The Girl on the Train: A Novel

THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 2013

AFTERNOON

The room is dark, the air close, sweet with the smell of us. We’re at the Swan again, in the room under the eaves. It’s different, though, because he’s still here, watching me.

“Where do you want to go?” he asks me.

“A house on the beach on the Costa de la Luz,” I tell him.

He smiles. “What will we do?”

I laugh. “You mean apart from this?”

His fingers are tracing slowly over my belly. “Apart from this.”

“We’ll open a café, show art, learn to surf.”

He kisses me on the tip of my hip bone. “What about Thailand?” he says.

I wrinkle my nose. “Too many gap-year kids. Sicily,” I say. “The Egadi islands. We’ll open a beach bar, go fishing . . .”

He laughs again and then moves his body up over mine and kisses me. “Irresistible,” he mumbles. “You’re irresistible.”

I want to laugh, I want to say it out loud: See? I win! I told you it wasn’t the last time, it’s never the last time. I bite my lip and close my eyes. I was right, I knew I was, but it won’t do me any good to say it. I enjoy my victory silently; I take pleasure in it almost as much as in his touch.

Afterwards, he talks to me in a way he hasn’t done before. Usually I’m the one doing all the talking, but this time he opens up. He talks about feeling empty, about the family he left behind, about the woman before me and the one before that, the one who wrecked his head and left him hollow. I don’t believe in soul mates, but there’s an understanding between us that I just haven’t felt before, or at least, not for a long time. It comes from shared experience, from knowing how it feels to be broken.

Hollowness: that I understand. I’m starting to believe that there isn’t anything you can do to fix it. That’s what I’ve taken from the therapy sessions: the holes in your life are permanent. You have to grow around them, like tree roots around concrete; you mould yourself through the gaps. All these things I know, but I don’t say them out loud, not now.

“When will we go?” I ask him, but he doesn’t answer me, and I fall asleep, and he’s gone when I wake up.

FRIDAY, MARCH 8, 2013

MORNING

Scott brings me coffee on the terrace.

“You slept last night,” he says, bending down to kiss my head. He’s standing behind me, hands on my shoulders, warm and solid. I lean my head back against his body, close my eyes and listen to the train rumbling along the track until it stops just in front of the house. When we first moved here, Scott used to wave at the passengers, which always made me laugh. His grip tightens a little on my shoulders; he leans forward and kisses my neck.

“You slept,” he says again. “You must be feeling better.”

“I am,” I say.

“Do you think it’s worked, then?” he asks. “The therapy?”

“Do I think I’m fixed, do you mean?”

“Not fixed,” he says, and I can hear the hurt in his voice. “I didn’t mean . . .”

“I know.” I lift my hand to his and squeeze. “I was only joking. I think it’s a process. It’s not simple, you know? I don’t know if there will be a time when I can say that it’s worked. That I’m better.”

There’s a silence, and he grips just a little harder. “So you want to keep going?” he asks, and I tell him I do.

There was a time when I thought he could be everything, he could be enough. I thought that for years. I loved him completely. I still do. But I don’t want this any longer. The only time I feel like me is on those secret, febrile afternoons like yesterday, when I come alive in all that heat and half-light. Who’s to say that once I run, I’ll find that isn’t enough? Who’s to say I won’t end up feeling exactly the way I do right now—not safe, but stifled? Maybe I’ll want to run again, and again, and eventually I’ll end up back by those old tracks, because there’s nowhere left to go. Maybe. Maybe not. You have to take the risk, don’t you?

I go downstairs to say good-bye as he’s heading off to work. He slips his arms around my waist and kisses the top of my head.

“Love you, Megs,” he murmurs, and I feel horrible then, like the worst person in the world. I can’t wait for him to shut the door because I know I’m going to cry.