The Girl on the Train (13 page)

I never learn. I wake with a crushing sensation of wrongness, of shame, and I know immediately that I’ve done something stupid. I go through my awful, achingly familiar ritual of trying to remember exactly what I did. I sent an email. That’s what it was.

At some point last night, Tom got promoted back up the list of men I think about, and I sent him an email. My laptop is on the floor next to my bed; it sits there, a squat, accusatory presence. I step over it as I get up to go to the bathroom. I drink water directly from the tap, giving myself a cursory glance in the mirror.

I don’t look well. Still, three days off isn’t bad, and I’ll start again today. I stand in the shower for ages, gradually reducing the water temperature, making it cooler and cooler until it’s properly cold. You can’t step directly into a cold stream of water, it’s too shocking, too brutal, but if you get there gradually, you hardly notice it; it’s like boiling a frog in reverse. The cool water soothes my skin; it dulls the burning pain of the cuts on my head and above my eye.

I take my laptop downstairs and make a cup of tea. There’s a chance, a faint one, that I wrote an email to Tom and didn’t send it. I take a deep breath and open my Gmail account. I’m relieved to see I have no messages. But when I click on the Sent folder, there it is: I have written to him, he just hasn’t replied. Yet. The email was sent just after eleven last night; I’d been drinking for a good few hours by then. That adrenaline and booze buzz I had earlier on would have been long gone. I click on the message.

Could you please tell your wife to stop lying to the police about me? Pretty low, don’t you think, trying to get me into trouble? Telling police I’m obsessed with her and her ugly brat? She needs to get over herself. Tell her to leave me the fuck alone.

I close my eyes and snap the laptop shut. I am cringing, literally, my entire body folding into itself. I want to be smaller; I want to disappear. I’m frightened, too, because if Tom decides to show this to the police, I could be in real trouble. If Anna is collecting evidence that I am vindictive and obsessive, this could be a key piece in her dossier. And why did I mention the little girl? What sort of person does that? What sort of person thinks like that? I don’t bear her any ill will – I couldn’t think badly of a child, any child, and especially not Tom’s child. I don’t understand myself; I don’t understand the person I’ve become. God, he must hate me.
I
hate me – that version of me anyway, the version who wrote that email last night. She doesn’t even feel like me, because I am not like that. I am not hateful.

Am I? I try not to think of the worst days, but the memories crowd into my head at times like this. Another fight, towards the end: waking, post-party, post-blackout, Tom telling me how I’d been the night before, embarrassing him again, insulting the wife of a colleague of his, shouting at her for flirting with my husband. ‘I don’t want to go anywhere with you any more,’ he told me. ‘You ask me why I never invite friends round, why I don’t like going to the pub with you any more. You honestly want to know why? It’s because of you. Because I’m ashamed of you.’

I pick up my handbag and my keys. I’m going to the Londis down the road. I don’t care that it’s not yet nine o’clock in the morning, I’m frightened and I don’t want to have to think. If I take some painkillers and have a drink now, I can put myself out, I can sleep all day. I’ll face it later. I get to the front door, my hand poised above the handle, then I stop. I could apologize. If I apologize right now, I might be able to salvage something. I might be able to persuade him not to show the message to Anna or to the police. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d protected me from her.

That day last summer, when I went to Tom and Anna’s, it didn’t happen exactly the way I told the police it had. I didn’t ring the doorbell, for starters. I wasn’t sure what I wanted – I’m still not sure what I intended. I did go down the pathway and over the fence. It was quiet, I couldn’t hear anything. I went up to the sliding doors and looked in. It’s true that Anna was sleeping on the sofa. I didn’t call out, to her or to Tom. I didn’t want to wake her. The baby wasn’t crying, she was fast asleep in her carrycot, at her mother’s side. I picked her up and took her outside, as quickly as I could. I remember running with her towards the fence, the baby starting to wake and to grizzle a little. I don’t know what I thought I was doing. I wasn’t going to hurt her. I got to the fence, holding her tightly against my chest. She was crying properly now, starting to scream. I was bouncing her and shushing her and then I heard another noise, a train coming, and I turned my back to the fence and I saw her – Anna – hurtling towards me, her mouth open like a gaping wound, her lips moving, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying.

