Our trains are so slow you could walk there faster

Helen Turner makes a living making things sound better than they are. Returning to her hometown after her mother’s death, she expects a quick house sale, an argument with her brother, and another painfully slow train journey. She gets all three-and discovers that the cheerful slogan promoting the railway’s closure is one she wrote herself.In Merefold, everyone complains that walking would be faster. But behind the jokes are missed hospital appointments, lost wages, and opportunities slipping beyond reach. As Helen becomes involved in the fight to save the line, she encounters a teenage artist trying to get to college, a conductor tired of apologising, and neighbours whose lives refuse to fit neatly into a transport report.At home, the questions are harder. Her brother Martin has spent years shouldering responsibilities she could keep at a distance. Her mother’s notebooks reveal a woman Helen loved without fully knowing. And the more Helen learns about the place she was so eager to escape, the harder it becomes to dismiss its people-or excuse her own choices.With funding uncertain, tempers rising, and a flood threatening the valley, good intentions will only take them so far. Helen must decide what she is willing to change when telling a better story is no longer enough.Warm, sharply observed, and quietly funny, Our trains are so slow you could walk there faster. is a novel about grief, family, belonging, and the unexpected demands of caring about a place. It asks what we might discover when we stop treating the world as something to get past.