_OceanofPDF.com_The_Girl_on_the_Train_-_Paula_Hawkins

“You didn’t see her, but you had something useful to tell him?”
I hesitate for a moment. I’m not sure how much I should tell him,
whether I should keep this just for Scott. “It’s about Megan,” I say. “She
was having an affair.”
“Wait—did you know her?”
“Just a little,” I say.
“How?”
“From her gallery.”
“Oh,” he says. “So who’s the guy?”
“Her therapist,” I tell him. “Kamal Abdic. I saw them together.”
“Really? The guy they arrested? I thought they’d let him go.”
“They have. And it’s my fault, because I’m an unreliable witness.”
Tom laughs. It’s soft, friendly, he isn’t mocking me. “Rachel, come
on. You did the right thing, coming forward. I’m sure it’s not just about
you.” In the background, I can hear the prattle of the child, and Tom says
something away from the phone, something I can’t hear. “I should go,”
he says. I can imagine him putting down the phone, picking up his little
girl, giving her a kiss, embracing his wife. The dagger in my heart twists,
round and round and round.
MONDAY, JULY 29, 2013
MORNING
It’s 8:07 and I’m on the train. Back to the imaginary office. Cathy was
with Damien all weekend, and when I saw her last night, I didn’t give
her a chance to berate me. I started apologizing for my behaviour
straightaway, said I’d been feeling really down, but that I was pulling
myself together, turning over a new leaf. She accepted, or pretended to
accept, my apologies. She gave me a hug. Niceness writ large.
Megan has dropped out of the news almost completely. There was a
comment piece in the Sunday Times about police incompetence that
referred briefly to the case, an unnamed source at the Crown Prosecution
Service citing it as “one of a number of cases in which the police have
made a hasty arrest on the basis of flimsy or flawed evidence.”
We’re coming to the signal. I feel the familiar rattle and jolt, the train
slows and I look up, because I have to, because I cannot bear not to, but
there is never anything to see any longer. The doors are closed and the