_OceanofPDF.com_The_Girl_on_the_Train_-_Paula_Hawkins

It was just starting to rain when I got there, with not a soul in sight,
but I parked the car and walked around the graveyard anyway. I found
her grave right in the furthermost corner, almost hidden under a line of
firs. You would never know that she was there, unless you knew to go
looking. The headstone marker bears her name and the dates of her life
—no “loving memory,” no “beloved wife,” or “daughter,” or “mother.”
Her child’s stone just says Libby. At least now her grave is properly
marked; she’s not all alone by the train tracks.
The rain started to fall harder, and when I walked back through the
churchyard I saw a man standing in the doorway of the chapel, and for
just a second I imagined that he was Scott. My heart in my mouth, I
wiped the rain from my eyes and looked again and saw that it was a
priest. He raised a hand to me in greeting.
I half ran back to the car, feeling needlessly afraid. I was thinking of
the violence of my last meeting with Scott, of the way he was at the end
—wild and paranoiac, on the edge of madness. There’ll be no peace for
him now. How can there be? I think about that, and the way he used to be
—the way they used to be, the way I imagined them to be—and I feel
bereft. I feel their loss, too.
I sent an email to Scott, apologizing for all the lies I told him. I
wanted to say sorry about Tom, too, because I should have known. If I’d
been sober all those years, would I have known? Maybe there will be no
peace for me, either.
He didn’t reply to my message. I didn’t expect him to.
I drive to the hotel and check in, and to stop myself thinking about
how nice it would be to sit in a leather armchair in their cosy, low-lit bar
with a glass of wine in my hand, I go for a walk out to the harbour
instead.
I can imagine exactly how good I would feel halfway through my first
drink. To push away the feeling, I count the days since I last had a drink:
twenty. Twenty-one, if you include today. Three weeks exactly: my
longest dry spell in years.
It was Cathy, oddly enough, who served me my last drink. When the
police brought me home, grimly pale and bloody, and told her what
happened, she fetched a bottle of Jack Daniel’s from her room and
poured us each a large measure. She couldn’t stop crying, saying how
sorry she was, as though it was in some way her fault. I drank the whisky
and then I vomited it straight back up; I haven’t touched a drop since.
Doesn’t stop me wanting to.