The Girl on the Train Read online

  “Well, she was very happy,” I say. “With you, I mean. Your relationship.” As I’m saying this I realize how odd it sounds, but I can’t be specific, and so I try to save myself. “To be honest with you, I was having a really hard time in my marriage, so I think it was a kind of compare-and-contrast thing. She lit up when she spoke about you.” What an awful cliché.

  “Did she?” He doesn’t seem to notice, there’s a note of wistfulness in his voice. “That’s so good to hear.” He pauses, and I can hear his breathing, quick and shallow, on the other end of the line. “We had . . . we had a terrible argument,” he says. “The night she left. I hate the idea that she was angry with me when . . .” He tails off.

  “I’m sure she wasn’t angry with you for long,” I say. “Couples fight. Couples fight all the time.”

  “But this was bad, it was terrible, and I can’t . . . I feel like I can’t tell anyone, because if I did they would look at me like I was guilty.”

  There’s a different quality to his voice now: haunted, saturated with guilt.

  “I don’t remember how it started,” he says, and immediately I don’t believe him, but then I think about all the arguments I’ve forgotten and I bite my tongue. “It got very heated. I was very . . . I was unkind to her. I was a bastard. A complete bastard. She was upset. She went upstairs and put some things in a bag. I don’t know what exactly, but I noticed later that her toothbrush was gone, so I knew she wasn’t planning on coming home. I assumed . . . I thought she must have gone to Tara’s for the night. That happened once before. Just one time. It wasn’t like this happened all the time.

  “I didn’t even go after her,” he says, and it hits me yet again that he’s not really talking to me, he’s confessing. He’s on one side of the confessional and I’m on the other, faceless, unseen. “I just let her go.”

  “That was on Saturday night?”

  “Yes. That was the last time I saw her.”

  There was a witness who saw her—or saw “a woman fitting her description”—walking towards Witney station at around seven fifteen, I know that from the newspaper reports. That was the final sighting. No one remembered seeing her on the platform, or on the train. There is no CCTV at Witney, and she wasn’t picked up on the CCTV at Corly, although the reports said that this didn’t prove she wasn’t there, because there are “significant blind spots” at that station.

  “What time was it when you tried to contact her?” I ask him. Another long silence.

  “I . . . I went to the pub. The Rose, you know, just around the corner, on Kingly Road? I needed to cool down, to get things straight in my head. I had a couple of pints, then I went back home. That was just before ten. I think I was hoping that she’d have had time to calm down and that she’d be back. But she wasn’t.”

  “So it was around ten o’clock when you tried to call her?”

  “No.” His voice is little more than a whisper now. “I didn’t. I drank a couple more beers at home, I watched some TV. Then I went to bed.”

  I think about all the arguments I had with Tom, all the terrible things I said after I’d had too much, all the storming out into the street, shouting at him, telling him I never wanted to see him again. He always rang me, he always talked me down, coaxed me home.

  “I just imagined she’d be sitting in Tara’s kitchen, you know, talking about what a shit I am. So I left it.”

  He left it. It sounds callous and uncaring, and I’m not surprised he hasn’t told this story to anyone else. I am surprised that he’s telling anyone at all. This is not the Scott I imagined, the Scott I knew, the one who stood behind Megan on the terrace, his big hands on her bony shoulders, ready to protect her from anything.

  I’m ready to hang up the phone, but Scott keeps talking. “I woke up early. There were no messages on my phone. I didn’t panic—I assumed she was with Tara and that she was still angry with me. I rang her then and got her voice mail, but I still didn’t panic. I thought she was probably still asleep, or just ignoring me. I couldn’t find Tara’s number, but I had her address—it was on a business card on Megan’s desk. So I got up and I drove round there.”

  I wonder, if he wasn’t worried, why he felt he needed to go round to Tara’s house, but I don’t interrupt. I let him talk.

  “I got to Tara’s place a little after nine. It took her a while to come to the door, but when she did, she looked really surprised to see me. It was obvious that I was the last person she expected to see on her doorstep at that time of the morning, and that’s when I knew . . . That’s when I knew that Megan wasn’t there. And I started to think . . . I started . . .” The words catch, and I feel wretched for doubting him.

  “She told me the last time she’d seen Megan was at their Pilates class on Friday night. That’s when I started to panic.”

  After I hang up the phone, I think about how, if you didn’t know him, if you hadn’t seen how he was with her, as I have, a lot of what he’d said would not ring quite true.

  MONDAY, JULY 22, 2013

  MORNING

  I feel quite befuddled. I slept soundly but dreamily and this morning I am struggling to wake up properly. The hot weather has returned and the carriage is stifling today, despite being only half full. I was late getting up this morning and didn’t have time to pick up a newspaper or to check the news on the Internet before I left the house, so I am trying to get the BBC site on my phone, but for some reason it is taking forever to load. At Northcote a man with an iPad gets on and takes the seat next to me. He has no problems at all getting the news up, he goes straight to the Daily Telegraph site and there it is, in big, bold letters, the third story: MAN ARRESTED IN CONNECTION WITH MEGAN HIPWELL DISAPPEARANCE.

