The Girl on the Train (27 page)

We’ve been here for ages and the train still isn’t moving. I wish we’d get going, because if we don’t Tom won’t be there and I’ll miss him. I can see Jess’s face now, more clearly than usual – it’s something to do with the light, which is very bright, shining directly on her like a spotlight. Jason is still behind her, but his hands aren’t on her shoulders now, they’re on her neck, and she looks uncomfortable, distressed. He’s choking her. I can see her face turning red. She’s crying. I get to my feet, I’m banging on the window and I’m screaming at him to stop, but he can’t hear me. Someone grabs my arm – the guy with the red hair. He tells me to sit down, says that we’re not far from the next stop.

‘It’ll be too late by then,’ I tell him, and he says, ‘It’s already too late, Rachel,’ and when I look back at the terrace, Jess is on her feet and Jason has a fistful of her blonde hair and he’s going to smash her skull against the wall.

It’s hours since I woke, but I’m still shaky, my legs trembling as I sit down in my seat. I woke from the dream with a sense of dread, a feeling that everything I thought I knew was wrong, that everything I’d seen – of Scott, of Megan – I’d made up in my head, that none of it was real. But if my mind is playing tricks, isn’t it more likely to be the dream that’s illusory? Those things Tom said to me in the car, all mixed up with guilt over what happened with Scott the other night: the dream was just my brain picking all that apart.

Still that familiar sense of dread grows when the train stops at the signal, and I’m almost too afraid to look up. The window is shut, there’s nothing there. It’s quiet, peaceful. Or it’s abandoned. Megan’s chair is still out on the terrace, empty. It’s warm today, but I can’t stop shivering.

I have to keep in mind that the things Tom said about Scott and Megan came from Anna, and no one knows better than I do that she can’t be trusted.

Dr Abdic’s welcome this morning seems a little half-hearted to me. He’s almost stooped over, as though he’s in pain, and when he shakes my hand his grip is weaker than before. I know that Scott said they wouldn’t release any information about the pregnancy, but I wonder if they’ve told him. I wonder if he’s thinking about Megan’s child.

I want to tell him about the dream, but I can’t think of a way to describe it without showing my hand, so instead I ask him about recovering memories, about hypnosis.

‘Well,’ he says, spreading his fingers out in front of him on the desk, ‘there are therapists who believe that hypnosis can be used to recover repressed memories, but it’s very controversial. I don’t do it, nor do I recommend it to my patients. I’m not convinced that it helps, and in some instances I think it can be harmful.’ He gives me a half-smile. ‘I’m sorry. I know this isn’t what you want to hear. But with the mind, I think, there are no quick fixes.’

‘Do you know therapists who do this kind of thing?’ I ask.

He shakes his head. ‘I’m sorry, but I couldn’t recommend one. You have to bear in mind that subjects under hypnosis are very suggestible. The memories which are “retrieved”’ – he puts air quotes around the word – ‘cannot always be trusted. They are not real memories at all.’

I can’t risk it. I couldn’t bear to have other images in my head, yet more memories that I can’t trust, memories that merge and morph and shift, fooling me into believing that what is, is not, telling me to look one way when really I should be looking another way.

‘So what do you suggest, then?’ I ask him. ‘Is there anything I can do, to try to recover what I’ve lost?’

He rubs his long fingers back and forth over his lips. ‘It’s possible, yes. Just talking about a particular memory can help you to clarify things, going over the details in a setting in which you feel safe and relaxed …’

‘Like here, for example?’

He smiles. ‘Like here, if indeed you do feel safe and relaxed here …’ His voice rises, he’s asking a question that I don’t answer. The smile fades. ‘Focusing on senses other than sight often helps. Sounds, the feel of things … smell is particularly important when it comes to recall. Music can be powerful, too. If you are thinking of a particular circumstance, a particular day, you might consider retracing your steps, returning to the scene of the crime, as it were.’ It’s a common enough expression, but the hairs on the back of my neck are standing up, my scalp tingling. ‘Do you want to talk about a particular incident, Rachel?’

I do, of course, but I can’t tell him that, so I tell him about that time with the golf club, when I attacked Tom after we’d had a fight.

