Paula Hawkins - The Girl on the Train

I was trespassing. That’s what it felt like this morning, because it’s their territory now, it’s Tom and Anna’s and Scott and Megan’s. I’m the outsider, I don’t belong there, and yet everything is so familiar to me. Down the concrete steps at the station, right past the newspaper kiosk into Roseberry Avenue, half a block to the end of the T-junction, to the right the archway leading to a dank pedestrian underpass beneath the track, and to the left Blenheim Road, narrow and tree-lined, flanked with its handsome Victorian terraces. It feels like coming home—not just to any home, but a childhood home, a place left behind a lifetime ago; it’s the familiarity of walking up stairs and knowing exactly which one is going to creak.

The familiarity isn’t just in my head, it’s in my bones; it’s muscle memory. This morning, as I walked past the blackened tunnel mouth, the entrance to the underpass, my pace quickened. I didn’t have to think about it because I always walked a little faster on that section. Every night, coming home, especially in winter, I used to pick up the pace, glancing quickly to the right, just to make sure. There was never anyone there—not on any of those nights and not today—and yet I stopped dead as I looked into the darkness this morning, because I could suddenly see myself. I could see myself a few metres in, slumped against the wall, my head in my hands, and both head and hands smeared with blood.

My heart thudding in my chest, I stood there, morning commuters stepping around me as they continued on their way to the station, one or two turning to look at me as they passed, as I stood stock-still. I didn’t know—don’t know—if it was real. Why would I have gone into the underpass? What reason would I have had to go down there, where it’s dark and damp and stinks of piss?

I turned around and headed back to the station. I didn’t want to be there any longer; I didn’t want to go to Scott and Megan’s front door. I wanted to get away from there. Something bad happened there, I know it did.

I paid for my ticket and walked quickly up the station steps to the other side of the platform, and as I did it came to me again in a flash: not the underpass this time, but the steps; stumbling on the steps and a man taking my arm, helping me up. The man from the train, with the reddish hair. I could see him, a vague picture but no dialogue. I could remember laughing—at myself, or at something he said. He was nice to me, I’m sure of it. Almost sure. Something bad happened, but I don’t think it had anything to do with him.

I got on the train and went into London. I went to the library and sat at a computer terminal, looking for stories about Megan. There was a short piece on the Telegraph website that said that “a man in his thirties is helping police with their inquiries.” Scott, presumably. I can’t believe he would have hurt her. I know that he wouldn’t. I’ve seen them together; I know what they’re like together. They gave a Crimestoppers number, too, which you can ring if you have information. I’m going to call it on the way home, from a pay phone. I’m going to tell them about B, about what I saw.

My phone rings just as we’re getting into Ashbury. It’s Cathy again. Poor girl, she really is worried about me.

“Rach? Are you on the train? Are you on your way home?” She sounds anxious.

“Yes, I’m on my way,” I tell her. “I’ll be fifteen minutes.”

“The police are here, Rachel,” she says, and my entire body goes cold. “They want to talk to you.”

WEDNESDAY, JULY 17, 2013

MORNING

Megan is still missing, and I have lied—repeatedly—to the police.

I was in a panic by the time I got back to the flat last night. I tried to convince myself that they’d come to see me about my accident with the taxi, but that didn’t make sense. I’d spoken to police at the scene—it was clearly my fault. It had to be something to do with Saturday night. I must have done something. I must have committed some terrible act and blacked it out.

I know it sounds unlikely. What could I have done? Gone to Blenheim Road, attacked Megan Hipwell, disposed of her body somewhere and then forgotten all about it? It sounds ridiculous. It is ridiculous. But I know something happened on Saturday. I knew it when I looked into that dark tunnel under the railway line, my blood turning to ice water in my veins.

Blackouts happen, and it isn’t just a matter of being a bit hazy about getting home from the club or forgetting what it was that was so funny when you were chatting in the pub. It’s different. Total black; hours lost, never to be retrieved.

Tom bought me a book about it. Not very romantic, but he was tired of listening to me tell him how sorry I was in the morning when I didn’t even know what I was sorry for. I think he wanted me to see the damage I was doing, the kind of things I might be capable of. It was written by a doctor, but I’ve no idea whether it was accurate: the author claimed that blacking out wasn’t simply a matter of forgetting what had happened, but having no memories to forget in the first place. His theory was that you get into a state where your brain no longer makes short-term memories. And while you’re there, in deepest black, you don’t behave as you usually would, because you’re simply reacting to the very last thing that you think happened, because—since you aren’t making memories—you might not actually know what the last thing that happened really was. He had anecdotes, too, cautionary tales for the blacked-out drinker: There was a guy in New Jersey who got drunk at a fourth of July party. Afterwards, he got into his car, drove several miles in the wrong direction on the motorway and ploughed into a van carrying seven people. The van burst into flames and six people died. The drunk guy was fine. They always are. He had no memory of getting into his car.

There was another man, in New York this time, who left a bar, drove to the house he’d grown up in, stabbed its occupants to death, took off all his clothes, got back into his car, drove home and went to bed. He got up the next morning feeling terrible, wondering where his clothes were and how he’d got home, but it wasn’t until the police came to get him that he discovered he had brutally slain two people for no apparent reason whatsoever.

So it sound ridiculous, but it’s not impossible, and by the time I got home last night I had convinced myself that I was in some way involved in Megan’s disappearance.

The police officers were sitting on the sofa in the living room, a fortysomething man in plain clothes and a younger one in uniform with acne on his neck. Cathy was standing next to the window, wringing her hands. She looked terrified. The policemen got up. The plainclothes one, very tall and slightly stooped, shook my hand and introduced himself as Detective Inspector Gaskill. He told me the other officer’s name as well, but I don’t remember it. I wasn’t concentrating. I was barely breathing.

“What’s this about?” I barked at them. “Has something happened? Is it my mother? Is it Tom?”

“Everyone’s all right, Ms. Watson, we just need to talk to you about what you did on Saturday evening,” Gaskill said. It’s the sort of thing they say on television; it didn’t seem real. They want to know what I did on Saturday evening. What the fuck did I do on Saturday evening?

“I need to sit down,” I said, and the detective motioned for me to take his place on the sofa, next to Neck Acne. Cathy was shifting from one foot to another, chewing on her lower lip. She looked frantic.

“Are you all right, Ms. Watson?” Gaskill asked me. He motioned to the cut above my eye.

“I was knocked down by a taxi,” I said. “Yesterday afternoon, in London. I went to the hospital. You can check.”