_OceanofPDF.com_The_Girl_on_the_Train_-_Paula_Hawkins

sorry little patch of land surrounded by 1930s houses and given over
almost entirely to an asphalted playground. I sat on a bench at the edge
of this space, watching mothers and childminders scolding their charges
for eating sand out of the pit. I used to dream of this, a few years back. I
dreamed of coming here—not to eat ham and cheese sandwiches in
between police interviews, obviously. I dreamed of coming here with my
own baby. I thought about the buggy I would buy, all the time I would
spend in Trotters and at the Early Learning Centre sizing up adorable
outfits and educational toys. I thought about how I would sit here,
bouncing my own bundle of joy on my lap.
It didn’t happen. No doctor has been able to explain to me why I can’t
get pregnant. I’m young enough, fit enough, I wasn’t drinking heavily
when we were trying. My husband’s sperm was active and plentiful. It
just didn’t happen. I didn’t suffer the agony of miscarriage, I just didn’t
get pregnant. We did one round of IVF, which was all we could afford. It
was, as everyone had warned us it would be, unpleasant and
unsuccessful. Nobody warned me it would break us. But it did. Or rather,
it broke me, and then I broke us.
The thing about being barren is that you’re not allowed to get away
from it. Not when you’re in your thirties. My friends were having
children, friends of friends were having children, pregnancy and birth
and first birthday parties were everywhere. I was asked about it all the
time. My mother, our friends, colleagues at work. When was it going to
be my turn? At some point our childlessness became an acceptable topic
of Sunday-lunch conversation, not just between Tom and me, but more
generally. What we were trying, what we should be doing, do you really
think you should be having a second glass of wine? I was still young,
there was still plenty of time, but failure cloaked me like a mantle, it
overwhelmed me, dragged me under, and I gave up hope. At the time, I
resented the fact that it was always seen as my fault, that I was the one
letting the side down. But as the speed with which he managed to
impregnate Anna demonstrates, there was never any problem with Tom’s
virility. I was wrong to suggest that we should share the blame; it was all
down to me.
Lara, my best friend since university, had two children in two years: a
boy first and then a girl. I didn’t like them. I didn’t want to hear anything
about them. I didn’t want to be near them. Lara stopped speaking to me
after a while. There was a girl at work who told me—casually, as though
she were talking about an appendectomy or a wisdom-tooth extraction—
that she’d recently had an abortion, a medical one, and it was so much