_OceanofPDF.com_The_Girl_on_the_Train_-_Paula_Hawkins

of colour appear on his cheeks. “They think I killed her.”
“But . . . Kamal Abdic . . .”
The chair crashes against the kitchen wall with such force that one of
the legs splinters away. I jump back in fright, but Scott has barely
moved. His hands are back at his sides, balled into fists. I can see the
veins under his skin.
“Kamal Abdic,” he says, teeth gritted, “is no longer a suspect.” His
tone is even, but he is struggling to restrain himself. I can feel the anger
vibrating off him. I want to get to the front door, but he is in my way,
blocking my path, blocking out what little light there was in the room.
“Do you know what he’s been saying?” he asks, turning away from
me to pick up the chair. Of course I don’t, I think, but I realize once again
that he’s not really talking to me. “Kamal’s got all sorts of stories. Kamal
says that Megan was unhappy, that I was a jealous, controlling husband,
a—what was the word?—an emotional abuser.” He spits the words out
in disgust. “Kamal says Megan was afraid of me.”
“But he’s—”
“He isn’t the only one. That friend of hers, Tara—she says that Megan
asked her to cover for her sometimes, that Megan wanted her to lie to me
about where she was, what she was doing.”
He places the chair back at the table and it falls over. I take a step
towards the hallway, and he looks at me then. “I am a guilty man,” he
says, his face a twist of anguish. “I am as good as convicted.”
He kicks the broken chair aside and sits down on one of the three
remaining good ones. I hover, unsure. Stick or twist? He starts to talk
again, his voice so soft I can barely hear him. “Her phone was in her
pocket,” he says. I take a step closer to him. “There was a message on it
from me. The last thing I ever said to her, the last words she ever read,
were Go to hell you lying bitch.”
His chin on his chest, his shoulders start to shake. I am close enough
to touch him. I raise my hand and, trembling, put my fingers lightly on
the back of his neck. He doesn’t shrug me away.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and I mean it, because although I’m shocked to
hear the words, to imagine that he could speak to her like that, I know
what it is to love someone and to say the most terrible things to them, in
anger or anguish. “A text message,” I say. “It’s not enough. If that’s all
they have . . .”
“It’s not, though, is it?” He straightens up then, shrugging my hand
away from him. I walk back around the table and sit down opposite him.
He doesn’t look up at me. “I have a motive. I didn’t behave . . . I didn’t