The Girl on the Train: A Novel

MONDAY, AUGUST 12, 2013

MORNING

We’re in the car park at Wilton Lake. We used to come here sometimes, to go swimming on really hot days. Today we’re just sitting side by side in Tom’s car, windows down, letting the warm breeze in. I want to lean my head back against the headrest and close my eyes and smell the pine and listen to the birds. I want to hold his hand and stay here all day.

He called me last night and asked if we could meet. I asked if this was about the thing with Anna, seeing her on Blenheim Road. I said it had nothing to do with them—I hadn’t been there to bother them. He believed me, or at least he said he did, but he still sounded wary, a little anxious. He said he needed to talk to me.

“Please, Rach,” he said, and that was it—the way he said it, just like the old days, I thought my heart would burst. “I’ll come and pick you up, OK?”

I woke up before dawn and was in the kitchen making coffee at five. I washed my hair and shaved my legs and put on makeup and changed four times. And I felt guilty. Stupid, I know, but I thought about Scott—about what we did and how it felt—and I wished I hadn’t done it, because it felt like a betrayal. Of Tom. The man who left me for another woman two years ago. I can’t help how I feel.

Tom arrived just before nine. I went downstairs and there he was, leaning on his car, wearing jeans and an old grey T-shirt—old enough that I can remember exactly how the fabric felt against my cheek when I lay across his chest.

“I’ve got the morning off work,” he said when he saw me. “I thought we could go for a drive.”

We didn’t say much on the drive to the lake. He asked me how I was and told me I looked well. He didn’t mention Anna until we were sitting there in the car park and I was thinking about holding his hand.

“Yeah, um, Anna said she saw you . . . and she thought you might have been coming from Scott Hipwell’s house. Is that right?” He’s turned to face me, but he isn’t actually looking at me. He seems almost embarrassed to be asking me the question.

“You don’t have to worry about it,” I tell him. “I’ve been seeing Scott . . . I mean, not like that, not seeing him. We’ve become friendly. That’s all. It’s difficult to explain. I’ve just been helping him out a bit. You know—obviously you know—that he’s been going through a terrible time.”

Tom nods, but he still doesn’t look at me. Instead he chews on the nail of his left forefinger, a sure sign that he’s worried.

“But Rach . . .”

I wish he’d stop calling me that, because it makes me feel light-headed, it makes me want to smile. It’s been so long since I’ve heard him say my name like that, and it’s making me hope. Maybe things aren’t going so well with Anna, maybe he remembers some of the good things about us, maybe there’s a part of him that misses me.

“I’m just . . . I’m really concerned about this.”

He looks up at me at last, his big brown eyes lock on mine and he moves his hand a little, as if he’s going to take mine, but then he thinks better of it and stops. “I know—well, I don’t really know much about it, but Scott . . . I know that he seems like a perfectly decent bloke, but you can’t be sure, can you?”

“You think he did it?”

He shakes his head, swallows hard. “No, no. I’m not saying that. I know . . . Well, Anna says that they argued a lot. That Megan sometimes seemed a little afraid of him.”

“Anna says?” My instinct is to dismiss anything that bitch says, but I can’t get away from the feeling I had when I was at Scott’s house on Saturday, that something was off, something was wrong.

He nods. “Megan did some babysitting for us when Evie was tiny. Jesus, I don’t even like to think about that now, after what’s been in the papers lately. But it goes to show, doesn’t it, that you think you know someone and then . . .” He sighs heavily. “I don’t want anything bad to happen. To you.” He smiles at me then, gives a little shrug. “I still care about you, Rach,” he says, and I have to look away because I don’t want him to see the tears in my eyes. He knows, of course, and he puts his hand on my shoulder and says, “I’m so sorry.”

We sit for a while in comfortable silence. I bite down hard on my lip to stop myself from crying. I don’t want to make this any harder for him, I really don’t.

“I’m all right, Tom. I’m getting better. I am.”

“I’m really glad to hear that. You’re not—”

“Drinking? Less. It’s getting better.”

“That’s good. You look well. You look . . . pretty.” He smiles at me and I can feel myself blush. He looks away quickly. “Are you . . . um . . . are you all right, you know, financially?”

“I’m fine.”

“Really? Are you really, Rachel, because I don’t want you to—”

“I’m OK.”

“Will you take a little? Fuck, I don’t want to sound like an idiot, but will you just take a little? To tide you over?”

“Honestly, I’m OK.”

He leans across then, and I can hardly breathe, I want to touch him so badly. I want to smell his neck, bury my face in that broad, muscular gap between his shoulder blades. He opens the glove box. “Let me just write you a cheque, just in case, you know? You don’t even have to cash it.”

I start laughing. “You still keep a chequebook in the glove box?”

He starts laughing, too. “You never know,” he says.

“You never know when you’re going to have to bail out your insane ex-wife?”

He rubs his thumb over my cheekbone. I raise my hand and take his in mine and kiss his palm.

“Promise me,” he says gruffly, “you’ll stay away from Scott Hipwell. Promise me, Rach.”

