The Girl on the Train

RACHEL • • •

The heat is insufferable, it builds and builds. With the apartment windows open, you can taste the carbon monoxide rising from the street below. My throat itches. I’m taking my second shower of the day when the phone rings. I let it go, and it rings again. And again. By the time I’m out, it’s ringing for a fourth time, and I answer.

He sounds panicky, his breath short. His voice comes to me in snatches. “I can’t go home,” he says. “There are cameras everywhere.”

“Scott?”

“I know this is… this is really weird, but I just need to go somewhere, somewhere they won’t be waiting for me. I can’t go to my mother’s, my friends’. I’m just… driving around. I’ve been driving around since I left the police station…” There’s a catch in his voice. “I just need an hour or two. To sit, to think. Without them, without the police, without people asking me fucking questions. I’m sorry, but could I come to your house?”

I say yes, of course. Not just because he sounds panicked, desperate, but because I want to see him. I want to help him. I give him the address and he says he’ll be here in fifteen minutes.

The doorbell rings ten minutes later: short, sharp, urgent bursts.

“I’m sorry to do this,” he says as I open the front door. “I didn’t know where to go.” He has a hunted look to him: he’s shaken, pale, his skin slick with sweat.

“It’s all right,” I say, stepping aside to allow him to pass me. I show him into the living room, tell him to sit down. I fetch him a glass of water from the kitchen. He drinks it, almost in one gulp, then sits, bent over, forearms on his knees, head hanging down.

I hover, unsure whether to speak or to hold my tongue. I fetch his glass and refill it, saying nothing. Eventually, he starts to speak.

“You think the worst has happened,” he says quietly. “I mean, you would think that, wouldn’t you?” He looks up at me. “My wife is dead, and the police think that I killed her. What could be worse than that?”

He’s talking about the news, about the things they’re saying about her. This tabloid story, supposedly leaked by someone in the police, about Megan’s involvement in the death of a child. Murky, speculative stuff, a smear campaign on a dead woman. It’s despicable.

“It isn’t true, though,” I say to him. “It can’t be.”

His expression is blank, uncomprehending. “Detective Riley told me this morning,” he says. He coughs, clears his throat. “The news I always wanted to hear. You can’t imagine,” he goes on, his voice barely more than a whisper, “how I’ve longed for it. I used to daydream about it, imagine how she’d look, how she’d smile at me, shy and knowing, how she’d take my hand and press it to her lips…” He’s lost, he’s dreaming, I have no idea what he’s talking about. “Today,” he says, “today I got the news that Megan was pregnant.”

He starts to cry, and I am choking, too, crying for an infant who never existed, the child of a woman I never knew. But the horror of it is almost too much to bear. I cannot understand how Scott is still breathing. It should have killed him, should have sucked the life right out of him. Somehow, though, he is still here.

I can’t speak, can’t move. The living room is hot, airless despite the open windows. I can hear noises from the street below: a police siren, young girls shouting and laughing, bass booming from a passing car. Normal life. But in here, the world is ending. For Scott, the world is ending, and I can’t speak. I stand there, mute, helpless, useless.

Until I hear footfalls on the steps outside, the familiar jangle of Cathy fishing around in her huge handbag for her house keys. It jolts me to life. I have to do something: I grab Scott’s hand and he looks up at me, alarmed.

“Come with me,” I say, pulling him to his feet. He lets me drag him into the hallway and up the stairs before Cathy unlocks the door. I close the bedroom door behind us.

“My flatmate,” I say by way of explanation. “She’d… she might ask questions. I know that’s not what you want at the moment.”

He nods. He looks around my tiny room, taking in the unmade bed, the clothes, both clean and dirty, piled on my desk chair, the blank walls, the cheap furniture. I am embarrassed. This is my life: messy, shabby, small. Unenviable. As I’m thinking this, I think how ridiculous I am to imagine that Scott could possibly care about the state of my life at this moment.

I motion for him to sit down on the bed. He obeys, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. He breathes out heavily.

“Can I get you something?” I ask him.

“A beer?”

“I don’t keep alcohol in the house,” I say, and I can feel myself going red as I say it. Scott doesn’t notice, though, he doesn’t even look up. “I can make you a cup of tea?” He nods again. “Lie down,” I say. “Rest.” He does as he’s told, kicking off his shoes and lying back on the bed, docile as a sick child.

Downstairs, while I boil the kettle I make small talk with Cathy, listening to her going on about the new place in Northcote she’s discovered for lunch (“really good salads”) and how annoying the new woman at work is. I smile and nod, but I’m only half hearing her. My body is braced: I’m listening out for him, for creaks or footsteps. It feels unreal to have him here, in my bed, upstairs. It makes me dizzy to think about it, as though I’m dreaming.

