_OceanofPDF.com_The_Girl_on_the_Train_-_Paula_Hawkins

There was a witness who saw her—or saw “a woman fitting her
description”—walking towards Witney station at around seven fifteen, I
know that from the newspaper reports. That was the final sighting. No
one remembered seeing her on the platform, or on the train. There is no
CCTV at Witney, and she wasn’t picked up on the CCTV at Corly,
although the reports said that this didn’t prove she wasn’t there, because
there are “significant blind spots” at that station.
“What time was it when you tried to contact her?” I ask him. Another
long silence.
“I . . . I went to the pub. The Rose, you know, just around the corner,
on Kingly Road? I needed to cool down, to get things straight in my
head. I had a couple of pints, then I went back home. That was just
before ten. I think I was hoping that she’d have had time to calm down
and that she’d be back. But she wasn’t.”
“So it was around ten o’clock when you tried to call her?”
“No.” His voice is little more than a whisper now. “I didn’t. I drank a
couple more beers at home, I watched some TV. Then I went to bed.”
I think about all the arguments I had with Tom, all the terrible things I
said after I’d had too much, all the storming out into the street, shouting
at him, telling him I never wanted to see him again. He always rang me,
he always talked me down, coaxed me home.
“I just imagined she’d be sitting in Tara’s kitchen, you know, talking
about what a shit I am. So I left it.”
He left it. It sounds callous and uncaring, and I’m not surprised he
hasn’t told this story to anyone else. I am surprised that he’s telling
anyone at all. This is not the Scott I imagined, the Scott I knew, the one
who stood behind Megan on the terrace, his big hands on her bony
shoulders, ready to protect her from anything.
I’m ready to hang up the phone, but Scott keeps talking. “I woke up
early. There were no messages on my phone. I didn’t panic—I assumed
she was with Tara and that she was still angry with me. I rang her then
and got her voice mail, but I still didn’t panic. I thought she was
probably still asleep, or just ignoring me. I couldn’t find Tara’s number,
but I had her address—it was on a business card on Megan’s desk. So I
got up and I drove round there.”
I wonder, if he wasn’t worried, why he felt he needed to go round to
Tara’s house, but I don’t interrupt. I let him talk.
“I got to Tara’s place a little after nine. It took her a while to come to
the door, but when she did, she looked really surprised to see me. It was
obvious that I was the last person she expected to see on her doorstep at