The Girl on the Train (15 page)

He nodded slowly. ‘Watson,’ he said. ‘So you’re, what, Tom’s ex-wife?’

‘Yes. I moved out a couple of years ago.’

‘But you still visited Megan’s gallery?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘And when you saw her, what did you … Did she talk about personal things, about me?’ His voice was husky. ‘About anyone else?’

I shook my head. ‘No, no. It was usually just … passing the time, you know.’ There was a long silence. The heat in the room seemed to build suddenly, the smell of antiseptic rising from every surface. I felt faint. To my right there was a side table adorned with photographs in frames. Megan smiled out at me, cheerfully accusing.

‘I should go now,’ I said. ‘I’ve taken up enough of your time.’ I started to get up, but he reached an arm out and placed his hand on my wrist, his eyes never leaving my face.

‘Don’t go just yet,’ he said softly. I didn’t stand up, but I withdrew my hand from beneath his; it felt uncomfortably as though I were being restrained. ‘This man,’ he said. ‘This man you saw her with – do you think you’d recognize him again? If you saw him?’

I couldn’t say that I already
had
identified the man to the police. My whole rationale for approaching him had been that the police hadn’t taken my story seriously. If I admitted the truth, the trust would be gone. So I lied again.

‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘But I think I might.’ I waited a moment, and then I went on. ‘In the newspapers, there was a quote from a friend of Megan’s. His name was Rajesh. I was wondering if—’

Scott was already shaking his head. ‘Rajesh Gujral? I can’t see it. He’s one of the artists who used to exhibit at the gallery. He’s a nice enough guy, but … He’s married, he’s got kids.’ As if that meant something. ‘Wait a second,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘I think there might be a picture of him somewhere.’

He disappeared upstairs. I felt my shoulders drop and realized that I’d been sitting rigid with tension since I arrived. I looked over at the photographs again: Megan in a sundress on a beach; a closeup of her face, her eyes a startling blue. Just Megan. No pictures of the two of them together.

Scott reappeared, holding a pamphlet which he presented to me. It was a leaflet, advertising a show at the gallery. He turned it over. ‘There,’ he said, ‘that’s Rajesh.’

The man was standing next to a colourful abstract painting: he was older, bearded, short, stocky. It wasn’t the man I had seen, the man I had identified to the police. ‘It’s not him,’ I said. Scott stood at my side, staring down at the pamphlet, before abruptly turning and marching out of the room and up the stairs again. A few moments later, he came back with a laptop and sat down at the kitchen table.

‘I think …’ he said, opening the machine and turning it on, ‘I think I might …’ He fell silent and I watched him, his face a picture of concentration, the muscle in his jaw locked. ‘Megan was seeing a therapist,’ he told me. ‘His name is … Abdic. Kamal Abdic. He’s not Asian, he’s from Serbia, or Bosnia, somewhere like that. He’s dark-skinned though. He could pass for Indian from a distance.’ He tapped away at the computer. ‘There’s a website, I think. I’m sure there is. I think there’s a picture …’

He spun the laptop round so that I could see the screen. I leaned forward to get a closer look. ‘That’s him,’ I said. ‘That’s definitely him.’

Scott snapped the laptop shut. For a long time, he didn’t say anything. He sat with his elbows on the table, his forehead resting on his fingertips, his arms trembling.

‘She was having anxiety attacks,’ he said at last. ‘Trouble sleeping, things like that. It started last year some time. I don’t remember when exactly.’ He talked without looking at me, as though he were talking to himself, as though he’d forgotten I was there at all. ‘I was the one who suggested she talk to someone. I was the one who encouraged her to go, because I didn’t seem to be able to help her.’ His voice cracked a little then. ‘I couldn’t help her. And she told me that she’d had similar problems in the past and that eventually they’d go away, but I made her … I
persuaded
her to go to the doctor. That guy was recommended to her.’ He gave a little cough to clear his throat. ‘The therapy seemed to be helping. She was happier.’ He gave a short, sad laugh. ‘Now I know why.’

I reached out my hand to give him a pat on the arm, a gesture of comfort. Abruptly, he drew away and got to his feet. ‘You should go,’ he said brusquely. ‘My mother will be here soon – she won’t leave me alone for more than an hour or two.’ At the door, just as I was leaving, he caught hold of my arm.

‘Have I seen you somewhere before?’ he asked.

For a moment, I thought about saying,
You might have done. You might have seen me at the police station, or here on the street. I was here on Saturday night.
I shook my head. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

I walked away towards the train station as quickly as I could. About halfway along the street, I turned to look back. He was still standing there in the doorway, watching me.

I’ve been checking my email obsessively, but I’ve heard nothing from Tom. How much better life must have been for jealous drunks before emails and texts and mobile phones, before all this electronica and the traces it leaves.

There was almost nothing in the papers about Megan today. They’re moving on already, the front pages devoted to the political crisis in Turkey, the four-year-old girl mauled by dogs in Wigan, the England football team’s humiliating loss to Montenegro. Megan is being forgotten, and she’s only been gone a week.

Cathy invited me out to lunch. She was at a loose end because Damien has gone to visit his mother in Birmingham. She wasn’t invited. They’ve been seeing each other for almost two years now, and she still hasn’t met his mother. We went to Giraffe on the High Street, a place I loathe. Seated in the centre of a room heaving with shrieking under-fives, Cathy quizzed me about what I’d been up to. She was curious about where I was last night.

‘Have you met someone?’ she asked me, her eyes alight with hope. It was quite touching really.

