_OceanofPDF.com_The_Girl_on_the_Train_-_Paula_Hawkins

look, and it seems to me that I’ve seen that dress before, I’ve seen
someone wearing it. I can’t remember when. It’s very cold. Too cold for
a dress like that. I think it might snow soon.
I’m looking forward to seeing Tom’s house—my house. I know that
he’ll be there, sitting outside. I know he’ll be alone, waiting for me. He’ll
stand up when we go past, he’ll wave and smile. I know all this.
First, though, we stop in front of number fifteen. Jason and Jess are
there, drinking wine on the terrace, which is odd, because it isn’t yet
eight thirty in the morning. Jess is wearing a dress with red flowers on it,
she’s wearing little silver earrings with birds on them—I can see them
moving back and forth as she talks. Jason is standing behind her, his
hands on her shoulders. I smile at them. I want to wave, but I don’t want
people to think I’m weird. I just watch, and I wish that I had a glass of
wine, too.
We’ve been here for ages and the train still isn’t moving. I wish we’d
get going, because if we don’t Tom won’t be there and I’ll miss him. I
can see Jess’s face now, more clearly than usual—it’s something to do
with the light, which is very bright, shining directly on her like a
spotlight. Jason is still behind her, but his hands aren’t on her shoulders
now, they’re on her neck, and she looks uncomfortable, distressed. He’s
choking her. I can see her face turning red. She’s crying. I get to my feet,
I’m banging on the window and I’m screaming at him to stop, but he
can’t hear me. Someone grabs my arm—the guy with the red hair. He
tells me to sit down, says that we’re not far from the next stop.
“It’ll be too late by then,” I tell him, and he says, “It’s already too late,
Rachel,” and when I look back at the terrace, Jess is on her feet and
Jason has a fistful of her blond hair and he’s going to smash her skull
against the wall.
MORNING
It’s hours since I woke, but I’m still shaky, my legs trembling as I sit
down in my seat. I woke from the dream with a sense of dread, a feeling
that everything I thought I knew was wrong, that everything I’d seen—of
Scott, of Megan—I’d made up in my head, that none of it was real. But if
my mind is playing tricks, isn’t it more likely to be the dream that’s
illusory? Those things Tom said to me in the car, all mixed up with guilt
over what happened with Scott the other night: the dream was just my
brain picking all that apart.