_OceanofPDF.com_The_Girl_on_the_Train_-_Paula_Hawkins

SATURDAY, JULY 20, 2013
MORNING
I never learn. I wake with a crushing sensation of wrongness, of shame,
and I know immediately that I’ve done something stupid. I go through
my awful, achingly familiar ritual of trying to remember exactly what I
did. I sent an email. That’s what it was.
At some point last night, Tom got promoted back up the list of men I
think about, and I sent him an email. My laptop is on the floor next to my
bed; it sits there, a squat, accusatory presence. I step over it as I get up to
go to the bathroom. I drink water directly from the tap, giving myself a
cursory glance in the mirror.
I don’t look well. Still, three days off isn’t bad, and I’ll start again
today. I stand in the shower for ages, gradually reducing the water
temperature, making it cooler and cooler until it’s properly cold. You
can’t step directly into a cold stream of water, it’s too shocking, too
brutal, but if you get there gradually, you hardly notice it; it’s like boiling
a frog in reverse. The cool water soothes my skin; it dulls the burning
pain of the cuts on my head and above my eye.
I take my laptop downstairs and make a cup of tea. There’s a chance,
a faint one, that I wrote an email to Tom and didn’t send it. I take a deep
breath and open my Gmail account. I’m relieved to see I have no
messages. But when I click on the Sent folder, there it is: I have written
to him, he just hasn’t replied. Yet. The email was sent just after eleven
last night; I’d been drinking for a good few hours by then. That
adrenaline and booze buzz I had earlier on would have been long gone. I
click on the message.
Could you please tell your wife to stop lying to the police about me?
Pretty low, don’t you think, trying to get me into trouble? Telling police
I’m obsessed with her and her ugly brat? She needs to get over
herself. Tell her to leave me the fuck alone.
I close my eyes and snap the laptop shut. I am cringing, literally, my
entire body folding into itself. I want to be smaller; I want to disappear.
I’m frightened, too, because if Tom decides to show this to the police, I
could be in real trouble. If Anna is collecting evidence that I am
vindictive and obsessive, this could be a key piece in her dossier. And
why did I mention the little girl? What sort of person does that? What
sort of person thinks like that? I don’t bear her any ill will—I couldn’t