_OceanofPDF.com_The_Girl_on_the_Train_-_Paula_Hawkins

put on just to be taken off. Then I’d get a text message and he’d be at the
door, and we’d have an hour or two in the bedroom upstairs.
He’d tell Rachel he was with a client, or meeting friends for a beer.
“Aren’t you worried she’ll check up on you?” I’d ask him, and he’d
shake his head, dismissing the idea. “I’m a good liar,” he told me once
with a grin. Once, he said, “Even if she did check, the thing with Rachel
is, she won’t remember what happened tomorrow anyway.” That’s when
I started to realize just how bad things were for him.
It wipes the smile off my face, though, thinking about those
conversations. Thinking about Tom laughing conspiratorially while he
traced his fingers lower over my belly, smiling up at me, saying, “I’m a
good liar.” He is a good liar, a natural. I’ve seen him doing it: convincing
check-in staff that we were honeymooners, for example, or talking his
way out of extra hours at work by claiming a family emergency.
Everyone does it, of course they do, only when Tom does it, you believe
him.
I think about breakfast this morning—but the point is that I caught
him in the lie, and he admitted it straightaway. I don’t have anything to
worry about. He isn’t seeing Rachel behind my back! The idea is
ridiculous. She might have been attractive once—she was quite striking
when he met her, I’ve seen pictures: all huge dark eyes and generous
curves—but now she’s just run to fat. And in any case, he would never
go back to her, not after everything she did to him, to us—all the
harassment, all those late-night phone calls, hang-ups, text messages.
I’m standing in the tinned goods aisle, Evie still mercifully sleeping in
the buggy, and I start thinking about those phone calls, and about the
time—or was it times?—when I woke up and the bathroom light was on.
I could hear his voice, low and gentle, behind the closed door. He was
calming her down, I know he was. He told me that sometimes she’d be
so angry, she’d threaten to come round to the house, go to his work,
throw herself in front of a train. He might be a very good liar, but I know
when he’s telling the truth. He doesn’t fool me.
EVENING
Only, thinking about it, he did fool me, didn’t he? When he told me that
he’d spoken to Rachel on the phone, that she sounded fine, better, happy
almost, I didn’t doubt him for a moment. And when he came home on
Monday night and I asked him about his day and he talked to me about a
really tiresome meeting that morning, I listened sympathetically, not