The Girl on the Train (21 page)

My phone buzzes briefly, telling me its battery is dying. I pick it up to plug it into the charger and I notice that I have two missed calls from last night. I dial into voicemail. I have one message.

‘Rachel, hi. It’s Mum. Listen, I’m coming down to London tomorrow. Saturday. I’ve got a spot of shopping to do. Could we meet up for a coffee or something? Darling, it’s not a good time for you to come and stay now. There’s … well, I’ve got a new friend, and you know how it is in the early stages.’ She titters. ‘Anyway, I’m very happy to give you a loan to tide you over for a couple of weeks. We’ll talk about it tomorrow. OK, darling. Bye.’

I’m going to have to be straight with her, tell her exactly how bad things are. That is not a conversation I want to have stone-cold sober. I haul myself out of bed: I can go down to the shops now and just have a couple of glasses before I go out. Take the edge off. I look at my phone again, check the missed calls. Only one is from my mother – the other is from Scott. At quarter to one in the morning. I sit there, with the phone in my hand, debating whether to call him back. Not now, too early. Perhaps later? After one glass, though, not two.

I plug the phone in to charge, pull the blind up and open the window, then go to the bathroom and run a cold shower. I scrub my skin and wash my hair and try to quieten the voice in my head which tells me it’s an odd thing to do, less than forty-eight hours after your wife’s body has been discovered, to ring another woman in the middle of the night.

The earth is still drying out, but the sun is almost breaking through thick white cloud. I bought myself one of those little bottles of wine – just one. I shouldn’t, but lunch with my mother would test the willpower of a lifelong teetotaller. Still, she’s promised to transfer £300 into my bank account, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.

I didn’t admit how bad things were. I didn’t tell her I’ve been out of work for months, or that I was fired (she thinks her money is tiding me over until my redundancy payment arrives). I didn’t tell her how bad things had got on the drinking front, and she didn’t notice. Cathy did. When I saw her on my way out this morning, she gave me a look and said, ‘Oh for God’s sake. Already?’ I have no idea how she does that, but she always knows. Even if I’ve only had half a glass, she takes one look at me and she knows.

‘I can tell from your eyes,’ she says, but when I check myself in the mirror I look exactly the same. Her patience is running out, her sympathy too. I have to stop. Only not today. I can’t today. It’s too hard today.

I should have been prepared for it, should have expected it, but somehow I didn’t. I got on to the train and she was everywhere, her face beaming from every newspaper: beautiful, blonde, happy Megan, looking right into the camera, right at me.

Someone has left behind their copy of
The Times
, so I read their report. The formal identification came last night, the post-mortem is today. A police spokesman is quoted saying that ‘Mrs Hipwell’s cause of death may be difficult to establish because her body has been outside for some time, and has been submerged for several days, at least.’ It’s horrible to think about, with her picture right in front of me. What she looked like then, what she looks like now.

There’s a brief mention of Kamal, his arrest and release, and a statement from DI Gaskill, saying that they are ‘pursuing a number of leads’, which I imagine means they are clueless. I close the newspaper and put it on the floor at my feet. I can’t bear to look at her any longer. I don’t want to read those hopeless, empty words.

I lean my head against the window. Soon we’ll pass number twenty-three. I glance over, just for a moment, but we’re too far away on this side of the track to really see anything. I keep thinking about the day I saw Kamal, about the way he kissed her, about how angry I was and how I wanted to confront her. What would have happened if I had done? What would have happened if I’d gone round then, banged on the door and asked her what the hell she thought she was up to? Would she still be out there, on her terrace?

I close my eyes. At Northcote, someone gets on and sits down in the seat next to me. I don’t open my eyes to look, but it strikes me as odd, because the train is half empty. The hairs are standing up on the back of my neck. I can smell aftershave under cigarette smoke and I know that I’ve smelled that scent before.

‘Hello.’

I look round and recognize the man with the red hair, the one from the station, from
that
Saturday. He’s smiling at me, offering his hand to shake. I’m so surprised that I take it. His palm feels hard and calloused.

‘You remember me?’

‘Yes,’ I say, shaking my head as I’m saying it. ‘Yes, a few weeks ago, at the station.’