I remember waking that morning filled with anxiety, instantly knowing that something terrible had happened. Tom wasn’t in bed with me, and I felt relieved. I lay on my back, playing it over. I remembered crying and crying and telling him that I loved him. He was angry, telling me to go to bed; he didn’t want to listen to it any longer.

I tried to think back to earlier in the evening, to where the argument started. We were having such a good time. I’d done grilled prawns with lots of chilli and coriander, and we were drinking this delicious Chenin Blanc that he’d been given by a grateful client. We ate outside on the patio, listening to The Killers and Kings of Leon, albums we used to play when we first got together.

I remember us laughing and kissing. I remember telling him a story about something – he didn’t find it as funny as I did. I remember feeling upset. Then I remember us shouting at each other, tripping through the sliding doors as I went inside, being furious that he didn’t rush to help me up.

But here’s the thing: ‘When I got up that morning, I went downstairs. He wouldn’t talk to me, barely even looked at me. I had to beg him to tell me what it was that I’d done. I kept telling him how sorry I was. I was desperately panicky. I can’t explain why, I know it makes no sense, but if you can’t remember what you’ve done, your mind just fills in all the blanks and you think the worst possible things …’

Kamal nods. ‘I can imagine. Go on.’

‘So eventually, just to get me to shut up, he told me. Oh, I’d taken offence at something he’d said, and then I’d kept at it, needling and bitching, and I wouldn’t let it go, and he tried to get me to stop, he tried to kiss and make up, but I wouldn’t have it. And then he decided to just leave me, to go upstairs to bed, and that’s when it happened. I chased him up the stairs with a golf club in my hand and tried to take his head off. I’d missed, fortunately. I just took a chunk out of the plaster in the hall.’

Kamal’s expression doesn’t change. He isn’t shocked. He just nods. ‘So, you know what happened, but you can’t quite feel it, is that right? You want to be able to remember it for yourself, to see it and experience it in your own memory, so that – how did you put it? – so that it
belongs
to you? And that way, you’ll feel fully responsible?’

‘Well,’ I shrug. ‘Yes. I mean, that’s partly it. But there’s something more. And it happened later, much later – weeks, maybe months afterwards. I kept thinking about that night. Every time I passed that hole in the wall I thought about it. Tom said he was going to patch it up, but he didn’t, and I didn’t want to pester him about it. One day I was standing there – it was evening and I was coming out of the bedroom and I just stopped, because I remembered. I was on the floor, my back to the wall, sobbing and sobbing, Tom standing over me, begging me to calm down, the golf club on the carpet next to my feet, and I felt it, I felt it. I was
terrified
. The memory doesn’t fit with the reality, because I don’t remember anger, raging fury. I remember fear.’

I’ve been thinking about what Kamal said, about returning to the scene of the crime, so instead of going home I’ve come to Witney, and instead of scurrying past the underpass, I walk slowly and deliberately right up to its mouth. I place my hands against the cold, rough brick at the entrance and close my eyes, running my fingers over it. Nothing comes. I open my eyes and look around. The road is very quiet: just one woman walking in my direction a few hundred yards off, no one else. No cars driving past, no children shouting, only a very faint siren in the distance. The sun slides behind a cloud and I feel cold, immobilized on the threshold of the tunnel, unable to go any further. I turn to leave.

The woman I saw walking towards me a moment ago is just turning the corner; she’s wearing a deep-blue trench wrapped around her. She glances up at me as she passes and it’s then that it comes to me. A woman … blue … the quality of the light. I remember: Anna. She was wearing a blue dress with a black belt, and was walking away from me, walking fast, almost like she did the other day, only this time she
did
look back, she looked over her shoulder and then she stopped. A car pulled up next to her on the pavement – a red car. Tom’s car. She leaned down to speak to him through the window and then opened the door and got in, and the car drove away.

I remember that. On that Saturday night I stood here, at the entrance to the underpass, and watched Anna getting into Tom’s car. Only I can’t be remembering right, because that doesn’t make sense. Tom came to look for me in the car. Anna wasn’t in the car with him – she was at home. That’s what the police told me. It doesn’t make sense, and I could scream with the frustration of it, the not knowing, the uselessness of my own brain.

