Paula Hawkins - The Girl on the Train

At the top of the stairs I feel dizzy again and grip the banister tightly. It is one of my great fears (along with bleeding into my belly when my liver finally packs up) that I will fall down the stairs and break my neck. Thinking about this makes me feel ill again. I want to lie down, but I need to find my bag, check my phone. I at least need to know that I haven’t lost my credit cards, I need to know who I called and when. My handbag has been dumped in the hallway, just inside the front door. My jeans and underwear sit next to it in a crumpled pile; I can smell the urine from the bottom of the stairs. I grab my bag to look for my phone—it’s in there, thank God, along with a bunch of scrunched-up twenties and a bloodstained Kleenex. The nausea comes over me again, stronger this time; I can taste the bile in the back of my throat and I run, but I don’t make it to the bathroom, I vomit on the carpet halfway up the stairs.

I have to lie down. If I don’t lie down, I’m going to pass out, I’m going to fall. I’ll clean up later.

Upstairs, I plug in my phone and lie down on the bed. I raise my limbs, gently, gingerly, to inspect them. There are bruises on my legs, above the knees, standard drink-related stuff, the sort of bruises you get from walking into things. My upper arms bear more worrying marks, dark, oval impressions that look like fingerprints. This is not necessarily sinister, I have had them before, usually from when I’ve fallen and someone has helped me up. The crack on my head feels bad, but it could be from something as innocuous as getting into a car. I might have taken a taxi home.

I pick up my phone. There are two messages. The first is from Cathy, received just after five, asking where I’ve got to. She’s going to Damien’s for the night, she’ll see me tomorrow. She hopes I’m not drinking on my own. The second is from Tom, received at ten fifteen. I almost drop the phone in fright as I hear his voice; he’s shouting.

“Jesus Christ, Rachel, what the hell is wrong with you? I have had enough of this, all right? I’ve just spent the best part of an hour driving around looking for you. You’ve really frightened Anna, you know that? She thought you were going to . . . she thought . . . It’s all I could do to get her not to ring the police. Leave us alone. Stop calling me, stop hanging around, just leave us alone. I don’t want to speak to you. Do you understand me? I don’t want to speak to you, I don’t want to see you, I don’t want you anywhere near my family. You can ruin your own life if you want to, but you’re not ruining mine. Not anymore. I’m not going to protect you any longer, understand? Just stay away from us.”

I don’t know what I’ve done. What did I do? Between five o’clock and ten fifteen, what was I doing? Why was Tom looking for me? What did I do to Anna? I pull the duvet over my head, close my eyes tightly. I imagine myself going to the house, walking along the little pathway between their garden and the neighbour’s garden, climbing over the fence. I think about sliding open the glass doors, stealthily creeping into the kitchen. Anna’s sitting at the table. I grab her from behind, I wind my hand into her long blond hair, I jerk her head backwards, I pull her to the floor and I smash her head against the cool blue tiles.

EVENING

Someone is shouting. From the angle of the light streaming in through my bedroom window I can tell I have been sleeping a long time; it must be late afternoon, early evening. My head hurts. There’s blood on my pillow. I can hear someone yelling downstairs.

“I do not believe this! For God’s sake! Rachel! RACHEL!”

I fell asleep. Oh Jesus, and I didn’t clear up the vomit on the stairs. And my clothes in the hallway. Oh God, oh God.

I pull on a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt. Cathy is standing right outside my bedroom door when I open it. She looks horrified when she sees me.

“What on earth happened to you?” she says, then raises her hand. “Actually, Rachel, I’m sorry, but I just don’t want to know. I cannot have this in my house. I cannot have . . .” She tails off, but she’s looking back down the hall, towards the stairs.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m so sorry, I was just really ill and I meant to clear it up—”

“You weren’t ill, were you? You were drunk. You were hungover. I’m sorry, Rachel. I just can’t have this. I cannot live like this. You have to go, OK? I’ll give you four weeks to find somewhere else, but then you have to go.” She turns around and walks towards her bedroom. “And for the love of God, will you clean up that mess?” She slams her bedroom door behind her.

After I’ve finished cleaning up, I go back to my room. Cathy’s bedroom door is still closed, but I can feel her quiet rage radiating through it. I can’t blame her. I’d be furious if I came home to piss-soaked knickers and a puddle of vomit on the stairs. I sit down on the bed and flip open my laptop, log in to my email account and start to compose a note to my mother. I think, finally, the time has come. I have to ask her for help. If I moved home, I wouldn’t be able to go on like this, I would have to change, I would have to get better. I can’t think of the words, though, I can’t think of a way to explain this to her. I can picture her face as she reads my plea for help, the sour disappointment, the exasperation. I can almost hear her sigh.

My phone beeps. There’s a message on it, received hours ago. It’s Tom again. I don’t want to hear what he has to say, but I have to, I can’t ignore him. My heartbeat quickens as I dial into my voice mail, bracing myself for the worst.

“Rachel, will you phone me back?” He doesn’t sound so angry any longer, and my heartbeat slows a little. “I want to make sure you got home all right. You were in some state last night.” A long, heartfelt sigh. “Look. I’m sorry that I yelled last night, that things got a bit . . . overheated. I do feel sorry for you, Rachel, I really do, but this has just got to stop.”

I play the message a second time, listening to the kindness in his voice, and the tears come. It’s a long time before I stop crying, before I’m able to compose a text message to him saying I’m very sorry, I’m at home now. I can’t say anything else because I don’t know what exactly it is I’m sorry for. I don’t know what I did to Anna, how I frightened her. I don’t honestly care that much, but I do care about making Tom unhappy. After everything he’s been through, he deserves to be happy. I will never begrudge him happiness—I only wish it could be with me.

I lie down on the bed and crawl under the duvet. I want to know what happened; I wish I knew what I had to be sorry for. I try desperately to make sense of an elusive fragment of memory. I feel certain that I was in an argument, or that I witnessed an argument. Was that with Anna? My fingers go to the wound on my head, to the cut on my lip. I can almost see it, I can almost hear the words, but it shifts away from me again. I just can’t get a handle on it. Every time I think I’m about to seize the moment, it drifts back into the shadow, just beyond my reach.

MEGAN

• • •

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2012

MORNING

It’s going to rain soon, I can feel it coming. My teeth are chattering in my head, the tips of my fingers are white with a tinge of blue. I’m not going inside. I like it out here, it’s cathartic, cleansing, like an ice bath. Scott will come and haul me inside soon anyway, he’ll wrap me in blankets, like a child.

I had a panic attack on the way home last night. There was a motorbike, revving its engine over and over and over, and a red car driving slowly past, like a kerb crawler, and two women with buggies blocking my path. I couldn’t get past them on the pavement, so I went into the street and was almost hit by a car coming in the opposite direction, which I hadn’t even seen. The driver leaned on the horn and yelled something at me. I couldn’t catch my breath, my heart was racing, I felt that lurch in my stomach, like when you’ve taken a pill and you’re just about to come up, that punch of adrenaline that makes you feel sick and excited and scared all at once.