_OceanofPDF.com_The_Girl_on_the_Train_-_Paula_Hawkins

I felt wretched then. I wasn’t helping, I had just made him feel worse,
increased his pain. I was intruding on his grief, it was wrong. I should
never have gone to see him. I should never have lied. Obviously, I should
never have lied.
I was just getting to my feet when he spoke. “It could . . . I don’t
know. It might be a good thing, mightn’t it? It could mean that she’s all
right. She’s just . . .” He gave a hollow little laugh. “She’s just run off
with someone.” He brushed a tear from his cheek with the back of his
hand and my heart screwed up into a tight little ball. “But the thing is, I
can’t believe she wouldn’t call.” He looked at me as though I held the
answers, as though I would know. “Surely she would call me, wouldn’t
she? She would know how panicked . . . how desperate I would be. She’s
not vindictive like that, is she?”
He was talking to me like someone he could trust—like Megan’s
friend—and I knew that it was wrong, but it felt good. He took another
swig of his beer and turned towards the garden. I followed his gaze to a
little pile of stones against the fence, a rockery long since started and
never finished. He raised the bottle halfway to his lips again, and then he
stopped. He turned to face me.
“You saw Megan from the train?” he asked. “So you were . . . just
looking out of the window and there she was, a woman you happen to
know?” The atmosphere in the room had changed. He wasn’t sure
anymore whether I was an ally, whether I was to be trusted. Doubt
passed over his face like a shadow.
“Yes, I . . . I know where she lives,” I said, and I regretted the words
the moment they came out of my mouth. “Where you live, I mean. I’ve
been here before. A long time ago. So sometimes I’d look out for her
when I went past.” He was staring at me; I could feel the heat rising to
my face. “She was often out there.”
He placed his empty bottle down on the counter, took a couple of
steps towards me and sat down in the seat nearest to me, at the table.
“So you knew Megan well then? I mean, well enough to come round
to the house?”
I could feel the blood pulsing in my neck, sweat at the base of my
spine, the sickening rush of adrenaline. I shouldn’t have said that,
shouldn’t have complicated the lie.
“It was just one time, but I . . . I know where the house is because I
used to live nearby.” He raised his eyebrows at me. “Down the road.
Number twenty-three.”