_OceanofPDF.com_The_Girl_on_the_Train_-_Paula_Hawkins

window. So I knew what was coming. But I thought of the baby as her
baby. Until the day I saw the picture of him, holding his newborn girl,
looking down at her and smiling, and beneath he’d written: So this is
what all the fuss is about! Never knew love like this! Happiest day of my
life! I thought about him writing that—knowing that I would see it, that I
would read those words and they would kill me, and writing it anyway.
He didn’t care. Parents don’t care about anything but their children. They
are the centre of the universe; they are all that really counts. Nobody else
is important, no one else’s suffering or joy matters, none of it is real.
I was angry. I was distraught. Maybe I was vengeful. Maybe I thought
I’d show them that my distress was real. I don’t know. I did a stupid
thing.
I went back to the police station after a couple of hours. I asked if I
could speak to Gaskill alone, but he said that he wanted Riley to be
present. I liked him a little less after that.
“I didn’t break into their home,” I said. “I did go there, I wanted to
speak to Tom. No one answered the doorbell . . .”
“So how did you get in?” Riley asked me.
“The door was open.”
“The front door was open?”
I sighed. “No, of course not. The sliding door at the back, the one
leading into the garden.”
“And how did you get into the back garden?”
“I went over the fence, I knew the way in—”
“So you climbed over the fence to gain access to your ex-husband’s
house?”
“Yes. We used to . . . There was always a spare key at the back. We
had a place we hid it, in case one of us lost our keys or forgot them or
something. But I wasn’t breaking in—I didn’t. I just wanted to talk to
Tom. I thought maybe . . . the bell wasn’t working or something.”
“This was the middle of the day, during the week, wasn’t it? Why did
you think your husband would be at home? Had you called to find out?”
Riley asked.
“Jesus! Will you just let me speak?” I shouted, and she shook her head
and gave me that smile again, as if she knew me, as if she could read me.
“I went over the fence,” I said, trying to control the volume of my voice,
“and knocked on the glass doors, which were partly open. There was no
answer. I stuck my head inside and called Tom’s name. Again, no
answer, but I could hear a baby crying. I went inside and saw that Anna
—”