“I promise,” I say, and I mean it, and I can hardly see for joy, because I realize that he’s not just worried about me, he’s jealous.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 13, 2013

EARLY MORNING

I’m on the train, looking out at a pile of clothes on the side of the tracks. Dark-blue cloth. A dress, I think, with a black belt. I can’t imagine how it ended up down there. That certainly wasn’t left behind by the engineers. We’re moving, glacially though, so I have plenty of time to look, and it seems to me that I’ve seen that dress before, I’ve seen someone wearing it. I can’t remember when. It’s very cold. Too cold for a dress like that. I think it might snow soon.

I’m looking forward to seeing Tom’s house—my house. I know that he’ll be there, sitting outside. I know he’ll be alone, waiting for me. He’ll stand up when we go past, he’ll wave and smile. I know all this.

First, though, we stop in front of number fifteen. Jason and Jess are there, drinking wine on the terrace, which is odd, because it isn’t yet eight thirty in the morning. Jess is wearing a dress with red flowers on it, she’s wearing little silver earrings with birds on them—I can see them moving back and forth as she talks. Jason is standing behind her, his hands on her shoulders. I smile at them. I want to wave, but I don’t want people to think I’m weird. I just watch, and I wish that I had a glass of wine, too.

We’ve been here for ages and the train still isn’t moving. I wish we’d get going, because if we don’t Tom won’t be there and I’ll miss him. I can see Jess’s face now, more clearly than usual—it’s something to do with the light, which is very bright, shining directly on her like a spotlight. Jason is still behind her, but his hands aren’t on her shoulders now, they’re on her neck, and she looks uncomfortable, distressed. He’s choking her. I can see her face turning red. She’s crying. I get to my feet, I’m banging on the window and I’m screaming at him to stop, but he can’t hear me. Someone grabs my arm—the guy with the red hair. He tells me to sit down, says that we’re not far from the next stop.

“It’ll be too late by then,” I tell him, and he says, “It’s already too late, Rachel,” and when I look back at the terrace, Jess is on her feet and Jason has a fistful of her blond hair and he’s going to smash her skull against the wall.

MORNING

It’s hours since I woke, but I’m still shaky, my legs trembling as I sit down in my seat. I woke from the dream with a sense of dread, a feeling that everything I thought I knew was wrong, that everything I’d seen—of Scott, of Megan—I’d made up in my head, that none of it was real. But if my mind is playing tricks, isn’t it more likely to be the dream that’s illusory? Those things Tom said to me in the car, all mixed up with guilt over what happened with Scott the other night: the dream was just my brain picking all that apart.

Still, that familiar sense of dread grows when the train stops at the signal, and I’m almost too afraid to look up. The window is shut, there’s nothing there. It’s quiet, peaceful. Or it’s abandoned. Megan’s chair is still out on the terrace, empty. It’s warm today, but I can’t stop shivering.

I have to keep in mind that the things Tom said about Scott and Megan came from Anna, and no one knows better than I do that she can’t be trusted.

Dr. Abdic’s welcome this morning seems a little halfhearted to me. He’s almost stooped over, as though he’s in pain, and when he shakes my hand his grip is weaker than before. I know that Scott said they wouldn’t release any information about the pregnancy, but I wonder if they’ve told him. I wonder if he’s thinking about Megan’s child.

I want to tell him about the dream, but I can’t think of a way to describe it without showing my hand, so instead I ask him about recovering memories, about hypnosis.

“Well,” he says, spreading his fingers out in front of him on the desk, “there are therapists who believe that hypnosis can be used to recover repressed memories, but it’s very controversial. I don’t do it, nor do I recommend it to my patients. I’m not convinced that it helps, and in some instances I think it can be harmful.” He gives me a half smile. “I’m sorry. I know this isn’t what you want to hear. But with the mind, I think, there are no quick fixes.”

“Do you know therapists who do this kind of thing?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “I’m sorry, but I couldn’t recommend one. You have to bear in mind that subjects under hypnosis are very suggestible. The memories that are ‘retrieved’”—he puts air quotes around the word—“cannot always be trusted. They are not real memories at all.”

I can’t risk it. I couldn’t bear to have other images in my head, yet more memories that I can’t trust, memories that merge and morph and shift, fooling me into believing that what is is not, telling me to look one way when really I should be looking another way.

“So what do you suggest, then?” I ask him. “Is there anything I can do to try to recover what I’ve lost?”

He rubs his long fingers back and forth over his lips. “It’s possible, yes. Just talking about a particular memory can help you to clarify things, going over the details in a setting in which you feel safe and relaxed . . .”

“Like here, for example?”

He smiles. “Like here, if indeed you do feel safe and relaxed here.” His voice rises, he’s asking a question that I don’t answer. The smile fades. “Focusing on senses other than sight often helps. Sounds, the feel of things . . . smell is particularly important when it comes to recall. Music can be powerful, too. If you are thinking of a particular circumstance, a particular day, you might consider retracing your steps, returning to the scene of the crime, as it were.” It’s a common enough expression, but the hairs on the back of my neck are standing up, my scalp tingling. “Do you want to talk about a particular incident, Rachel?”