Cathy stops talking eventually and looks at me, her brow furrowed. “Are you all right?” she asks. “You look… kind of out of it.”

“I’m just a bit tired,” I tell her. “I’m not feeling very well. I think I’ll go to bed.”

She gives me a look. She knows I’ve not been drinking (she can always tell), but she probably assumes I’m about to start. I don’t care, I can’t think about it now; I pick up the cup of tea for Scott and tell her I’ll see her in the morning.

I stop outside my bedroom door and listen. It’s quiet. Carefully, I twist the doorknob and push the door open. He’s lying there, in exactly the same position I left him, his hands at his sides, his eyes shut. I can hear his breathing, soft and ragged. His bulk takes up half the bed, but I’m tempted to lie down in the space next to him, to put my arm across his chest, to comfort him. Instead, I give a little cough and hold out the cup of tea.

He sits up. “Thank you,” he says gruffly, taking the mug from me. “Thank you for… giving me sanctuary. It’s been… I can’t describe how it’s been, since that story came out.”

“The one about what happened years ago?”

“Yeah, that one.”

How the tabloids got hold of that story is hotly disputed. The speculation has been rife, fingers pointed at the police, at Kamal Abdic, at Scott.

“It’s a lie,” I say to him. “Isn’t it?”

“Of course it is, but it gives someone a motive, doesn’t it? That’s what they’re saying: Megan killed her baby, which would give someone—the father of the child, presumably—a motive to kill her. Years and years later.”

“It’s ridiculous.”

“But you know what everyone’s saying. That I made this story up, not just to make her look like a bad person, but to shift suspicion away from me, onto some unknown person. Some guy from her past that no one even knows about.”

I sit down next to him on the bed. Our thighs almost touch.

“What are the police saying about it?”

He shrugs. “Nothing really. They asked me what I knew about it. Did I know she’d had a child before? Did I know what happened? Did I know who the father was? I said no, it was all bullshit, she’d never been pregnant…” His voice catches again. He stops, takes a sip of the tea. “I asked them where the story came from, how it made it into the newspapers. They said they couldn’t tell me. It’s from him, I assume. Abdic.” He gives a long, shuddering sigh. “I don’t understand why. I don’t understand why he would say things like that about her. I don’t know what he’s trying to do. He’s obviously fucking disturbed.”

I think of the man I met the other day: the calm demeanour, the soft voice, the warmth in the eyes. As far from disturbed as it’s possible to get. That smile, though. “It’s outrageous that this has been printed. There should be rules…”

“Can’t libel the dead,” he says. He falls silent for a moment, then says, “They’ve assured me that they won’t release the information about this… about her pregnancy. Not yet. Perhaps not at all. But certainly not until they know for sure.”

“Until they know?”

“It’s not Abdic’s child,” he says.

“They’ve done DNA testing?”

He shakes his head. “No, I just know. I can’t say how, but I know. The baby is—was—mine.”

“If he thought it was his baby, it gives him a motive, doesn’t it?” He wouldn’t be the first man to get rid of an unwanted child by getting rid of its mother—although I don’t say that out loud. And—I don’t say this, either—it gives Scott a motive, too. If he thought his wife was pregnant with another man’s child… only he can’t have done. His shock, his distress—it has to be real. No one is that good an actor.

Scott doesn’t appear to be listening any longer. His eyes, fixed on the back of the bedroom door, are glazed over, and he seems to be sinking into the bed as though into quicksand.

“You should stay here a while,” I say to him. “Try to sleep.”

He looks at me then, and he almost smiles. “You don’t mind?” he asks. “It would be… I would be grateful. I find it hard to sleep at home. It’s not just the people outside, the sense of people trying to get to me. It’s not just that. It’s her. She’s everywhere, I can’t stop seeing her. I go down the stairs and I don’t look, I force myself not to look, but when I’m past the window, I have to go back and check that she’s not out there, on the terrace.” I can feel the tears pricking my eyes as he tells me. “She liked to sit out there, you see—on this little terrace we’ve got. She liked to sit out there and watch the trains.”

“I know,” I say, putting my hand on his arm. “I used to see her there sometimes.”

“I keep hearing her voice,” he says. “I keep hearing her calling me. I lie in bed and I can hear her calling me from outside. I keep thinking she’s out there.” He’s trembling.

“Lie down,” I say, taking the mug from his hand. “Rest.”

When I’m sure that he’s fallen asleep, I lie down at his back, my face inches from his shoulder blade. I close my eyes and listen to my heart beating, the throb of blood in my neck. I inhale the sad, stale scent of him.

When I wake, hours later, he’s gone.