He’s nodding and smiling. ‘I was a bit wasted,’ he says, then laughs. ‘Think you were, too, weren’t you, love?’

He’s younger than I’d realized, maybe late twenties. He has a nice face, not good looking, just nice. Open, a wide smile. His accent’s cockney, or Estuary, something like that. He’s looking at me as though he knows something about me, as though he’s teasing me, as though we have an in joke. We don’t. I look away from him. I ought to say something, ask him,
What did you see?

‘You doing OK?’ he asks.

‘Yes, I’m fine.’ I’m looking out of the window again, but I can feel his eyes on me and I have the oddest urge to turn towards him, to smell the smoke on his clothes and his breath. I like the smell of cigarette smoke. Tom smoked when we first met. I used to have the odd one with him, when we were out drinking or after sex. It’s erotic to me, that smell; it reminds me of being happy. I graze my teeth over my lower lip, wondering for a moment what he would do if I turned to face him and kissed his mouth. I feel his body move. He’s leaning forward, bending down, he picks up the newspaper at my feet.

‘Awful, innit? Poor girl. It’s weird, ’cos we were there that night. It was that night, wasn’t it? That she went missing.’

It’s like he’s read my mind, and it stuns me. I whip round to look at him. I want to see the expression in his eyes. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘That night when I met you on the train. That was the night that girl went missing, the one they just found. And they’re saying the last time anyone saw her was outside the station. I keep thinking, you know, that I might’ve seen her. Don’t remember, though. I was wasted.’ He shrugs. ‘You don’t remember anything, do you?’

It’s strange, the way I feel when he says this. I can’t remember ever feeling like this before. I can’t reply because my mind has gone somewhere else entirely, and it’s not the words he’s saying, it’s the aftershave. Under the smoke, that scent – fresh, lemony, aromatic – evokes a memory of sitting on the train next to him, just like I am now, only we’re going the other way and someone is laughing really loudly. He’s got his hand on my arm, he’s asking if I want to go for a drink, but suddenly something is wrong. I feel frightened, confused. Someone is trying to hit me. I can see the fist coming and I duck down, my hands up to protect my head. I’m not on the train any longer, I’m in the street. I can hear laughter again, or shouting. I’m on the steps, I’m on the pavement, it’s so confusing, my heart is racing. I don’t want to be anywhere near this man. I want to get away from him.

I scramble to my feet, saying ‘Excuse me’ loudly so the other people in the carriage will hear, but there’s hardly anyone in here and no one looks around. The man looks up at me, surprised, and moves his legs to one side to let me past.

‘Sorry, love,’ he says. ‘Didn’t mean to upset you.’

I walk away from him as fast as I can, but the train jolts and sways and I almost lose my balance. I grab on to a seat back to stop myself from falling. People are staring at me. I hurry through to the next carriage and all the way through to the one after that; I just keep going until I get to the end of the train. I feel breathless and afraid. I can’t explain it, I can’t remember what happened, but I can feel it, the fear and confusion. I sit down, facing in the direction I have just come from so that I’ll be able to see him if he comes after me.

Pressing my palms into my eye sockets, I concentrate. I’m trying to get it back, to see what I just saw. I curse myself for drinking. If only my head was straight … but there it is. It’s dark, and there’s a man walking away from me. A woman walking away from me? A woman, wearing a blue dress. It’s Anna.

Blood is throbbing in my head, my heart pounding. I don’t know whether what I’m seeing, feeling, is real or not, imagination or memory. I squeeze my eyes tightly shut and try to feel it again, to see it again, but it’s gone.

Tom is meeting some of his army buddies for a drink and Evie’s down for her nap. I’m sitting in the kitchen, doors and windows closed despite the heat. The rain of the past week has stopped at last; now it’s stiflingly close.

I’m bored. I can’t think of anything to do. I fancy going shopping, spending a bit of money on myself, but it’s hopeless with Evie. She gets irritable and I get stressed. So I’m just hanging round the house. I can’t watch television or look at a newspaper. I don’t want to read about it, I don’t want to see Megan’s face, I don’t want to think about it.

How can I not think about it when we’re here, just four doors away?

