The Girl on the Train (36 page)

Anna goes across into the kitchen and changes the child’s nappy on the table. The smell of shit fills the room, it turns my stomach.

‘Are you going to tell us why?’ I ask him. Anna stops what she’s doing and looks across at us. The room is still, quiet, save for the babbling of the child.

Tom shakes his head, almost in disbelief himself. ‘She could be very like you, Rach. She wouldn’t let things go. She didn’t know when she was over. She just … she wouldn’t
listen
. Remember how you always argued with me, how you always wanted the last word? Megan was like that. She wouldn’t listen.’

He shifts in his seat and leans forward, his elbows on his knees, as if he’s telling me a story. ‘When we started, it was just fun, just fucking. She led me to believe that was what she was into. But then she changed her mind. I don’t know why. She was all over the place, that girl. She’d have a bad day with Scott, or she’d just be a bit bored, and she’d start talking about us going away together, starting over, about me leaving Anna and Evie. As if I would! And if I wasn’t there on demand when she wanted me, she’d be furious, calling here, threatening me, telling me she was going to come round, that she was going to tell Anna about us.

‘But then it stopped. I was so relieved. I thought she’d finally managed to get it into her head that I wasn’t interested any longer. But then that Saturday she called, saying she needed to talk, that she had something important to tell me. I ignored her, so she started making threats again – she was going to come to the house, that sort of thing. I wasn’t too worried at first, because Anna was going out. You remember, darling? You were supposed to be going out to dinner with the girls, and I was going to babysit. I thought perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad thing – she would come round and I’d have it out with her. I’d make her understand. But then you came along, Rachel, and fucked everything up.’

He leans back on the sofa, his legs spread wide apart, the big man, taking up space. ‘It was your fault. The whole thing was actually
your
fault, Rachel. Anna didn’t end up having dinner with her friends – she was back here after five minutes, upset and angry because
you
were out there, pissed as usual, stumbling around with some bloke outside the station. She was worried that you were going to head over here. She was worried about Evie.

‘So instead of sorting things out with Megan, I had to go out and deal with you.’ His lip curls. ‘God, the state of you. Looking like shit, stinking of wine … you tried to kiss me, do you remember?’ He pretends to gag, then starts laughing. Anna laughs, too, and I can’t tell whether she finds it funny or whether she’s trying to appease him.

‘I needed to make you understand that I didn’t want you anywhere near me – near us. So I took you back up the road into the underpass so that you wouldn’t be making a scene in the street. And I told you to stay away. And you cried and whined, so I gave you a smack to shut you up, and you cried and whined some more.’ He’s talking through gritted teeth; I can see the muscle tensing in his jaw. ‘I was so pissed off, I just wanted you to go away and leave us alone, you
and
Megan. I have my family. I have a good life.’ He glances over at Anna, who is trying to get the child to sit down in the high chair. Her face is completely expressionless. ‘I’ve made a good life for myself, despite you, despite Megan – despite everything.

‘It was after I’d seen you that Megan came along. She was heading down towards Blenheim Road. I couldn’t let her go to the house. I couldn’t let her talk to Anna, could I? I told her that we could go somewhere and talk, and I meant it – that was all I was going to do. So we got into the car and drove to Corly, to the wood. It was a place we sometimes used to go, if we hadn’t got a room. Do it in the car.’

From my seat on the sofa, I can feel Anna flinch.

‘You have to believe me, Anna, I didn’t intend for things to go the way they did.’ Tom looks at her, then hunches over, looking down at the palms of his hands. ‘She started going on about the baby – she didn’t know if it was mine or his. She wanted everything out in the open, and if it was mine she’d be OK with me seeing it … I was saying, I’m not interested in your baby, it’s got nothing to do with me.’ He shakes his head. ‘She got all upset, but when Megan gets upset … she’s not like Rachel. There’s no crying and whining. She was screaming at me, swearing, saying all sorts of shit, telling me she’d go straight to Anna, she wasn’t going to be ignored, her child wasn’t going to be neglected … Christ, she just wouldn’t fucking shut up. So … I don’t know, I just needed her to stop. So I picked up a rock …’ – he stares down at his right hand, as though he can see it now – ‘and I just …’ He closes his eyes and sighs deeply. ‘It was just one hit, but she was …’ He puffs out his cheeks, exhales slowly. ‘I didn’t mean for this. I just wanted her to stop. She was bleeding a lot. She was crying, making a horrible noise. She tried to crawl away from me. There was nothing I could do. I had to finish it.’

