_OceanofPDF.com_The_Girl_on_the_Train_-_Paula_Hawkins

She swallows, bites her lip hard. “Megan,” she says. “What about
Megan?”
“I know. They had an affair.” The words sound strange to me—this is
the first time that I’ve said them out loud. He cheated on me. He cheated
on me. “I’m sure that amuses you,” I say to her, “but she’s gone now, so
it doesn’t matter, does it?”
“Anna . . .”
The darkness gets bigger; it’s pushing at the edges of my skull,
clouding my vision. I grab Evie by the hand and start to drag her inside.
She protests vociferously.
“Anna . . .”
“They had an affair. That’s it. Nothing else. It doesn’t necessarily
mean—”
“That he killed her?”
“Don’t say that!” I find myself yelling at her. “Don’t say that in front
of my child.”
I give Evie her midmorning snack, which she eats without complaint
for the first time in weeks. It’s almost as though she knows that I have
other things to worry about, and I adore her for it. I feel immeasurably
calmer when we go back outside, even if Rachel is still there, standing
down at the bottom of the garden by the fence, watching one of the trains
go past. After a while, when she realizes that I’m back outside, she walks
towards me.
“You like them, don’t you?” I say. “The trains. I hate them.
Absolutely bloody loathe them.”
She gives me a half smile. I notice that she has a deep dimple on the
left side of her face. I’ve never seen that before. I suppose I haven’t seen
her smile very often. Ever.
“Another thing he lied about,” she says. “He told me you loved this
house, loved everything about it, even the trains. He told me that you
wouldn’t dream of finding a new place, that you wanted to move in here
with him, even if I had been here first.”
I shake my head. “Why on earth would he tell you that?” I ask her.
“It’s utter bullshit. I’ve been trying to get him to sell this house for two
years.”
She shrugs. “Because he lies, Anna. All the time.”
The darkness blossoms. I pull Evie onto my lap and she sits there
quite contentedly, she’s getting sleepy in the sunshine. “So all those
phone calls . . .” I say. It’s only really starting to make sense now. “They
weren’t from you? I mean, I know some of them were, but some—”