_OceanofPDF.com_The_Girl_on_the_Train_-_Paula_Hawkins

“What time was this?” Gaskill’s voice was even, his face completely
blank. His lips barely moved when he spoke. I could hear the scratch of
Neck Acne’s pencil on paper, I could hear the blood pounding in my
ears.
“It was . . . um . . . I think it was around six thirty. I mean, I think I got
the train at around six o’clock.”
“And you came home . . . ?”
“Maybe seven thirty?” I glanced up and caught Cathy’s eye and I
could see from the look on her face that she knew I was lying. “Maybe a
bit later than that. Maybe it was closer to eight. Yes, actually, I remember
now—I think I got home just after eight.” I could feel the colour rising to
my cheeks; if this man didn’t know I was lying then, he didn’t deserve to
be on the police force.
The detective turned around, grabbed one of the chairs pushed under
the table in the corner and pulled it towards him in a swift, almost violent
movement. He placed it directly opposite me, a couple of feet away. He
sat down, his hands on his knees, head cocked to one side. “OK,” he
said. “So you left at around six, meaning you’d be in Witney by six
thirty. And you were back here around eight, which means you must
have left Witney at around seven thirty. Does that sound about right?”
“Yes, that seems right,” I said, that wobble back in my voice,
betraying me. In a second or two he was going to ask me what I’d been
doing for an hour, and I had no answer to give him.
“And you didn’t actually go to see your ex-husband. So what did you
do during that hour in Witney?”
“I walked around for a bit.”
He waited, to see if I was going to elaborate. I thought about telling
him I went to a pub, but that would be stupid—that’s verifiable. He’d ask
me which pub, he’d ask me whether I’d spoken to anyone. As I was
thinking about what I should tell him, I realized that I hadn’t actually
thought to ask him to explain why he wanted to know where I was on
Saturday evening, and that that in itself must have seemed odd. That
must have made me look guilty of something.
“Did you speak to anyone?” he asked me, reading my mind. “Go into
any shops, bars . . . ?”
“I spoke to a man in the station!” I blurted this out loudly,
triumphantly almost, as though it meant something. “Why do you need
to know this? What is going on?”
Detective Inspector Gaskill leaned back in the chair. “You may have
heard that a woman from Witney—a woman who lives on Blenheim