Laura Anthony’s 2025 novel, The Women on Platform Two, is a work of historical fiction that employs a dual-timeline narrative. The contemporary frame story follows Saoirse, a Dublin nurse who is uncertain about motherhood, as she impulsively boards a train and meets an elderly woman named Maura. The majority of the novel unfolds as Maura recounts her life in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a time when contraception was illegal in the Republic of Ireland. Maura’s story traces her journey from a naive young bride in an abusive marriage to an activist, highlighting the pivotal friendship that helps her find her voice. The novel explores themes of The Generational Struggle for Bodily Autonomy, The Disparity Between Public Persona and Private Suffering, and Female Friendship as a Catalyst for Rebellion.

The Women on Platform Two is the first historical fiction novel by Janelle Peacock, writing under the pseudonym Laura Anthony. Peacock was inspired to write the book after discovering the real-life 1971 “Contraceptive Train” protest, in which members of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement traveled from Dublin to Belfast to publicly challenge the ban on contraception. The novel is set against a deeply conservative social backdrop where the Catholic Church’s doctrine heavily influenced Irish law. This resulted in policies such as the “marriage bar,” which forced women to resign from their jobs upon marrying, and created the restrictive climate that the novel’s characters navigate and ultimately defy.

This guide refers to the 2025 Gallery Books hardcover edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain depictions of gender discrimination, physical abuse, emotional abuse, rape, pregnancy loss and pregnancy termination, child death, child sexual abuse, and death by suicide.

Plot Summary

Saoirse, a 35-year-old pediatric nurse in 2023 Dublin, takes a pregnancy test and feels relief when it comes back negative. Her fiancé, Miles, reacts with disappointment, reigniting their longstanding disagreement about children. Saoirse explains that watching children die at the hospital fills her with dread about parenthood; Miles calls her refusal selfish. The argument escalates, and Saoirse storms out with no destination in mind.

Wandering Dublin, Saoirse enters Connolly Station and notices a glamorous elderly woman hurrying toward a train, a scrapbook clutched at her side. On the ground lies a dropped black-and-white photograph of two young women celebrating, dated 22 May 1971, exactly 52 years ago. Saoirse jumps the turnstile and boards the Belfast-bound train to return it. The woman, Maura, identifies the shorter figure as Bernie, her best friend of over 40 years who has since died, and explains that the photo was taken at this very station on a day that “changed our lives forever” (12). Before Saoirse can disembark, the train departs. She settles in to hear Maura’s story.

In November 1968, Maura Flynn is a sales assistant at Switzer’s department store on Grafton Street when Christy Davenport, a charming junior doctor, asks her to the cinema. They begin dating intensely. Maura’s colleague Geraldine warns that marriage will cost Maura her job, as was common in 1960s Ireland, where many women were forced to leave employment upon marrying. Geraldine tries to interest Maura in women’s liberation ideas, but Maura dismisses them. Christy proposes within six months, and Maura eagerly accepts. She receives a formal goodbye letter from Switzer’s ending her career, feels a pang of regret, but pushes it aside.

The couple marries on June 21, 1969. After the reception at The Shelbourne Hotel, Maura changes into a trouser suit as her going-away outfit. On the hotel steps, Christy slaps her across the face, furious she dressed “like a man” (45) in front of his father. On the ferry to their honeymoon on the Isle of Man, he apologizes, claiming he would never hurt her on purpose. Maura endures painful, uninformed wedding-night intimacy, reflecting bitterly that her mother never told her anything about her own body.

In their Rathmines home, Christy’s abuse escalates as months pass without a pregnancy. He smashes dishes, slams doors, and leaves bruises Maura hides with makeup. She collides by chance with Bernie McCarthy, the blunt, warm, and heavily pregnant wife of local butcher Dan McCarthy. Bernie is outspoken and impoverished, raising three small girls above the shop. The two women bond instantly, and Bernie insists they talk openly about everything women are taught to keep silent about.

When Christy hears from Maura’s doctor that she is pregnant, Maura must confess she has already lost her pregnancy, likely due to being pushed down the stairs by Christy. He drags her to the hospital for an exam that humiliates her. After beating her so savagely that her injuries cannot be hidden, he leaves her alone on Christmas Day. Maura defiantly spends a joyful Christmas with the McCarthy family. Months later, Bernie gives birth prematurely. Her baby boy, Philip, does not survive, and doctors diagnose preeclampsia, a dangerous pregnancy complication, warning that another pregnancy could kill her. Dan moves out of their shared bedroom, believing total abstinence is the only way to keep Bernie safe. Their marriage deteriorates until Geraldine’s brother smuggles condoms, then illegal in Ireland, from England. Maura purchases them for Bernie, and the condoms restore the McCarthys’ intimate life.

Maura endures four pregnancy losses, most caused by Christy’s violence. She resolves to prevent pregnancy entirely, especially after Christy rapes her, making clear she has no control over her own body. Bernie takes Maura to Mrs. Stitch, an eccentric seamstress who secretly provides dangerous abortifacient services, hoping to obtain the contraceptive pill, but Mrs. Stitch cannot supply it. Outside the shop, they find Josie, a homeless 15-year-old who was raped by her father’s friend, became pregnant, and was disowned. Maura takes Josie in, but after five days the girl dies by suicide. Maura is shattered. Later, Josie’s mother visits Maura in the hospital, after another beating from Christy, to thank her for trying.

Through Geraldine, Maura attends a meeting of women activists at Bewley’s café, led by Nuala Tyrone, a passionate organizer building what will become the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement. Maura delivers an impassioned argument that contraception is the most fundamental right because women bear all the physical consequences of sex. Nuala asks Maura to appear on The Late Late Show, Ireland’s most-watched television program, because her status as a married suburban woman will make the cause credible. On air, alongside Nuala and journalist Sharon Casey, Maura states that some women do not want babies at all, for reasons that are entirely their own. The camera lingers on her bruised face, making her abuse visible to the nation. Hundreds of supportive letters pour in, though Maura’s parents disown her, Christy moves out, and Christy’s solicitor informs her the house is being sold.

Undeterred, Maura proposes at a public meeting that the women travel by train to Belfast, in Northern Ireland, where contraception is legal. On May 22, 1971, 47 women board the train, among them Maura, Bernie, Geraldine, Nuala, and Sharon. Dan arrives at the last moment and insists Bernie go, telling her their daughters’ futures matter more than lost customers. In Belfast, the women buy condoms but cannot obtain the pill without prescriptions, so Maura improvises by purchasing aspirin in unmarked bags to pass as contraceptive pills. On the platform, a photographer captures Maura and Bernie side by side, the image Saoirse will find 52 years later. Back in Dublin, crowds greet them at Connolly Station. Customs officials inspect bags but make no arrests, and all 47 women publicly swallow their “pills” before cameras. A police officer then pulls Maura aside to tell her Christy died that afternoon of a heart attack; because his house-sale papers were unsigned, the sale was never finalized. Maura realizes that Christy’s death was also likely due to suicide, but that it is being covered up because of his social standing.

In 2023, as the train nears Belfast, Marie Russo, Bernie’s eldest daughter, boards at Newry and confirms the McCarthy family makes this journey every year. Marie shares that Bernie died of cancer in 2012 and Dan a year later. Maura reveals she has told this story to a stranger on the train every year for 50 years on this date. Saoirse watches Maura reunite with the extended McCarthy family on the Belfast platform, then sits alone on the empty train and calls Miles. They mutually acknowledge their relationship is over: Saoirse does not want children, and Miles does. She tells him he will be a wonderful father someday. When he asks if she will be okay, she answers that she already is.