I do, of course, but I can’t tell him that, so I tell him about that time with the golf club, when I attacked Tom after we’d had a fight.

I remember waking that morning filled with anxiety, instantly knowing that something terrible had happened. Tom wasn’t in bed with me, and I felt relieved. I lay on my back, playing it over. I remembered crying and crying and telling him that I loved him. He was angry, telling me to go to bed; he didn’t want to listen to it any longer.

I tried to think back to earlier in the evening, to where the argument started. We were having such a good time. I’d done grilled prawns with lots of chilli and coriander, and we were drinking this delicious Chenin Blanc that he’d been given by a grateful client. We ate outside on the patio, listening to the Killers and Kings of Leon, albums we used to play when we first got together.

I remember us laughing and kissing. I remember telling him a story about something—he didn’t find it as funny as I did. I remember feeling upset. Then I remember us shouting at each other, tripping through the sliding doors as I went inside, being furious that he didn’t rush to help me up.

But here’s the thing: “When I got up that morning, I went downstairs. He wouldn’t talk to me, barely even looked at me. I had to beg him to tell me what it was that I’d done. I kept telling him how sorry I was. I was desperately panicky. I can’t explain why, I know it makes no sense, but if you can’t remember what you’ve done, your mind just fills in all the blanks and you think the worst possible things . . .”

Kamal nods. “I can imagine. Go on.”

“So eventually, just to get me to shut up, he told me. Oh, I’d taken offence at something he’d said, and then I’d kept at it, needling and bitching, and I wouldn’t let it go, and he tried to get me to stop, he tried to kiss and make up, but I wouldn’t have it. And then he decided to just leave me, to go upstairs to bed, and that’s when it happened. I chased him up the stairs with a golf club in my hand and tried to take his head off. I’d missed, fortunately. I just took a chunk out of the plaster in the hall.”

Kamal’s expression doesn’t change. He isn’t shocked. He just nods. “So, you know what happened, but you can’t quite feel it, is that right? You want to be able to remember it for yourself, to see it and experience it in your own memory, so that—how did you put it?—so that it belongs to you? And that way, you’ll feel fully responsible?”

“Well.” I shrug. “Yes. I mean, that’s partly it. But there’s something more. And it happened later, much later—weeks, maybe months afterwards. I kept thinking about that night. Every time I passed that hole in the wall I thought about it. Tom said he was going to patch it up, but he didn’t, and I didn’t want to pester him about it. One day I was standing there—it was evening and I was coming out of the bedroom and I just stopped, because I remembered. I was on the floor, my back to the wall, sobbing and sobbing, Tom standing over me, begging me to calm down, the golf club on the carpet next to my feet, and I felt it, I felt it. I was terrified. The memory doesn’t fit with the reality, because I don’t remember anger, raging fury. I remember fear.”

EVENING

I’ve been thinking about what Kamal said, about returning to the scene of the crime, so instead of going home I’ve come to Witney, and instead of scurrying past the underpass, I walk slowly and deliberately right up to its mouth. I place my hands against the cold, rough brick at the entrance and close my eyes, running my fingers over it. Nothing comes. I open my eyes and look around. The road is very quiet: just one woman walking in my direction a few hundred yards off, no one else. No cars driving past, no children shouting, only a very faint siren in the distance. The sun slides behind a cloud and I feel cold, immobilized on the threshold of the tunnel, unable to go any farther. I turn to leave.

The woman I saw walking towards me a moment ago is just turning the corner; she’s wearing a deep-blue trench wrapped around her. She glances up at me as she passes and it’s then that it comes to me. A woman . . . blue . . . the quality of the light. I remember: Anna. She was wearing a blue dress with a black belt and was walking away from me, walking fast, almost like she did the other day, only this time she did look back, she looked over her shoulder and then she stopped. A car pulled up next to her on the pavement—a red car. Tom’s car. She leaned down to speak to him through the window and then opened the door and got in, and the car drove away.

I remember that. On that Saturday night I stood here, at the entrance to the underpass, and watched Anna getting into Tom’s car. Only I can’t be remembering right, because that doesn’t make sense. Tom came to look for me in the car. Anna wasn’t in the car with him—she was at home. That’s what the police told me. It doesn’t make sense, and I could scream with the frustration of it, the not knowing, the uselessness of my own brain.

I cross the street and walk along the left-hand side of Blenheim Road. I stand under the trees for a while, opposite number twenty-three. They’ve repainted the front door. It was dark green when I lived there; it’s black now. I don’t remember noticing that before. I preferred the green. I wonder what else is different inside? The baby’s room, obviously, but I wonder whether they still sleep in our bed, whether she puts on her lipstick in front of the mirror that I hung. I wonder if they’ve repainted the kitchen, or filled in that hole in the plasterwork in the corridor upstairs.

I want to cross over and thump the knocker against the black paint. I want to talk to Tom, to ask him about the night Megan went missing. I want to ask him about yesterday, when we were in the car and I kissed his hand, I want to ask him what he felt. Instead, I just stand there for a bit, looking up at my old bedroom window until I feel tears sting the back of my eyes, and I know it’s time to go.