Paula Hawkins - The Girl on the Train

The phone goes dead.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 18, 2013

EARLY MORNING

I’ve been downstairs in the living room all night, with the television on for company, fear ebbing and flowing. Strength ebbing and flowing. It feels a bit like I’ve gone back in time, the wound he made years ago ripped open again, new and fresh. It’s silly, I know. I was an idiot to think that I had a chance with him again, just on the basis of one conversation, a few moments that I took for tenderness and that were probably nothing more than sentimentality and guilt. Still, it hurts. And I’ve just got to let myself feel the pain, because if I don’t, if I keep numbing it, it’ll never really go away.

And I was an idiot to let myself think that there was a connection between me and Scott, that I could help him. So, I’m an idiot. I’m used to that. I don’t have to continue to be one, do I? Not any longer. I lay here all night and I promised myself that I’ll get a handle on things. I’ll move away from here, far away. I’ll get a new job. I’ll go back to my maiden name, sever ties with Tom, make it hard for anyone to find me. Should anyone come looking.

I haven’t had much sleep. Lying here on the sofa, making plans, every time I started drifting off to sleep I heard Tom’s voice in my head, as clear as if he were right there, right next to me, his lips against my ear— You were blind drunk. Filthy, stinking drunk —and I jolted awake, shame washing over me like a wave. Shame, but also the strongest sense of déjà vu, because I’ve heard those words before, those exact words.

And then I couldn’t stop running the scenes through my head: waking with blood on the pillow, the inside of my mouth hurting, as though I’d bitten my cheek, fingernails dirty, terrible headache, Tom coming out of the bathroom, that expression he wore—half hurt, half angry—dread rising in me like floodwater.

“What happened?”

Tom, showing me the bruises on his arm, on his chest, where I’d hit him.

“I don’t believe it, Tom. I’d never hit you. I’ve never hit anyone in my life.”

“You were blind drunk, Rachel. Do you remember anything you did last night? Anything you said?” And then he’d tell me, and I still couldn’t believe it, because nothing he said sounded like me, none of it. And the thing with the golf club, that hole in the plaster, grey and blank like a blinded eye trained on me every time I passed it, and I couldn’t reconcile the violence that he talked about with the fear that I remembered.

Or thought that I remembered. After a while I learned not to ask what I had done, or to argue when he volunteered the information, because I didn’t want to know the details, I didn’t want to hear the worst of it, the things I said and did when I was like that, filthy, stinking drunk. Sometimes he threatened to record me, he told me he’d play it back for me. He never did. Small mercies.

After a while, I learned that when you wake up like that, you don’t ask what happened, you just say that you’re sorry: you’re sorry for what you did and who you are and you’re never, ever going to behave like that again.

And now I’m not, I’m really not. I can be thankful to Scott for this: I’m too afraid, now, to go out in the middle of the night to buy booze. I’m too afraid to let myself slip, because that’s when I make myself vulnerable.

I’m going to have to be strong, that’s all there is to it.

My eyelids start to feel heavy again and my head nods against my chest. I turn the TV down so there’s almost no sound at all, roll over so that I’m facing the sofa back, snuggle down and pull the duvet over me, and I’m drifting off, I can feel it, I’m going to sleep, and then—bang, the ground is rushing up at me and I jerk upright, my heart in my throat. I saw it. I saw it.

I was in the underpass and he was coming towards me, one slap across the mouth and then his fist raised, keys in his hand, searing pain as the serrated metal smashed down against my skull.

ANNA

• • •

SATURDAY, AUGUST 17, 2013

EVENING

I hate myself for crying, it’s so pathetic. But I feel exhausted, these past few weeks have been so hard on me. And Tom and I have had another row about—inevitably—Rachel.

It’s been brewing, I suppose. I’ve been torturing myself about the note, about the fact that he lied to me about them meeting up. I keep telling myself it’s completely stupid, but I can’t fight the feeling that there is something going on between them. I’ve been going round and round: after everything she did to him—to us—how could he? How could he even contemplate being with her again? I mean, if you look at the two of us, side by side, there isn’t a man on earth who would pick her over me. And that’s without even going into all her issues.

But then I think, this happens sometimes, doesn’t it? People you have a history with, they won’t let you go, and as hard as you might try, you can’t disentangle yourself, can’t set yourself free. Maybe after a while you just stop trying.

She came by on Thursday, banging on the door and calling out for Tom. I was furious, but I didn’t dare open up. Having a child with you makes you vulnerable, it makes you weak. If I’d been on my own I would have confronted her, I’d have had no problems sorting her out. But with Evie here, I just couldn’t risk it. I’ve no idea what she might do.

I know why she came. She was pissed off that I’d talked to the police about her. I bet she came crying to Tom to tell me to leave her alone. She left a note— We need to talk, please call me as soon as possible, it’s important ( important underlined three times)—which I threw straight into the bin. Later, I fished it out and put it in my bedside drawer, along with the printout of that vicious email she sent and the log I’ve been keeping of all the calls and all the sightings. The harassment log. My evidence, should I need it. I called Detective Riley and left a message saying that Rachel had been round again. She still hasn’t rung back.

I should have mentioned the note to Tom, I know I should have, but I didn’t want him to get annoyed with me about talking to the police, so I just shoved it in that drawer and hoped that she’d forget about it. She didn’t, of course. She rang him tonight. He was fuming when he got off the phone with her.

“What the fuck is all this about a note?” he snapped.

I told him I’d thrown it away. “I didn’t realize that you’d want to read it,” I said. “I thought you wanted her out of our lives as much as I do.”

He rolled his eyes. “That’s not the point and you know it. Of course I want Rachel gone. What I don’t want is for you to start listening to my phone calls and throwing away my mail. You’re . . .” He sighed.

“I’m what?”

“Nothing. It’s just . . . it’s the sort of thing she used to do.”

It was a punch in the gut, a low blow. Ridiculously, I burst into tears and ran upstairs to the bathroom. I waited for him to come up to soothe me, to kiss and make up like he usually does, but after about half an hour he called out to me, “I’m going to the gym for a couple of hours,” and before I could reply I heard the front door slam.

And now I find myself behaving exactly like she used to: polishing off the half bottle of red left over from dinner last night and snooping around on his computer. It’s easier to understand her behaviour when you feel like I feel right now. There’s nothing so painful, so corrosive, as suspicion.

I cracked the laptop password eventually: it’s Blenheim . As innocuous and boring as that—the name of the road we live on. I’ve found no incriminating emails, no sordid pictures or passionate letters. I spend half an hour reading through work emails so mind-numbing that they dull even the pain of jealousy, then I shut down the laptop and put it away. I’m feeling really quite jolly, thanks to the wine and the tedious contents of Tom’s computer. I’ve reassured myself I was just being silly.