_OceanofPDF.com_The_Girl_on_the_Train_-_Paula_Hawkins

to bottom right. I don’t know. I just hope, as I slip my hand into the
drawer behind me, that she didn’t.
“You could be right, you know,” I say when the kiss breaks. I tilt my
face up to his. “Maybe if I hadn’t come to Blenheim Road that night,
Megan would still be alive.”
He nods and my right hand closes around a familiar object. I smile
and lean in to him, closer, closer, snaking my left hand around his waist.
I whisper into his ear, “But do you honestly think, given you’re the one
who smashed her skull, that I’m responsible?”
He jerks his head away from me and it’s then that I lunge forward,
pressing all my weight against him, throwing him off balance so that he
stumbles back against the kitchen table. I raise my foot and stamp down
on his as hard as I can, and as he pitches forward in pain, I grab a fistful
of hair at the back of his head and pull him towards me, while at the
same time driving my knee up into his face. I feel a crunch of cartilage as
he cries out. I push him to the floor, grab the keys from the kitchen table
and am out of the French doors before he’s able to get to his knees.
I head for the fence, but I slip in the mud and lose my footing, and
he’s on top of me before I get there, dragging me backwards, pulling my
hair, clawing at my face, spitting curses through blood—“You stupid,
stupid bitch, why can’t you stay away from us? Why can’t you leave me
alone?” I get away from him again, but there’s nowhere to go. I won’t
make it back through the house and I won’t make it over the fence. I cry
out, but no one’s going to hear me, not over the rain and the thunder and
the sound of the approaching train. I run to the bottom of the garden,
down towards the tracks. Dead end. I stand on the spot where, a year or
more ago, I stood with his child in my arms. I turn, my back to the fence,
and watch him striding purposefully towards me. He wipes his mouth
with his forearm, spitting blood to the ground. I can feel the vibrations
from the tracks in the fence behind me—the train is almost upon us, its
sound like a scream. Tom’s lips are moving, he’s saying something to
me, but I can’t hear him. I watch him come, I watch him, and I don’t
move until he’s almost upon me, and then I swing. I jam the vicious twist
of the corkscrew into his neck.
His eyes widen as he falls without a sound. He raises his hands to his
throat, his eyes on mine. He looks as though he’s crying. I watch until I
can’t look any longer, then I turn my back on him. As the train goes past
I can see faces in brightly lit windows, heads bent over books and
phones, travellers warm and safe on their way home.