  I get such a fright that I forget myself and lean right over to get a better look. He looks up at me, affronted, almost startled.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I know her. The missing woman. I know her.”

  “Oh, how awful,” he says. He’s a middle-aged man, well-spoken and well-dressed. “Would you like to read the story?”

  “Please. I can’t get anything to come up on my phone.”

  He smiles kindly and hands me the tablet. I touch the headline and the story comes up.

  A man in his thirties has been arrested in connection with the disappearance of Megan Hipwell, twenty-nine, the Witney woman who has been missing since Saturday, 13 July. Police were not able to confirm whether the man arrested is Megan Hipwell’s husband, Scott Hipwell, who was questioned under caution on Friday. In a statement this morning a police spokesman said: “We can confirm that we have arrested a man in connection with Megan’s disappearance. He has not yet been charged with an offence. The search for Megan continues, and we are searching an address that we believe may be a crime scene.”

  We are passing the house now; for once, the train has not stopped at the signal. I whip my head around, but I’m too late. It’s gone. My hands are trembling as I hand the iPad back to its owner. He shakes his head sadly. “I’m very sorry,” he says.

  “She isn’t dead,” I say. My voice is a croak and even I don’t believe me. Tears are stinging the back of my eyes. I was in his house. I was there. I sat across the table from him, I looked into his eyes, I felt something. I think about those huge hands and about how, if he could crush me, he could destroy her—tiny, fragile Megan.

  The brakes screech as we approach Witney station and I leap to my feet.

  “I have to go,” I tell the man next to me, who looks a little surprised but nods sagely.

  “Good luck,” he says.

  I run along the platform and down the stairs. I’m going against the flow of people, and am almost at the bottom of the stairs when I stumble and a man says, “Watch it!” I don’t glance up at him because I’m looking at the edge of the concrete step, the second to last one. There’s a smear of blood on it. I wonder how long it’s been there. Could it be a we
ek old? Could it be my blood? Hers? Is her blood in the house, I wonder, is that why they’ve arrested him? I try to picture the kitchen, the living room. The smell: very clean, antiseptic. Was that bleach? I don’t know, I can’t remember now, all I can remember clearly is the sweat on his back and the beer on his breath.

  I run past the underpass, stumbling at the corner of Blenheim Road. I’m holding my breath as I hurry along the pavement, head down, too afraid to look up, but when I do there’s nothing to see. There are no vans parked outside Scott’s house, no police cars. Could they have finished searching the house already? If they had found something they would still be there, surely; it must take hours, going over everything, processing the evidence. I quicken my pace. When I get to his house I stop, take a deep breath. The curtains are drawn, upstairs and down. The curtains in the neighbour’s window twitch. I’m being watched. I step into the doorway, my hand raised. I shouldn’t be here. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I just wanted to see. I wanted to know. I’m caught, for a moment, between going against my every instinct and knocking on that door, and turning away. I turn to leave, and it’s at that moment that the door opens.

  Before I have time to move, his hand shoots out, he grabs my forearm and pulls me towards him. His mouth is a grim line, his eyes wild. He is desperate. Flooded with dread and adrenaline, I see darkness coming. I open my mouth to cry out, but I’m too late, he yanks me into the house and slams the door behind me.

  MEGAN

  • • •

  THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 2013

  MORNING

  I don’t lose. He should know this about me. I don’t lose games like this.

  The screen on my phone is blank. Stubbornly, insolently blank. No text messages, no missed calls. Every time I look at it, it feels like I’ve been slapped, and I get angrier and angrier. What happened to me in that hotel room? What was I thinking? That we made a connection, that there was something real between us? He has no intention of going anywhere with me. But I believed him for a second—more than a second—and that’s what really pisses me off. I was ridiculous, credulous. He was laughing at me all along.

  If he thinks I’m going to sit around crying over him, he’s got another think coming. I can live without him, I can do without him just fine—but I don’t like to lose. It’s not like me. None of this is like me. I don’t get rejected. I’m the one who walks away.

  I’m driving myself insane, I can’t help it. I can’t stop going back to that afternoon at the hotel and going over and over what he said, the way he made me feel.

  Bastard.

  If he thinks I will just disappear, go quietly, he’s mistaken. If he doesn’t pick up soon, I’m going to stop calling his mobile and call him at home. I’m not just going to be ignored.

  At breakfast, Scott asks me to cancel my therapy session. I don’t say anything. I pretend I haven’t heard him.

  “Dave’s asked us round to dinner,” he says. “We haven’t been over there for ages. Can you rearrange your session?”

  His tone is light, as though this is a casual request, but I can feel him watching me, his eyes on my face. We’re on the edge of an argument, and I have to be careful.

  “I can’t, Scott, it’s too late,” I say. “Why don’t you ask Dave and Karen to come here on Saturday instead?” Just the thought of entertaining Dave and Karen at the weekend is wearing, but I’m going to have to compromise.

  “It’s not too late,” he says, putting his coffee cup down on the table in front of me. He rests his hand on my shoulder for just a moment, says, “Cancel it, OK?” and walks out of the room.

