_OceanofPDF.com_The_Girl_on_the_Train_-_Paula_Hawkins

THURSDAY, AUGUST 1, 2013
MORNING
There’s something covering my face, I can’t breathe, I’m suffocating.
When I surface into wakefulness, I’m gasping for air and my chest hurts.
I sit up, eyes wide, and see something moving in the corner of the room,
a dense centre of blackness that keeps growing, and I almost cry out—
and then I’m properly awake and there’s nothing there, but I am sitting
up in bed and my cheeks are wet with tears.
It’s almost dawn, the light outside is just beginning to tinge grey, and
the rain of the last several days is still battering against the window. I
won’t go back to sleep, not with my heart hammering in my chest so
much it hurts.
I think, though I can’t be sure, that there’s some wine downstairs. I
don’t remember finishing the second bottle. It’ll be warm, because I
can’t leave it in the fridge; if I do, Cathy pours it away. She so badly
wants me to get better, but so far, things are not going according to her
plan. There’s a little cupboard in the hallway where the gas meter is. If
there was any wine left, I’ll have stashed it in there.
I creep out onto the landing and tiptoe down the stairs in the halflight.
I flip the little cupboard open and lift out the bottle: it’s
disappointingly light, not much more than a glassful in there. But better
than nothing. I pour it into a mug (just in case Cathy comes down—I can
pretend it’s tea) and put the bottle in the bin (making sure to conceal it
under a milk carton and a crisp packet). In the living room, I flick on the
TV, mute it straightaway and sit down on the sofa.
I’m flicking through channels—it’s all children’s TV and infomercials
until with a flash of recognition I’m looking at Corly Wood, which is just
down the road from here: you can see it from the train. Corly Wood in
pouring rain, the fields between the tree line and train tracks submerged
underwater.
I don’t know why it takes me so long to realize what’s going on. For
ten seconds, fifteen, twenty, I’m looking at cars and blue-and-white tape
and a white tent in the background, and my breath is coming shorter and
shorter until I’m holding it and not breathing at all.
It’s her. She’s been in the wood all along, just along the railway track
from here. I’ve been past those fields every day, morning and evening,
travelling by, oblivious.