I feel treacherous. He left me just hours ago, and here I am, on my way to see Kamal, to meet once again the man he believes killed his wife. His child. I feel sick. I wonder whether I should have told him my plan, explained that I’m doing all this for him. Only I’m not sure that I am doing it just for him, and I don’t really have a plan.

I will give something of myself. That’s my plan for today. I will talk about something real. I will talk about wanting a child. I’ll see whether that provokes something—an unnatural response, any kind of reaction. I’ll see where that gets me.

It gets me nowhere.

He starts out by asking me how I’m feeling, when I last had a drink.

“Sunday,” I tell him.

“Good. That’s good.” He folds his hands in his lap. “You look well.” He smiles, and I don’t see the killer. I’m wondering now what I saw the other day. Did I imagine it?

“You asked me, last time, about how the drinking started.” He nods. “I became depressed,” I say. “We were trying… I was trying to get pregnant. I couldn’t, and I became depressed. That’s when it started.”

In no time at all, I find myself crying again. It’s impossible to resist the kindness of strangers. Someone who looks at you, who doesn’t know you, who tells you it’s OK, whatever you did, whatever you’ve done: you suffered, you hurt, you deserve forgiveness. I confide in him and I forget, once again, what I’m doing here. I don’t watch his face for a reaction, I don’t study his eyes for some sign of guilt or suspicion. I let him comfort me.

He is kind, rational. He talks about coping strategies, he reminds me that youth is on my side.

So maybe it doesn’t get me nowhere, because I leave Kamal Abdic’s office feeling lighter, more hopeful. He has helped me. I sit on the train and I try to conjure up the killer I saw, but I can’t see him any longer. I am struggling to see him as a man capable of beating a woman, of crushing her skull.

A terrible, shameful image comes to me: Kamal with his delicate hands, his reassuring manner, his sibilant speech, contrasted with Scott, huge and powerful, wild, desperate. I have to remind myself that this is Scott now, not as he was. I have to keep reminding myself of what he was before all this. And then I have to admit that I don’t know what Scott was before all this.

The train stops at the signal. I take a sip from the cold can of gin and tonic and look up at his house, her terrace. I was doing so well, but I need this. Dutch courage. I’m on my way to see Scott, and I’ll have to run all the risks of Blenheim Road before I do: Tom, Anna, police, press. The underpass, with its half memories of terror and blood. But he asked me to come, and I couldn’t refuse him.

They found the little girl last night. What was left of her. Buried in the grounds of a farmhouse near the East Anglian coast, just where someone had told them to look. It was in the papers this morning:

I phoned Scott this morning when I saw the news. He didn’t answer, so I left a message, telling him I was sorry. He called back this afternoon.

“Are you all right?” I asked him.

“Not really.” His voice was thick with drink.

“I’m so sorry… do you need anything?”

“I need someone who isn’t going to say ‘I told you so.’”

“I’m sorry?”

“My mother’s been here all afternoon. She knew all along, apparently—‘something not right about that girl, something off, no family, no friends, came from nowhere.’ Wonder why she never told me.” The sound of glass breaking, swearing.

“Are you all right?” I said again.

“Can you come here?” he asked.

“To the house?”

“Yes.

“I… the police, journalists… I’m not sure…”

“Please. I just want some company. Someone who knew Megs, who liked her. Someone who doesn’t believe all this…”

He was drunk and I knew it and I said yes anyway.

Now, sitting on the train, I’m drinking, too, and I’m thinking about what he said. Someone who knew Megs, who liked her. I didn’t know her, and I’m not sure that I like her anymore. I finish my drink as quickly as I can and open another one.

I get off at Witney. I’m part of the Friday-evening commuter throng, just another wage slave amongst the hot, tired masses, looking forward to getting home and sitting outside with a cold beer, dinner with the kids, an early night. It might just be the gin, but it feels indescribably good to be swept along with the crowd, everyone phone-checking, fishing in pockets for rail passes. I’m taken back, way back to the first summer we lived on Blenheim Road, when I used to rush home from work every night, desperate to get down the steps and out of the station, half running down the street. Tom would be working from home and I’d barely be through the door before he was taking my clothes off. I find myself smiling about it even now, the anticipation of it: heat rising to my cheeks as I skipped down the road, biting my lip to stop myself from grinning, my breath quickening, thinking of him and knowing he’d be counting the minutes until I got home, too.

My head is so full of those days that I forget to worry about Tom and Anna, the police and the photographers, and before I know it I’m at Scott’s door, ringing the doorbell, and the door is opening and I’m feeling excited, although I shouldn’t be, but I don’t feel guilty about it, because Megan isn’t what I thought she was anyway. She wasn’t that beautiful, carefree girl out on the terrace. She wasn’t a loving wife. She wasn’t even a good person. She was a liar, a cheat.

She was a killer.