_OceanofPDF.com_The_Girl_on_the_Train_-_Paula_Hawkins

think badly of a child, any child, and especially not Tom’s child. I don’t
understand myself; I don’t understand the person I’ve become. God, he
must hate me. I hate me—that version of me, anyway, the version who
wrote that email last night. She doesn’t even feel like me, because I am
not like that. I am not hateful.
Am I? I try not to think of the worst days, but the memories crowd
into my head at times like this. Another fight, towards the end: waking,
post-party, post-blackout, Tom telling me how I’d been the night before,
embarrassing him again, insulting the wife of a colleague of his, shouting
at her for flirting with my husband. “I don’t want to go anywhere with
you anymore,” he told me. “You ask me why I never invite friends
round, why I don’t like going to the pub with you anymore. You honestly
want to know why? It’s because of you. Because I’m ashamed of you.”
I pick up my handbag and my keys. I’m going to the Londis down the
road. I don’t care that it’s not yet nine o’clock in the morning, I’m
frightened and I don’t want to have to think. If I take some painkillers
and have a drink now, I can put myself out, I can sleep all day. I’ll face it
later. I get to the front door, my hand poised above the handle, then I
stop.
I could apologize. If I apologize right now, I might be able to salvage
something. I might be able to persuade him not to show the message to
Anna or to the police. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d protected me
from her.
That day last summer, when I went to Tom and Anna’s, it didn’t
happen exactly the way I told the police it had. I didn’t ring the doorbell,
for starters. I wasn’t sure what I wanted—I’m still not sure what I
intended. I did go down the pathway and over the fence. It was quiet, I
couldn’t hear anything. I went up to the sliding doors and looked in. It’s
true that Anna was sleeping on the sofa. I didn’t call out, to her or to
Tom. I didn’t want to wake her. The baby wasn’t crying, she was fast
asleep in her carry-cot at her mother’s side. I picked her up and took her
outside as quickly as I could. I remember running with her towards the
fence, the baby starting to wake and to grizzle a little. I don’t know what
I thought I was doing. I wasn’t going to hurt her. I got to the fence,
holding her tightly against my chest. She was crying properly now,
starting to scream. I was bouncing her and shushing her and then I heard
another noise, a train coming, and I turned my back to the fence and I
saw her—Anna—hurtling towards me, her mouth open like a gaping
wound, her lips moving, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying.