_OceanofPDF.com_The_Girl_on_the_Train_-_Paula_Hawkins

“You could determine his ethnic group from the train?” Riley said.
“Impressive. Who is Jess, by the way?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You mentioned Jess a moment ago.”
I could feel my face flushing again. I shook my head, “No, I didn’t,” I
said.
Gaskill got to his feet and held out his hand for me to shake. “I think
that’s enough.” I shook his hand, ignored Riley and turned to go. “Don’t
go anywhere near Blenheim Road, Ms. Watson,” Gaskill said. “Don’t
contact your ex-husband unless it’s important, and don’t go anywhere
near Anna Watson or her child.”
On the train on the way home, as I dissect all the ways that today went
wrong, I’m surprised by the fact that I don’t feel as awful as I might do.
Thinking about it, I know why that is: I didn’t have a drink last night,
and I have no desire to have one now. I am interested, for the first time in
ages, in something other than my own misery. I have purpose. Or at
least, I have a distraction.
THURSDAY, JULY 18, 2013
MORNING
I bought three newspapers before getting onto the train this morning:
Megan has been missing for four days and five nights, and the story is
getting plenty of coverage. The Daily Mail, predictably, has managed to
find pictures of Megan in her bikini, but they’ve also done the most
detailed profile I’ve seen of her so far.
Born Megan Mills in Rochester in 1983, she moved with her parents
to King’s Lynn in Norfolk when she was ten. She was a bright child, very
outgoing, a talented artist and singer. A quote from a school friend says
she was “a good laugh, very pretty and quite wild.” Her wildness seems
to have been exacerbated by the death of her brother, Ben, to whom she
was very close. He was killed in a motorcycle accident when he was
nineteen and she fifteen. She ran away from home three days after his
funeral. She was arrested twice—once for theft and once for soliciting.
Her relationship with her parents, the Mail informs me, broke down
completely. Both her parents died a few years ago, without ever being
reconciled with their daughter. (Reading this, I feel desperately sad for