I rang around to see if anyone was up for a playdate, but everyone’s got plans. I even called my sister, but of course you’ve got to book her at least a week in advance. In any case, she said she was too hungover to spend time with Evie. I felt a horrible pang of envy then, a longing for Saturdays spent lying on the sofa with the newspapers and a hazy memory of leaving the club the night before.

Stupid, really, because what I’ve got now is a million times better, and I made sacrifices to secure it. Now I just need to protect it. So here I sit in my sweltering house, trying not to think about Megan. I try not to think about
her
and I jump every time I hear a noise, I flinch when a shadow passes the window. It’s intolerable.

What I can’t stop thinking about is the fact that Rachel was here the night Megan went missing, stumbling around, totally pissed, and then she just
disappeared
. Tom looked for her for ages, but he couldn’t find her. I can’t stop wondering what she was doing.

There is no connection between Rachel and Megan Hipwell. I spoke to the police officer, Detective Sergeant Riley, about it after we saw Rachel at the Hipwells’ house, and she said it was nothing to worry about. ‘She’s a rubbernecker,’ she said. ‘Lonely, a bit desperate. She just wants to be involved in something.’

She’s probably right. But then I think about her coming into my house and taking my child, I remember the terror I felt when I saw her with Evie down by the fence. I think about that horrible, chilling little smile she gave me when I saw her outside the Hipwells’ house. Detective Sergeant Riley doesn’t know just how dangerous Rachel can be.

I
T
’
S DIFFERENT
,
THE
nightmare I wake from this morning. In it, I’ve done something wrong, but I don’t know what it is, all I know is that it cannot be put right. All I know is that Tom hates me now, he won’t talk to me any longer, and he has told everyone I know about the terrible thing I’ve done, and everyone has turned against me: old colleagues, my friends, even my mother. They look at me with disgust, contempt, and no one will listen to me, no one will let me tell them how sorry I am. I feel awful, desperately guilty, I just can’t think what it is that I’ve done. I wake and I know the dream must come from an old memory, some ancient transgression – it doesn’t matter which one now.

After I got off the train yesterday, I hung around outside Ashbury station for a full fifteen or twenty minutes. I watched to see if he’d got off the train with me – the red-haired man – but there was no sign of him. I kept thinking that I might have missed him, that he was there somewhere, just waiting for me to walk home so that he could follow me. I thought how desperately I would love to be able to run home and for Tom to be waiting for me. To have someone waiting for me.

I walked home via the off-licence.

The flat was empty when I got back, it had the feeling of a place just vacated, as though I’d just missed Cathy, but the note on the counter said she was going out for lunch with Damien in Henley and that she wouldn’t be back until Sunday night. I felt restless, afraid. I walked from room to room, picking things up, putting them down. Something felt off, but I realized eventually that it was just me.

Still, the silence ringing in my ears sounded like voices, so I poured myself a glass of wine, and then another, and then I phoned Scott. The phone went straight to voicemail: his message from another lifetime, the voice of a busy, confident man, with a beautiful wife at home. After a few minutes, I phoned again. The phone was answered, but no one spoke.

‘Hello?’

‘Who is this?’

‘It’s Rachel,’ I said. ‘Rachel Watson.’

‘Oh.’ There was noise in the background, voices, a woman. His mother, perhaps.

‘You … I missed your call,’ I said.

‘No … no. Did I call you? Oh. By mistake.’ He sounded flustered. ‘No, just put it there,’ he said, and it took me a moment to realize he wasn’t talking to me.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.

‘Yes.’ His tone was flat and even. ‘So sorry.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Did you … did you need to talk to me?’

‘No, I must have rung you by mistake,’ he said, with more conviction this time.

‘Oh.’ I could tell he was keen to get off the phone. I knew I should leave him to his family, his grief. I knew that I should, but I didn’t. ‘Do you know Anna?’ I asked him. ‘Anna Watson?’

‘Who? You mean your ex’s missus?’

‘Yes.’

‘No. I mean not really. Megan … Megan did a bit of babysitting for her, last year. Why do you ask?’

I don’t know why I ask. I don’t know. ‘Can we meet?’ I asked him. ‘I wanted to talk to you about something.’