  The second the front door closes, I pick up the coffee cup and hurl it against the wall.

  EVENING

  I could tell myself that it’s not really a rejection. I could try to persuade myself that he’s just trying to do the right thing, morally and professionally. But I know that isn’t true. Or at least, it’s not the whole truth, because if you want someone badly enough, morals (and certainly professionalism) don’t come into it. You’ll do anything to have them. He just doesn’t want me badly enough.

  I ignored Scott’s calls all afternoon, I turned up to my session late and walked straight into his office without a word to the receptionist. He was sitting at his desk, writing something. He glanced up at me when I walked in, didn’t smile, then looked back down at his papers. I stood in front of his desk, waiting for him to look at me. It felt like forever before he did.

  “Are you OK?” he asked eventually. He smiled at me then. “You’re late.”

  The breath was catching in my throat, I couldn’t speak. I walked around the desk and leaned against it, my leg brushing against his thigh. He drew back a little.

  “Megan,” he said, “are you all right?”

  I shook my head. I put my hand out to him, and he took it.

  “Megan,” he said again, shaking his head.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You can’t . . . You should sit down,” he said. “Let’s talk.”

  I shook my head.

  “Megan.”

  Every time he said my name he made it worse.

  He got to his feet and circled the desk, walking away from me. He stood in the middle of the room.

  “Come on,” he said, his voice businesslike—brusque, even. “Sit down.”

  I followed him into the middle of the room, put one hand on his waist, the other against his chest. He held me by my wrists and moved away from me.

  “Don’t, Megan. You can’t . . . we can’t . . .” He turned away.

  “Kamal,” I said, my voice catching. I hated the sound of it. “Please.”

  “This . . . here. It’s not appropriate. It’s normal, believe me, but . . .”

  I told him then that I wanted to be with him.

  “It’s transference, Megan,” he said. “It happens from time to time. It happens to me, too. I really should have introduced this topic last time. I’m sorry.”

  I wanted to scream then. He made it sound so banal, so bloodless, so common.

  “Are you telling me you feel nothing?” I asked him. “You’re saying I’m imagining all this?”

  He shook his head. “You have to understand, Megan, I shouldn’t have let things get this far.”

  I moved closer to him, put my hands on his hips and turned him around. He took hold of my arms again, his long fingers locked around my wrists. “I could lose my job,” he said, and then I really lost my temper.

  I pulled away angrily, violently. He tried to hold me, but he couldn’t. I was yelling at him, telling him I didn’t give a shit about his job. He was trying to quieten me—worried, I assume, about what the receptionist thought, what the other patients thought. He grabbed hold of my shoulders, his thumbs digging into the flesh at the tops of my arms, and told me to calm down, to stop behaving like a child. He shook me, hard; I thought for a moment he was going to slap my face.

  I kissed him on the mouth, I bit his lower lip as hard as I could; I could taste his blood in my mouth. He pushed me away.

  I plotted revenge on my way home. I was thinking of all the things I could do to him. I could get him fired, or worse. I won’t, though, because I like him too much. I don’t want to hurt him. I’m not even that upset about the rejection anymore. What bothers me most is that I haven’t got to the end of my story, and I can’t start over with someone else, it’s too hard.

  I don’t want to go home now, because I don’t know how I’m going to be able to explain the bruises on my arms.

  RACHEL

  • • •

  MONDAY, JULY 22, 2013

  EVENING

  And now I wait. It’s agonizing, the not knowing, the slowness with which everything is bound to move. But there’s nothing more to do.

  I was right, this morning, when I felt that dread. I just didn’t know what I had to be afraid
of.

  Not Scott. When he pulled me inside he must have seen the terror in my eyes, because almost immediately he let go of me. Wild-eyed and dishevelled, he seemed to shrink back from the light, and closed the door behind us. “What are you doing here? There are photographers, journalists everywhere. I can’t have people coming to the door. Hanging around. They’ll say things . . . They’ll try . . . they’ll try anything, to get pictures, to get—”

  “There’s no one out there,” I said, though to be honest I hadn’t really looked. There might have been people sitting in cars, waiting for something to happen.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded again.

  “I heard . . . it was on the news. I just wanted . . . is it him? Have they arrested him?”

  He nodded. “Yes, early this morning. The family liaison person was here. She came to tell me. But she couldn’t . . . they won’t tell me why. They must have found something, but they won’t tell me what. It’s not her, though. I know that they haven’t found her.”

  He sits down on the stairs and wraps his arms around himself. His whole body is trembling.

  “I can’t stand it. I can’t stand waiting for the phone to ring. When the phone rings, what will it be? Will it be the worst news? Will it be . . .” He tails off, then looks up as though he’s seeing me for the first time. “Why did you come?”

  “I wanted . . . I thought you wouldn’t want to be alone.”

  He looked at me as though I was insane. “I’m not alone,” he said. He got up and pushed past me into the living room. For a moment, I just stood there. I didn’t know whether to follow him or to leave, but then he called out, “Do you want a coffee?”