Paula Hawkins - The Girl on the Train

Not at first. At first, although it felt like a memory, I thought it must be a dream. I sat there, on the sofa, almost paralysed with shock, telling myself that it wouldn’t be the first time I’d misremembered something, wouldn’t be the first time that I’d thought things went a certain way when in fact they had played out differently.

Like that time we went to a party thrown by a colleague of Tom’s, and I was very drunk, but we’d had a good night. I remember kissing Clara good-bye. Clara was the colleague’s wife, a lovely woman, warm and kind. I remember her saying that we should get together again; I remember her holding my hand in hers.

I remembered that so clearly, but it wasn’t true. I knew it wasn’t true the next morning when Tom turned his back on me when I tried to speak to him. I know it isn’t true because he told me how disappointed and embarrassed he was that I’d accused Clara of flirting with him, that I’d been hysterical and abusive.

When I closed my eyes I could feel her hand, warm against my skin, but that didn’t actually happen. What really happened is that Tom had to half carry me out of the house, me crying and shouting all the way, while poor Clara cowered in the kitchen.

So when I closed my eyes, when I drifted into a half dream and found myself in that underpass, I may have been able to feel the cold and smell the rank, stale air, I may have been able to see a figure walking towards me, spitting rage, fist raised, but it wasn’t true. The terror I felt wasn’t real. And when the shadow struck, leaving me there on the ground, crying and bleeding, that wasn’t real, either.

Only it was, and I saw it. It’s so shocking that I can scarcely believe it, but as I watch the sun rise it feels like mist lifting. What he told me was a lie. I didn’t imagine him hitting me. I remember it. Just like I remember saying good-bye to Clara after that party and her hand holding mine. Just like I remember the fear when I found myself on the floor next to that golf club—and I know now, I know for sure that I wasn’t the one swinging it.

I don’t know what to do. I run upstairs, pull on a pair of jeans and some trainers, run back downstairs. I dial their number, the landline, and let it ring a couple of times, then I hang up. I don’t know what to do. I make coffee, let it go cold, dial Detective Riley’s number, then hang up straightaway. She won’t believe me. I know she won’t.

I head out to the station. It’s a Sunday service, the first train isn’t for half an hour, so there’s nothing to do but sit there on a bench, going round and round, from disbelief to desperation and back again.

Everything is a lie. I didn’t imagine him hitting me. I didn’t imagine him walking away from me quickly, his fists clenched. I saw him turn, shout. I saw him walking down the road with a woman, I saw him getting into the car with her. I didn’t imagine it. And I realize then that it’s all very simple, so very simple. I do remember, it’s just that I had confused two memories. I’d inserted the image of Anna, walking away from me in her blue dress, into another scenario: Tom and a woman getting into a car. Because of course that woman wasn’t wearing a blue dress, she was wearing jeans and a red T-shirt. She was Megan.

ANNA

• • •

SUNDAY, AUGUST 18, 2013

EARLY MORNING

I hurl the phone over the fence, as far as I can; it lands somewhere on the edge of the scree at the top of the embankment. I think I can hear it rolling down towards the track. I think I can still hear her voice. Hi. It’s me. Leave a message. I think I might be hearing her voice for a long time to come.

He’s at the bottom of the stairs by the time I get back to the house. He’s watching me, blinking, bleary-eyed, struggling out of sleep.

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” I say, but I can hear the tremor in my voice.

“What were you doing outside?”

“I thought I heard someone,” I tell him. “Something woke me. I couldn’t get back to sleep.”

“The phone rang,” he says, rubbing his eyes.

I clasp my hands together to stop them shaking. “What? What phone?”

“The phone.” He’s looking at me as though I’m insane. “The phone rang. Someone called and hung up.”

“Oh. I don’t know. I don’t know who that was.”

He laughs. “Of course you don’t. Are you all right?” He comes across to me and puts his arms around my waist. “You’re being weird.” He holds me for a bit, his head bowed against my chest. “You should’ve woken me if you heard something,” he says. “You shouldn’t be going out there on your own. That’s my job.”

“I’m fine,” I say, but I have to clench my jaw to stop my teeth from chattering. He kisses my lips, pushes his tongue into my mouth.

“Let’s go back to bed,” he says.

“I think I’m going to have a coffee,” I say, trying to pull away from him.

He’s not letting me go. His arms are tight around me, his hand gripping the back of my neck.

“Come on,” he says. “Come with me. I’m not taking no for an answer.”

RACHEL

• • •

SUNDAY, AUGUST 18, 2013

MORNING

I’m not really sure what to do, so I just ring the doorbell. I wonder whether I should have called first. It’s not polite to turn up early on a Sunday morning without calling, is it? I start to giggle. I feel slightly hysterical. I don’t really know what I’m doing.

No one comes to the door. The hysterical feeling grows as I walk round the side of the house, down the little passageway. I have the strongest feeling of déjà vu. That morning, when I came to the house, when I took the little girl. I never meant her any harm. I’m sure of that now.

I can hear her chattering as I make my way along the path in the cool shadow of the house, and I wonder whether I’m imagining things. But no, there she is, and Anna, too, sitting on the patio. I call out to her and hoist myself over the fence. She looks at me. I expect shock, or anger, but she barely even looks surprised.

“Hello, Rachel,” she says. She gets to her feet, taking her child by the hand, drawing her to her side. She looks at me, unsmiling, calm. Her eyes are red, her face pale, scrubbed, devoid of makeup.

“What do you want?” she asks.

“I rang the doorbell,” I tell her.

“I didn’t hear it,” she says, hoisting the child up onto her hip. She half turns away from me, as though she’s about to go into the house, but then she just stops. I don’t understand why she’s not yelling at me.

“Where’s Tom, Anna?”

“He went out. Army boys get-together.”

“We need to go, Anna,” I say, and she starts to laugh.

ANNA

• • •

SUNDAY, AUGUST 18, 2013

MORNING

For some reason, the whole thing seems very funny all of a sudden. Poor fat Rachel standing in my garden, all red and sweaty, telling me we need to go. We need to go.

“Where are we going?” I ask her when I stop laughing, and she just looks at me, blank, lost for words. “I’m not going anywhere with you.” Evie squirms and complains and I put her back down. My skin still feels hot and tender from where I scrubbed myself in the shower this morning; the inside of my mouth, my cheeks, my tongue, they feel bitten.

“When will he be back?” she asks me.

“Not for a while yet, I shouldn’t think.”

I’ve no idea when he’ll be back, in fact. Sometimes he can spend whole days at the climbing wall. Or I thought he spent whole days at the climbing wall. Now I don’t know.