory. As does what happened the following morning, when, despite being tired and worn out from our long journey, we went for an early walk, no one else around, save for a woman several steps ahead of us.

Suddenly, Euros began falling from her purse – not simply fives or tens, but twenties and fifties.

We had limited funds then, were riding out the final months on our Irish visas in Spain because we could get tapas for the price of a two euro cana. To be confronted by such a large amount of bills – we stood still for a moment, both thinking the same thing: could we keep it? The woman had already turned, had already disappeared behind the corner. It would be all too easy. Money meant an upgrade in transportation – Renfe tickets, with comfortable seats, air conditioning, and a fraction of the time on the road.

In the end, we returned the money. But it was her reaction that always stayed with me – not grateful, not relieved, not even particularly happy to see the money returned to her. We continued to comment on it from time to time – perhaps she had not wanted anyone to pick up that money? Or perhaps, just not us. I jotted down a note, told myself that one day it might make a good story.

That was where the idea of The Continental Affair began. With my characters Henri and Louise in Granada first. And then, as I continued writing, instead of simply remaining on a train, my characters were everywhere. They were on a bus to Paris – which was the first European city I had ever visited, when I was sixteen, the start of a tour with my friend and her family and which circled the entire country. Then Belgrade, a city I traveled to via a nine-hour ride in a minivan and where I ate ‘old’ cheese and drank rakija in hidden bars in the days after. And then there was Istanbul, where I arrived after a very long train ride from Sofia, one made longer still by a fellow passenger who wouldn’t open his locked – and barricaded – door for the custom officers.

Behind my desk, surrounded by boxes that still needed to be unpacked, by suitcases that still housed souvenirs, I found myself thinking about all the overnight bus rides, train journeys, and ferries that I had been lucky enough to experience over the years. It was in these overland journeys – moving through, rather than over – that I found my inspiration for The Continental Affair. Without them, there would be no Henri and Louise. Just as, I realised, there would be no Spain without that never-ending bus to Granada, no Istanbul without that overnight train which carried us away from Sofia, the fields outside the station turning golden under the setting sun, and toward that city on the Bosphorus, where the dawn prayer filled the air and the cats curled on the steps outside the station, and we pushed onward, toward the next adventure.

The Continental Affair by Christine Mangan (Bedford Square).