I cross the street and walk along the left-hand side of Blenheim Road. I stand under the trees for a while, opposite number twenty-three. They’ve repainted the front door. It was dark green when I lived there; it’s black now. I don’t remember noticing that before. I preferred the green. I wonder what else is different inside? The baby’s room, obviously, but I wonder whether they still sleep in our bed, whether she puts on her lipstick in front of the mirror that I hung. I wonder if they’ve repainted the kitchen, or filled in that hole in the plasterwork in the corridor upstairs.

I want to cross over and thump the knocker against the black paint. I want to talk to Tom, to ask him about the night Megan went missing. I want to ask him about yesterday, when we were in the car and I kissed his hand, I want to ask him what he felt. Instead, I just stand there for a bit, looking up at my old bedroom window until I feel tears sting the back of my eyes, and I know it’s time to go.

I
WATCHED
T
OM
getting ready for work this morning, putting on his shirt and tie. He seemed a little distracted, probably running through his schedule for the day – meetings, appointments, who, what, where. I felt jealous. For the first time ever, I actually envied him the luxury of getting dressed up and leaving the house and rushing around all day, with purpose, all in the service of a pay cheque.

It’s not the work I miss – I was an estate agent, not a neurosurgeon, it’s not exactly a job you dream about as a child – but I did like being able to wander around the really expensive houses when the owners weren’t there, running my fingers over the marble worktops, sneaking a peek into the walk-in wardrobes. I used to imagine what my life would be like if I lived like that, the kind of person I would be. I’m well aware there is no job more important than that of raising a child, but the problem is that it isn’t valued. Not in the sense that counts to me at the moment, which is financial. I want us to have more money so that we can leave this house, this road. It’s as simple as that.

Perhaps not quite as simple as that. After Tom left for work, I sat down at the kitchen table to do battle with Evie over breakfast. Two months ago, I swear she would eat anything. Now, if it’s not strawberry yoghurt, she’s not having it. I know this is normal. I keep telling myself this while I’m trying to get egg yolk out of my hair, while I’m crawling around on the floor picking up spoons and upturned bowls. I keep telling myself, this is normal.

Still, when we were finally done and she was playing happily by herself, I let myself cry for a minute. I allow myself these tears sparingly, only ever when Tom’s not here, just a few moments to let it all out. It was when I was washing my face afterwards, when I saw how tired I looked, how blotchy and bedraggled and bloody awful, that I felt it again – that need to put on a dress and high heels, to blow-dry my hair and do my make-up and walk down the street and have men turn and look at me.

I miss work, but I also miss what work meant to me, in my last year of gainful employment, when I met Tom. I miss being a mistress.

I enjoyed it. I loved it, in fact. I never felt guilty. I pretended I did. I had to, with my married girlfriends, the ones who live in terror of the pert au pair or the pretty, funny girl in the office who can talk about football and spends half her life in the gym. I had to tell them that
of course
I felt terrible about it, of course I felt bad for his wife, I never meant for any of this to happen, we fell in love, what could we do?

The truth is, I never felt bad for Rachel, even before I found out about her drinking and how difficult she was, how she was making his life a misery. She just wasn’t real to me, and anyway, I was enjoying myself too much. Being the other woman is a huge turn-on, there’s no point denying it: you’re the one he can’t help but betray his wife for, even though he loves her. That’s just how irresistible you are.

I was selling a house. Number thirty-four, Cranham Street. It was proving difficult to shift, because the latest interested buyer hadn’t been granted a mortgage. Something about the lender’s survey. So we arranged to get an independent surveyor in, just to make sure everything was OK. The sellers had already moved on, the house was empty, so I had to be there to let him in.

It was obvious from the moment I opened the door to him that it was going to happen. I’d never done anything like that before, never even dreamed of it, but there was something in the way he looked at me, the way he smiled at me. We couldn’t help ourselves – we did it there in the kitchen, up against the counter. It was insane, but that’s how we were. That’s what he always used to say to me.
Don’t expect me to be sane, Anna. Not with you.