She took the child from me and I tried to run away, but I tripped and fell. She was standing over me, screaming at me, she told me to stay put or she’d call the police. She rang Tom and he came home and sat with her in the living room. She was crying hysterically, she still wanted to phone the police, she wanted to have me arrested for kidnapping. Tom calmed her down, he begged her to let it go, to let me go. He saved me from her. Afterwards he drove me home, and when he dropped me off he took my hand. I thought it was a gesture of kindness, of reassurance, but he squeezed tighter and tighter and tighter until I cried out, and his face was red when he told me that he would kill me if I ever did anything to harm his daughter.

I don’t know what I intended to do that day. I still don’t. At the door, I hesitate, my fingers grasped around the handle. I bite down hard on my lip. I know that if I start drinking now, I will feel better for an hour or two and worse for six or seven. I let go of the handle and walk back into the living room, and I open my laptop again. I have to apologize, I have to beg forgiveness. I log back into my email account and see that I have one new message. It isn’t from Tom. It’s from Scott Hipwell.

Dear Rachel,

Thank you for contacting me. I don’t remember Megan mentioning you to me, but she had a lot of gallery regulars – I’m not very good with names. I would like to talk to you about what you know. Please telephone me on 07583 123657 as soon as possible.

Regards,

Scott Hipwell.

For an instant, I imagine that he’s sent the email to the wrong address. This message is intended for someone else. It’s just the briefest of moments, and then I remember. I remember. Sitting on the sofa, halfway through the second bottle, I realized that I didn’t want my part to be over. I wanted to be at the heart of it.

So I wrote to him.

I scroll down from his email to mine.

Dear Scott,

Sorry for contacting you again, but I feel it’s important that we talk. I’m not sure if Megan ever mentioned me to you – I’m a friend from the gallery – I used to live in Witney. I think I have information that would interest you. Please email me back on this address.

Rachel Watson.

I can feel the heat come to my face, my stomach a pit of acid. Yesterday – sensible, clear-headed, right-thinking – I decided I must accept that my part in this story was over. But my better angels lost again, defeated by drink, by the person I am when I drink. Drunk Rachel sees no consequences, she is either excessively expansive and optimistic or wrapped up in hate. She has no past, no future. She exists purely in the moment. Drunk Rachel – wanting to be part of the story, needing a way to persuade Scott to talk to her – she lied.
I
lied.

I want to drag knives over my skin, just so that I can feel something other than shame, but I’m not even brave enough to do that. I start writing to Tom, writing and deleting, writing and deleting, trying to find ways to ask forgiveness for the things I said last night. If I had to write down every transgression for which I should apologize to Tom, I could fill a book.

A week ago, almost exactly a week ago, Megan Hipwell walked out of number fifteen, Blenheim Road and disappeared. No one has seen her since. Neither her phone nor her bank cards have been used since Saturday either. When I read that in a news story earlier today, I started to cry. I am ashamed now of the secret thoughts I had. Megan is not a mystery to be solved, she is not a figure who wanders into the tracking shot at the beginning of a film, beautiful, ethereal, insubstantial. She is not a cipher. She is real.

I am on the train, and I’m going to her home. I’m going to meet her husband.

I had to phone him. The damage was done. I couldn’t just ignore the email – he would tell the police. Wouldn’t he? I would, in his position, if a stranger contacted me, claiming to have information, and then disappeared. He might have called the police already; they might be waiting for me when I get there.

Sitting here, in my usual seat, though not on my usual day, I feel as though I am driving off a cliff. It felt the same this morning when I dialled his number, like falling through the dark, not knowing when you’re going to hit the ground. He spoke to me in a low voice, as though there were someone else in the room, someone he didn’t want to overhear.

‘Can we talk in person?’ he asked.

‘I … no. I don’t think so …’

‘Please?’

I hesitated just for a moment, and then I agreed.

‘Could you come to the house? Not now, my … there are people here. This evening?’ He gave me the address, which I pretended to note down.

‘Thank you for contacting me,’ he said, and he hung up.