The sun is gone, the room is dark. It’s quiet, save for the sound of Tom’s breathing, ragged and shallow. There’s no street noise. I can’t remember the last time I heard a train.

‘I put her in the boot of the car,’ he says. ‘I drove a bit further into the wood, off the road. There was no one around. I had to dig …’ His breathing is shallower still, quickening. ‘I had to dig with my bare hands. I was afraid.’ He looks up at me, his pupils huge. ‘Afraid that someone would come. And it was painful, my fingernails ripped in the soil. It took a long time. I had to stop to phone Anna, to tell her I was out looking for you.’

He clears his throat. ‘The ground was actually quite soft, but I still couldn’t go down as deep as I wanted. I was so afraid that someone would come. I thought there would be a chance to go back, later on, when things had all died down. I thought I would be able to move her, put her somewhere … better. But then it started raining and I never got the chance.’

He looks up at me with a frown. ‘I was almost sure that the police would go for Scott. She told me how paranoid he was about her screwing around, that he used to read her emails, check up on her. I thought … well, I was planning to put her phone in his house at some point. I don’t know. I thought I might go round there for a beer or something, a friendly neighbour kind of thing. I don’t know. I didn’t have a plan. I hadn’t thought it all through. It wasn’t like a premeditated thing. It was just a terrible accident.’

But then his demeanour changes again. It’s like clouds scudding across the sky, now dark, now light. He gets to his feet and walks slowly over to the kitchen, where Anna is now sitting at the table, feeding Evie. He kisses her on the top of the head, then lifts his daughter out of the chair.

‘Tom …’ Anna starts to protest.

‘It’s OK.’ He smiles at his wife. ‘I just want a cuddle. Don’t I, darling?’ He goes over to the fridge with his daughter in his arms and pulls out a beer. He looks over at me. ‘You want one?’

I shake my head.

‘No, best not, I suppose.’

I hardly hear him. I’m calculating whether I can reach the front door from here before he can get hold of me. If it’s just on the latch, I reckon I could make it. If he’s locked it, then I’d be in trouble. I pitch myself forward and run. I get into the hallway – my hand is almost on the door handle when I feel the bottle hit the back of my skull. There’s an explosion of pain, white before my eyes, and I crumple to my knees. His fingers twist into my hair as he grabs a fistful and pulls, dragging me back into the living room, where he lets go. He stands above me, straddling me, one foot on either side of my hips. His daughter is still in his arms but Anna is at his side, tugging at her.

‘Give her to me, Tom, please. You’re going to hurt her. Please, give her to me.’

He hands the wailing Evie over to Anna.

I can hear Tom talking, but it seems like he’s a long way away, or as though I’m hearing him through water. I can make out the words but they somehow don’t seem to apply to me, to what’s happening to me. Everything is happening at one remove.

‘Go upstairs,’ he says. ‘Go into the bedroom and shut the door. You mustn’t call anyone, OK? I mean it, Anna. You don’t want to call anyone. Not with Evie here. We don’t want things to turn nasty.’ Anna doesn’t look down at me. She clutches the child to her chest, steps over me and hurries away.

Tom bends down, slips his hands into the waistband of my jeans, grabs hold of them and drags me along the floor into the kitchen. I’m kicking out with my legs, trying to get a hold of something, but I can’t. I can’t see properly – tears are stinging my eyes, everything is a blur. The pain in my head is excruciating as I bump along the floor and I feel a wave of nausea come over me. There’s hot, white pain as something connects with my temple. Then nothing.

S
HE
’
S ON THE FLOOR
in the kitchen. She’s bleeding, but I don’t think it’s serious. He hasn’t finished it. I’m not really sure what he’s waiting for. I suppose it’s not easy for him. He did love her, once.

I was upstairs, putting Evie down, and I was thinking that this is what I wanted, isn’t it? Rachel will be gone at last, once and for all, never to return. This is what I dreamed about happening. Well, not exactly this, obviously. But I did want her gone. I dreamed of a life without Rachel, and now I could have one. It would be just the three of us, me and Tom and Evie, like it should be.

