The Girl on the Train

It was my fault, the taxi driver wasn’t to blame. I stepped right out – ran right out, actually – in front of the cab. I don’t know where I thought I was running to. I wasn’t thinking at all, I suppose, at least not about myself. I was thinking about Jess. Who isn’t Jess, she’s Megan Hipwell, and she’s missing.

I’d been in the library on Theobalds Road. I’d just emailed my mother (I didn’t tell her anything of significance, it was a sort of test-the-waters email, to gauge how maternal she’s feeling towards me at the moment) via my Yahoo account. On Yahoo’s front page there are news stories, tailored to your postcode or whatever – God only knows how they know my postcode, but they do. And there was a picture of her, Jess, my Jess, the perfect blonde, next to a headline which read CONCERN FOR MISSING WITNEY WOMAN.

At first I wasn’t sure. It looked like her, she looked exactly the way she looks in my head, but I doubted myself. Then I read the story and I saw the street name and I knew.

Buckinghamshire Police are becoming increasingly concerned for the welfare of a missing twenty-nine-year-old woman, Megan Hipwell, of Blenheim Road, Witney. Ms Hipwell was last seen by her husband, Scott Hipwell, on Saturday night when she left the couple’s home to visit a friend at around seven o’clock. Her disappearance is ‘completely out of character’, Mr Hipwell said. Ms Hipwell was wearing jeans and a red T-shirt. She is five foot four, slim, with blonde hair and blue eyes. Anyone with information regarding Ms Hipwell is requested to contact Buckinghamshire Police.

She’s missing. Jess is missing. Megan is missing. Since Saturday. I googled her – the story appeared in the Witney Argus, but with no further details. I thought about seeing Jason – Scott – this morning, standing on the terrace, looking at me, smiling at me. I grabbed my bag and got to my feet and ran out of the library, into the road, right into the path of a black cab.

‘Rachel? Rachel?’ The good-looking doctor is trying to get my attention. ‘Your friend is here to pick you up.’

MEGAN

Thursday, 10 January 2013

Morning

SOMETIMES, I DON’T want to go anywhere, I think I’ll be happy if I never have to set foot outside the house again. I don’t even miss working. I just want to remain safe and warm in my haven with Scott, undisturbed.

It helps that it’s dark and cold and the weather is filthy. It helps that it hasn’t stopped raining for weeks – freezing, driving, bitter rain accompanied by gales howling through the trees, so loud they drown out the sound of the train. I can’t hear it on the tracks, enticing me, tempting me to journey elsewhere.

Today, I don’t want to go anywhere, I don’t want to run away, I don’t even want to go down the road. I want to stay here, holed up with my husband, watching TV and eating ice cream, after calling him to come home from work early so we can have sex in the middle of the afternoon.

I will have to go out later, of course, because it’s my day for Kamal. I’ve been talking to him lately about Scott, about all the things I’ve done wrong, my failure as a wife. Kamal says I have to find a way of making myself happy, I have to stop looking for happiness elsewhere. It’s true, I do, I know I do, and then I’m in the moment and I just think, fuck it, life’s too short.

I think about that time when we went on a family holiday to Santa Margherita in the Easter school holidays. I’d just turned fifteen and I met this guy on the beach, much older than I was – thirties, probably, possibly even early forties – and he invited me to go sailing the next day. Ben was with me and he was invited too, but – ever the protective big brother – he said we shouldn’t go because he didn’t trust the guy, he thought he was a sleazy creep. Which, of course, he was. But I was furious, because when were we ever going to get the chance to sail around the Ligurian Sea on some bloke’s private yacht? Ben told me we’d have lots of opportunities like that, that our lives would be full of adventure. In the end we didn’t go, and that summer Ben lost control of his motorbike on the A10, and he and I never got to go sailing.

I miss the way we were when we were together, Ben and I. We were fearless.

I’ve told Kamal all about Ben, but we’re getting closer to the other stuff now, the truth, the whole truth – what happened with Mac, the before, the after. It’s safe with Kamal, he can’t ever tell anyone because of patient confidentiality.

But even if he could tell someone, I don’t think he would. I trust him, I really do. It’s funny, but the thing that’s been holding me back from telling him everything is not the fear of what he’d do with it, it’s not the fear of judgement, it’s Scott. It feels like I’m betraying Scott if I tell Kamal something I can’t tell him. When you think about all the other stuff I’ve done, the other betrayals, this should be peanuts, but it isn’t. Somehow this feels worse, because this is real life, this is the heart of me, and I don’t share it with him.

I’m still holding back, because obviously I can’t say everything I’m feeling. I know that’s the point of therapy, but I just can’t. I have to keep things vague, jumble up all the men, the lovers and the exes, but I tell myself that’s OK, because it doesn’t matter who they are. It matters how they make me feel. Stifled, restless, hungry. Why can’t I just get what I want? Why can’t they give it to me?

Well, sometimes they do. Sometimes all I need is Scott. If I can just learn how to hold on to this feeling, this one I’m having now – if I could just discover how to focus on this happiness, enjoy the moment, not wonder about where the next high is coming from – then everything will be all right.

Evening

I have to focus, when I’m with Kamal. It’s difficult not to let my mind wander, when he looks at me with those leonine eyes, when he folds his hands together on his lap, long legs crossed at the knee. It’s hard not to think of the things we could do together.

I have to focus. We’ve been talking about what happened after Ben’s funeral, after I ran off. I was in Ipswich for a while; not long. I met Mac there, the first time. He was working in a pub or something. He picked me up on his way home. He felt sorry for me.

‘He didn’t even want … you know.’ I start laughing. ‘We got back to his flat and I asked for the money, and he looked at me like I was mad. I told him I was old enough, but he didn’t believe me. And he waited, he did, until my sixteenth birthday. He’d moved, by then, to this old house near Holkham. An old stone cottage at the end of a lane leading nowhere, with a bit of land around it, about half a mile from the beach. There was an old railway track running along one side of the property. At night I’d lie awake – I was always buzzing then, we were smoking a lot – and I used to imagine I could hear the trains, I used to be so sure I’d get up and go outside and look for the lights.’