I knew as I was agreeing that it wasn’t a good idea. What I know about Scott, from the papers, is almost nothing. What I know from my own observations, I don’t
really
know. I don’t know anything about Scott. I know things about Jason – who, I have to keep reminding myself, doesn’t exist. All I know for sure – for absolutely certain – is that Scott’s wife has been missing for a week. I know that he is probably a suspect. And I know, because I saw that kiss, that he has a motive to kill her. Of course, he might not know that he has a motive, but … Oh, I’ve tied myself up in knots thinking about it, but how could I pass up the opportunity to approach that house, the one I’ve observed a hundred times from the trackside, from the street? To walk up to his front door, to go inside, to sit in his kitchen, on his terrace, where they sat, where I watched them?

It was too tempting. Now I sit on the train, my arms wrapped around myself, hands jammed against my sides to stop them from trembling, like an excited child caught up in an adventure. I was so glad to have a purpose that I stopped thinking about the reality. I stopped thinking about Megan.

I’m thinking about her now. I have to convince Scott that I knew her – a little, not a lot. That way, he’ll believe me when I tell him that I saw her with another man. If I admit to lying right away, he’ll never trust me. So I try to imagine what it would have been like to drop by the gallery, chat with her over a coffee. Does she drink coffee? We would talk about art, perhaps, or yoga, or our husbands. I don’t know anything about art, I’ve never done yoga. I don’t have a husband. And she betrayed hers.

I think of the things her real friends said about her:
wonderful
,
funny
,
beautiful
,
warm-hearted
.
Loved
. She made a mistake. It happens. We are none of us perfect.

E
VIE WAKES JUST
before six. I get out of bed, slip into the nursery and pick her up. I feed her and take her back to bed with me.

When I wake again, Tom’s not at my side, but I can hear his footfalls on the stairs. He’s singing, low and tuneless,
Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you
… I hadn’t even thought about it earlier, I’d completely forgotten; I didn’t think of anything but fetching my little girl and getting back to bed. Now I’m giggling before I’m even properly awake. I open my eyes and Evie’s smiling too, and when I look up, Tom’s standing at the foot of the bed, holding a tray. He’s wearing my Orla Kiely apron and nothing else.

‘Breakfast in bed, birthday girl,’ he says. He places the tray at the end of the bed and scoots round to kiss me.

I open my presents. I have a pretty silver bracelet with onyx inlay from Evie, and a black silk teddy and matching knickers from Tom, and I can’t stop smiling. He climbs back into bed and we lie with Evie between us. She has her fingers curled tightly around his forefinger and I have hold of her perfect pink foot, and I feel as though fireworks are going off in my chest. It’s impossible, this much love.

A while later, when Evie gets bored of lying there, I get her up and we go downstairs and leave Tom to snooze. He deserves it. I potter round, tidying up a bit. I drink my coffee outside on the patio, watching the half-empty trains rattle past, and think about lunch. It’s hot – too hot for a roast, but I’ll do one anyway, because Tom loves roast beef, and we can have ice cream afterwards to cool us down. I just need to pop out to get that Merlot he likes, so I get Evie ready, strap her in the buggy and we stroll down to the shops.

Everyone told me I was insane to agree to move into Tom’s house. But then everyone thought I was insane to get involved with a married man, let alone a married man whose wife was highly unstable, and I’ve proved them wrong on that one. No matter how much trouble she causes, Tom and Evie are worth it. But they were right about the house. On days like today, with the sun shining, when you walk down our little street – tree-lined and tidy, not quite a cul-de-sac, but with the same sense of community – it could be perfect. Its pavements are busy with mothers just like me, with dogs on leads and toddlers on scooters. It could be ideal. It could be, if you weren’t able to hear the screeching brakes of the trains. It could be, so long as you didn’t turn around and look back down towards number fifteen.

When I get back, Tom is sitting at the dining-room table looking at something on the computer. He’s wearing shorts but no shirt; I can see the muscles moving under his skin when he moves. It still gives me butterflies to look at him. I say hello, but he’s in a world of his own and when I run my fingertips over his shoulder he jumps. The laptop snaps shut.