For just a moment, I let myself enjoy the fantasy, but then I looked down at my sleeping daughter and I knew that was all it was. A fantasy. I kissed my finger and touched it to her perfect lips and I knew that we would never be safe.
I
would never be safe, because I know, and he won’t be able to trust me. And who’s to say another Megan won’t come along? Or – worse – another Anna, another me?

I went back downstairs and he was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking a beer. I couldn’t see her at first, but then I noticed her feet, and I thought at first that it was done, but he said she was all right.

‘Just a little knock,’ he said. He won’t be able to call this one an accident.

So we waited. I got myself a beer too, and we drank them together. He told me he was really sorry about Megan, about the affair. He kissed me, he told me he’d make it up to me, that we’d be OK, that everything would be all right.

‘We’ll move away from here, just like you’ve always wanted. We’ll go anywhere you want. Anywhere.’ He asked me if I could forgive him, and I said that I could, given time, and he believed me. I think he believed me.

The storm has started, just like they said it would. The rumble of thunder wakes her, brings her to. She starts to make a noise, to move around on the floor.

‘You should go,’ he says to me. ‘Go back upstairs.’

I kiss him on the lips and I leave him, but I don’t go back upstairs. Instead I pick up the phone in the hallway, sit on the bottom stair and listen, the handset in my hand, waiting for the right moment.

I can hear him talking to her, soft and low, and then I hear her. I think she’s crying.

I
CAN HEAR SOMETHING
, a hissing sound. There’s a flash of light and I realize it’s the rain, pouring down. It’s dark outside, there’s a storm. Lightning. I don’t remember when it got dark. The pain in my head brings me back to myself, my heart crawls into my throat. I’m on the floor. In the kitchen. With difficulty, I manage to lift my head and raise myself on to one elbow. He’s sitting at the kitchen table, looking out at the storm, a beer bottle between his hands.

‘What am I going to do, Rach?’ he asks when he sees me raise my head. ‘I’ve been sitting here for … almost half an hour now, just asking myself that question. What am I supposed to do with you? What choice are you giving me?’ He takes a long draught of beer and regards me thoughtfully. I pull myself up to a sitting position, my back to the kitchen cupboards. My head swims, my mouth floods with saliva. I feel as though I’m going to throw up. I bite my lip and dig my fingernails into my palms. I need to bring myself out of this stupor, I can’t afford to be weak. I can’t rely on anyone else. I know that. Anna isn’t going to call the police. She isn’t going to risk her daughter’s safety for me.

‘You have to admit it,’ Tom is saying. ‘You’ve brought this upon yourself. Think about it: if you’d just left us alone, you’d never be in this situation.
I
wouldn’t be in this situation. None of us would. If you hadn’t been there that night, if Anna hadn’t come running back here after she saw you at the station, then I’d probably have just been able to sort things out with Megan. I wouldn’t have been so … riled up. I wouldn’t have lost my temper. I wouldn’t have hurt her. None of this would have happened.’

I can feel a sob building in the back of my throat, but I swallow it down. This is what he does – this is what he always does. He’s a master at it, making me feel as though everything is my fault, making me feel worthless.

He finishes his beer and rolls the empty bottle across the table. With a sad shake of his head, he gets to his feet, comes over to me and holds out his hands. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Grab hold. Come on, Rach, up you come.’

I let him pull me to my feet. My back is to the kitchen counter, he is standing in front of me, against me, his hips pressing against mine. He reaches up to my face, wipes the tears off my cheekbones with his thumb. ‘What am I supposed to do with you, Rach? What do you think I should do?’

‘You don’t have to do anything,’ I say to him, and I try to smile. ‘You know that I love you. I still do. You know that I wouldn’t tell anyone … I couldn’t do that to you.’

He smiles – that wide, beautiful smile that used to make me melt – and I start to sob. I can’t believe it, can’t believe we are brought to this, that the greatest happiness I have ever known – my life with him – was an illusion.

He lets me cry for a while, but it must bore him, because the dazzling smile disappears and now his lip is twisted into a sneer.