I almost said yes, because it was the truth, but lying was easier. I told her I’d been to an AA meeting in Witney.

‘Oh,’ she said, embarrassed, dipping her eyes to her limp Greek salad. ‘I thought you’d maybe had a little slip. On Friday.’

‘Yes. It won’t be plain sailing, Cathy,’ I said, and I felt awful, because I think she really cares whether I get sober or not. ‘But I’m doing my best.’

‘If you need me to, you know, come with you …’

‘Not at this stage,’ I said. ‘But thank you.’

‘Well, maybe we could do something else together, like go to the gym?’ she asked.

I laughed, but when I realized she was being serious I said I’d think about it.

She’s just left – Damien rang to say he was back from his mother’s, so she’s gone round to his place. I thought about saying something to her – why do you go running to him whenever he calls? But I’m really not in a great position to give relationship advice – or any advice, come to that – and in any case I feel like a drink. (I’ve been thinking about it ever since we sat down in Giraffe and the spotty waiter asked if we’d like a glass of wine and Cathy said ‘No, thank you’ very firmly.) So I wave her off and feel the little anticipatory tingle run over my skin and I push away the good thoughts (
Don’t do this, you’re doing really well
). I’m just putting my shoes on to go to the off-licence and my phone rings. Tom. It’ll be Tom. I grab the phone from my bag and look at the screen and my heart bangs like a drum.

‘Hi.’ There is silence, so I ask, ‘Is everything OK?’

After a little pause Scott says, ‘Yeah, fine. I’m OK. I just called to say thank you, for yesterday. For taking the time to let me know.’

‘Oh, that’s all right. You didn’t need—’

‘Am I disturbing you?’

‘No. It’s fine.’ There is silence on the end of the line, so I say again, ‘It’s fine. Have you … has something happened? Did you speak to the police?

‘The family liaison officer was here this afternoon,’ he says. My heart rate quickens. ‘Detective Sergeant Riley. I mentioned Kamal Abdic to her. Told her that he might be worth speaking to.’

‘You said … you told her that you’d spoken to me?’ My mouth is completely dry.

‘No, I didn’t. I thought perhaps … I don’t know. I thought it would be better if I came up with the name myself. I said … it’s a lie, I know, but I said that I’d been racking my brains to think of anything significant, and that I thought it might be worth speaking to her therapist. I said that I’d had some concerns about their relationship in the past.’

I can breathe again. ‘What did she say?’ I ask him.

‘She said they had already spoken to him, but that they would do again. She asked me lots of questions about why I hadn’t mentioned him before. She’s … I don’t know. I don’t trust her. She’s supposed to be on my side, but all the time I feel like she’s snooping, like she’s trying to trip me up.’

I’m stupidly pleased that he doesn’t like her either; another thing we have in common, another thread to bind us.

‘I just wanted to say thank you, anyway. For coming forward. It was actually … it sounds odd, but it was good to talk to someone … someone I’m not close to. I felt as though I could think more rationally. After you left, I kept thinking about the first time Megan went to see him – Abdic – about the way she was when she came back. There was something about her, a lightness.’ He exhales loudly. ‘I don’t know. Maybe I’m imagining it.’

I have the same feeling I did yesterday – that he’s no longer really talking to me, he’s just talking. I’ve become a sounding board, and I’m glad of it. I’m glad to be of use to him.

‘I’ve spent the whole day going through Megan’s things again,’ he says. ‘I’ve already searched our room, the whole house, half a dozen times, looking for something, anything that would give me an indication as to where she could be. Something from him, perhaps. But there’s nothing. No emails, no letters, nothing. I thought about trying to contact him, but the practice is closed today and I can’t find a mobile number.’

‘Is that a good idea, do you think?’ I ask. ‘I mean, do you not think you should just leave him to the police?’ I don’t want to say it out loud, but we must both be thinking it: he’s dangerous. Or at least, he could be dangerous.

‘I don’t know, I just don’t know.’ There’s a desperate edge to his voice that’s painful to hear, but I have no comfort to offer. I can hear his breathing on the other end of the line; it sounds short, quickened, as though he’s afraid. I want to ask him if he has someone there with him, but I can’t: it would sound wrong, forward.

‘I saw your ex today,’ he says, and I can feel the hairs on my arms stand up.

‘Oh?’

‘Yes, I went out for the papers and saw him in the street. He asked me if I was all right, whether there was any news.’

‘Oh,’ I repeat, because it’s all I can say, words won’t form. I don’t want him to speak to Tom. Tom knows that I don’t know Megan Hipwell. Tom knows that I was on Blenheim Road the night she disappeared.

‘I didn’t mention you. I didn’t … you know. I wasn’t sure if I should have mentioned that I’d met you.’

‘No, I don’t think you should have. I don’t know. It might be awkward.’

‘All right,’ he says.

After that, there’s a long silence. I’m waiting for my heartbeat to slow. I think he’s going to ring off, but then he says, ‘Did she really never talk about me?’

‘Of course … of course she did,’ I say. ‘I mean, we didn’t talk all that often, but—’

‘But you came to the house. Megan hardly ever invites people round. She’s really private, protective of her own space.’

I’m searching for a reason. I wish I had never told him I’d been to the house.

‘I just came round to borrow a book.’

‘Really?’ He doesn’t believe me. She’s not a reader. I think of the house – there were no books on the shelves there. ‘What sort of things did she say? About me?’

‘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 quarter past seven, 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 blindspots’ at that station.