The Girl on the Train: A Novel

THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013

EVENING

I’m sitting on the sofa in his living room, a glass of wine in my hand. The house is still a total mess. I wonder, does he always live like this, like a teenage boy? And I think about how he lost his family when he was a teenager, so maybe he does. I feel sad for him. He comes in from the kitchen and sits at my side, comfortably close. If I could, I would come here every day, just for an hour or two. I’d just sit here and drink wine, feel his hand brush against mine.

But I can’t. There’s a point to this, and he wants me to get to it.

“OK, Megan,” he says. “Do you feel ready now? To finish what you were telling me before?”

I lean back a little against him, against his warm body. He lets me. I close my eyes, and it doesn’t take me long to get back there, back to the bathroom. It’s weird, because I’ve spent so long trying not to think about it, about those days, those nights, but now I can close my eyes and it’s almost instant, like falling asleep, right into the middle of a dream.

It was dark and very cold. I wasn’t in the bath any longer. “I don’t know exactly what happened. I remember waking up, I remember knowing that something was wrong, and then the next thing I know Mac was home. He was calling for me. I could hear him downstairs, shouting my name, but I couldn’t move. I was sitting on the floor in the bathroom, she was in my arms. The rain was hammering down, the beams in the roof creaking. I was so cold. Mac came up the stairs, still calling out to me. He came to the doorway and turned on the light.” I can feel it now, the light searing my retinas, everything stark and white, horrifying.

“I remember screaming at him to turn the light off. I didn’t want to see, I didn’t want to look at her like that. I don’t know—I don’t know what happened then. He was shouting at me, he was screaming in my face. I gave her to him and ran. I ran out of the house into the rain, I ran to the beach. I don’t remember what happened after that. It was a long time before he came for me. It was still raining. I was in the dunes, I think. I thought about going in the water, but I was too scared. He came for me eventually. He took me home.

“We buried her in the morning. I wrapped her in a sheet and Mac dug the grave. We put her down at the edge of the property, near the disused railway line. We put stones on top to mark it. We didn’t talk about it, we didn’t talk about anything, we didn’t look at each other. That night, Mac went out. He said he had to meet someone. I thought maybe he was going to go to the police. I didn’t know what to do. I just waited for him, for someone to come. He didn’t come back. He never came back.”

I’m sitting in Kamal’s warm living room, his warm body at my side, and I’m shivering. “I can still feel it,” I tell him. “At night, I can still feel it. It’s the thing I dread, the thing that keeps me awake: the feeling of being alone in that house. I was so frightened—too frightened to go to sleep. I’d just walk around those dark rooms and I’d hear her crying, I’d smell her skin. I saw things. I’d wake in the night and be sure that there was someone else—something else—in the house with me. I thought I was going mad. I thought I was going to die. I thought that maybe I would just stay there, and that one day someone would find me. At least that way I wouldn’t have left her.”

I sniff, leaning forward to take a Kleenex from the box on the table. Kamal’s hand runs down my spine to my lower back and rests there.

“But in the end I didn’t have the courage to stay. I think I waited about ten days, and then there was nothing left to eat—not a tin of beans, nothing. I packed up my things and I left.”

“Did you see Mac again?”

“No, never. The last time I saw him was that night. He didn’t kiss me or even say good-bye properly. He just said he had to go out for a bit.” I shrug. “That was it.”

“Did you try to contact him?”

I shook my head. “No. I was too frightened, at first. I didn’t know what he would do if I did get in touch. And I didn’t know where he was—he didn’t even have a mobile phone. I lost touch with the people who knew him. His friends were all kind of nomadic. Hippies, travellers. A few months ago, after we talked about him, I Googled him. But I couldn’t find him. It’s odd . . .”

“What is?”

“In the early days, I used to see him all the time. Like, in the street, or I’d see a man in a bar and be so sure it was him that my heart would start racing. I used to hear his voice in crowds. But that stopped, a long time ago. Now, I think he might be dead.”

“Why do you think that?”

“I don’t know. He just . . . he feels dead to me.”

Kamal sits up straighter and gently moves his body away from mine. He turns so that he’s facing me.

“I think that’s probably just your imagination, Megan. It’s normal to think you see people who have been a big part of your life after you part company with them. In the early days, I used to catch glimpses of my brother all the time. As for him ‘feeling dead,’ that’s probably just a consequence of his being gone from your life for so long. In some senses he no longer feels real to you.”

He’s gone back into therapy mode now, we’re not just two friends sitting on the sofa anymore. I want to reach out and pull him back to me, but I don’t want to cross any lines. I think about last time, when I kissed him before I left—the look on his face, longing and frustration and anger.

“I wonder if, now that we’ve spoken about this, now that you’ve told me your story, it might help for you to try to contact Mac. To give you closure, to seal that chapter in your past.”

I thought he might suggest this. “I can’t,” I say. “I can’t.”

“Just think about it for a moment.”

“I can’t. What if he still hates me? What if it just brings it all back, or if he goes to the police?” What if—I can’t say this out loud, can’t even whisper it—what if he tells Scott what I really am?

Kamal shakes his head. “Perhaps he doesn’t hate you at all, Megan. Perhaps he never hated you. Perhaps he was afraid, too. Perhaps he feels guilty. From what you have told me, he isn’t a man who behaved responsibly. He took in a very young, very vulnerable girl and left her alone when she needed support. Perhaps he knows that what happened is your shared responsibility. Perhaps that’s what he ran away from.”

I don’t know if he really believes that or if he’s just trying to make me feel better. I only know that it isn’t true. I can’t shift the blame onto him. This is one thing I have to take as my own.

“I don’t want to push you into doing something you don’t want to do,” Kamal says. “I just want you to consider the possibility that contacting Mac might help you. And it’s not because I believe that you owe him anything. Do you see? I believe that he owes you. I understand your guilt, I do. But he abandoned you. You were alone, afraid, panicking, grieving. He left you on your own in that house. It’s no wonder you cannot sleep. Of course the idea of sleeping frightens you: you fell asleep and something terrible happened to you. And the one person who should have helped you left you all alone.”

In the moments when Kamal is saying these things, it doesn’t sound so bad. As the words slip seductively off his tongue, warm and honeyed, I can almost believe them. I can almost believe that there is a way to leave all this behind, lay it to rest, go home to Scott and live my life as normal people do, neither glancing over my shoulder nor desperately waiting for something better to come along. Is that what normal people do?

“Will you think about it?” he asks, touching my hand as he does so. I give him a bright smile and say that I will. Maybe I even mean it, I don’t know. He walks me to the door, his arm around my shoulders, I want to turn and kiss him again, but I don’t.

Instead I ask, “Is this the last time I’m going to see you?” and he nods. “Couldn’t we . . . ?”

“No, Megan. We can’t. We have to do the right thing.”

I smile up at him. “I’m not very good at that,” I say. “Never have been.”

“You can be. You will be. Go home now. Go home to your husband.”

I stand on the pavement outside his house for a long time after he shuts the door. I feel lighter, I think, freer—but sadder, too, and all of a sudden I just want to get home to Scott.

I’m just turning to walk to the station when a man comes running along the pavement, earphones on, head down. He’s heading straight for me, and as I step back, trying to get out of the way, I slip off the edge of the pavement and fall.

The man doesn’t apologize, he doesn’t even look back at me, and I’m too shocked to cry out. I get to my feet and stand there, leaning against a car, trying to catch my breath. All the peace I felt in Kamal’s house is suddenly shattered.

It’s not until I get home that I realize I cut my hand when I fell, and at some point I must have rubbed my hand across my mouth. My lips are smeared with blood.