_OceanofPDF.com_The_Girl_on_the_Train_-_Paula_Hawkins

shoulders and he’s gripping them tightly, his thumbs digging into my
clavicles, and it hurts so much I cry out.
“All this time,” he says through gritted teeth, “all this time I thought
you were on my side, but you were working against me. You were giving
him information, weren’t you? Telling him things about me, about Megs.
It was you, trying to make the police come after me. It was you—”
“No. Please don’t. It wasn’t like that. I wanted to help you.” His right
hand slides up, he grabs hold of my hair at the nape of my neck and he
twists. “Scott, please don’t. Please. You’re hurting me. Please.” He’s
dragging me now, towards the front door. I’m flooded with relief. He’s
going to throw me out into the street. Thank God.
Only he doesn’t throw me out, he keeps dragging me, spitting and
cursing. He’s taking me upstairs and I’m trying to resist, but he’s so
strong, I can’t. I’m crying, “Please don’t. Please,” and I know that
something terrible is about to happen. I try to scream, but I can’t, the
noise won’t come.
I’m blind with tears and terror. He shoves me into a room and slams
the door behind me. The key twists in the lock. Hot bile rises to my
throat and I throw up onto the carpet. I wait, I listen. Nothing happens,
and no one comes.
I’m in the spare room. In my house, this room used to be Tom’s study.
Now it’s their baby’s nursery, the room with the soft pink blind. Here, it’s
a box room, filled with papers and files, a fold-up treadmill and an
ancient Apple Mac. There is a box of papers lined with figures—
accounts, perhaps from Scott’s business—and another filled with old
postcards—blank ones, with bits of Blu-Tack on the back, as though they
were once stuck onto a wall: the roofs of Paris, children skateboarding in
an alley, old railway sleepers covered in moss, a view of the sea from
inside a cave. I delve through the postcards—I don’t know why or what
I’m looking for, I’m just trying to keep panic at bay. I’m trying not to
think about that news report, Megan’s body being dragged out of the
mud. I’m trying not to think of her injuries, of how frightened she must
have been when she saw it coming.
I’m scrabbling around in the postcards, and then something bites me
and I rock back on my heels with a yelp. The tip of my forefinger is
sliced neatly across the top, and blood is dripping onto my jeans. I stop
the blood with the hem of my T-shirt and sort more carefully through the
cards. I spot the culprit immediately: a framed picture, smashed, with a
piece of glass missing from the top, the exposed edge smeared with my
blood.