The Girl on the Train

‘Will you think about it?’ he asks, touching my hand as he does so. I give him a bright smile and say that I will. Maybe I even mean it, I don’t know. He walks me to the door, his arm around my shoulders, I want to turn and kiss him again, but I don’t.

Instead I ask, ‘Is this the last time I’m going to see you?’ and he nods. ‘Couldn’t we …?’

‘No, Megan. We can’t. We have to do the right thing.’

I smile up at him. ‘I’m not very good at that,’ I say. ‘Never have been.’

‘You can be. You will be. Go home now. Go home to your husband.’

I stand on the pavement outside his house for a long time after he shuts the door. I feel lighter, I think, freer – but sadder too, and all of a sudden I just want to get home to Scott.

I’m just turning to walk to the station when a man comes running along the pavement, earphones on, head down. He’s heading straight for me and as I step back, trying to get out of the way, I slip off the edge of the pavement and fall.

The man doesn’t apologize, he doesn’t even look back at me and I’m too shocked to cry out. I get to my feet and stand there, leaning against a car, trying to catch my breath. All the peace I felt in Kamal’s house is suddenly shattered.

It’s not until I get home that I realize I cut my hand when I fell, and at some point I must have rubbed my hand across my mouth. My lips are smeared with blood.

RACHEL

Saturday, 10 August 2013

Morning

I WAKE EARLY. I can hear the recycling van trundling up the street and the soft patter of rain against the window. The blinds are half up – we forgot to close them last night. I smile to myself. I can feel him behind me, warm and sleepy, hard. I wriggle my hips, pressing against him a little closer. It won’t take long for him to stir, to grab hold of me, roll me over.

‘Rachel,’ his voice says, ‘don’t.’ I go cold. I’m not at home, this isn’t home. This is all wrong.

I roll over. Scott is sitting up now. He swings his legs over the side of the bed, his back to me. I squeeze my eyes tightly shut and try to remember, but it’s all too hazy. When I open my eyes I can think straight because this room is the one I’ve woken up in a thousand times or more: this is where the bed is, this is the exact aspect – if I sit up now I will be able to see the tops of the oak trees on the opposite side of the street; over there, on the left, is the en suite bathroom and to the right are the built-in wardrobes. It’s exactly the same as the room I shared with Tom.

‘Rachel,’ he says again and I reach out to touch his back, but he stands quickly and turns to face me. He looks hollowed out, like the first time I saw him, up close in the police station – as though someone has scraped away his insides, leaving a shell. This is like the room I shared with Tom, but it is the one he shared with Megan. This room, this bed.

‘I know,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. This was wrong.’

‘Yes, it was,’ he says, his eyes not meeting mine. He goes into the bathroom and shuts the door.

I lie back and close my eyes and feel myself sink into dread, that awful gnawing in my gut. What have I done? I remember him talking a lot when I first arrived, a rush of words. He was angry – angry with his mother, who never liked Megan; angry with the newspapers for what they were writing about her, the implication that she got what was coming to her; angry with the police for botching the whole thing, for failing her, failing him. We sat in the kitchen drinking beers and I listened to him talk, and when the beers were finished we sat outside on the patio and he stopped being angry then. We drank and watched the trains go by and talked about nothing: television and work and where he went to school, just like normal people. I forgot to feel what I was supposed to be feeling, we both did, because I can remember now. I can remember him smiling at me, touching my hair.

It hits me like a wave, I can feel blood rushing to my face. I remember admitting it to myself. Thinking the thought and not dismissing it, embracing it. I wanted it. I wanted to be with Jason. I wanted to feel what Jess felt when she sat out there with him, drinking wine in the evening. I forgot what I was supposed to be feeling. I ignored the fact that at the very best, Jess is nothing but a figment of my imagination, and at the worst, Jess is not nothing, she is Megan – she is dead, a body battered and left to rot. Worse than that: I didn’t forget. I didn’t care. I didn’t care because I’ve started to believe what they’re saying about her. Did I, for just the briefest of moments, think she got what was coming to her, too?

Scott comes out of the bathroom. He’s taken a shower, washed me off his skin. He looks better for it, but he won’t look me in the eye when he asks if I’d like a coffee. This isn’t what I wanted: none of this is right. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to lose control again.

I dress quickly and go into the bathroom, and splash cold water on my face. My mascara’s run, smudged at the corners of my eyes, and my lips are dark. Bitten. My face and neck are red where his stubble has grazed my skin. I have a quick flashback to the night before, his hands on me, and my stomach flips. Feeling dizzy, I sit down on the edge of the bathtub. The bathroom is grubbier than the rest of the house: grime around the sink, toothpaste smeared on the mirror. A mug, with just one toothbrush in it. There’s no perfume, no moisturizer, no make-up. I wonder if she took it when she left, or whether he’s thrown it all away.

Back in the bedroom, I look around for evidence of her – a robe on the back of the door, a hairbrush on the chest of drawers, a pot of lip balm, a pair of earrings – but there’s nothing. I cross the bedroom to the wardrobe and am about to open it, my hand resting on the handle, when I hear him call out, ‘There’s coffee here!’ and I jump.

He hands me the mug without looking at my face, then turns away and stands with his back to me, his gaze fixed on the tracks or something beyond. I glance to my right and notice that the photographs are gone, all of them. There’s a prickle at the back of my scalp, the hairs on my forearms raised. I sip my coffee and struggle to swallow. None of this is right.

Maybe his mother did it: cleared everything out, took the pictures away. His mother didn’t like Megan, he’s said that over and over. Still, who does what he did last night? Who fucks a strange woman in the marital bed when his wife has been dead less than a month? He turns then, he looks at me, and I feel as though he’s read my mind because he’s got a strange look on his face – contempt, or revulsion – and I’m repulsed by him, too. I put the mug down.