The Girl on the Train (4 page)

‘Maidstone,’ he says, ‘in Kent. But I moved to Corly a few years back.’ He knows that wasn’t what I was asking; he gives me a wolfish smile.

Scott is waiting for me when I get home, he thrusts a drink into my hand, he wants to know all about it. I say it was OK. He asks me about the therapist: did I like him, did he seem nice? OK, I say again, because I don’t want to sound too enthusiastic. He asks me whether we talked about Ben. Scott thinks everything is about Ben. He may be right. He may know me better than I think he does.

I woke early this morning, but I did sleep for a few hours, which is an improvement on last week. I felt almost refreshed when I got out of bed, so instead of sitting on the terrace I decided to go for a walk.

I’ve been shutting myself away, almost without realizing it. The only places I seem to go these days are to the shops, my pilates classes and the therapist. Occasionally to Tara’s. The rest of the time, I’m at home. It’s no wonder I get restless.

I walk out of the house, turn right and then left on to Kingly Road. Past the pub – the Rose. We used to go there all the time; I can’t remember why we stopped. I never liked it all that much, too many couples just the right side of forty drinking too much and casting around for something better, wondering if they’d have the courage. Perhaps that’s why we stopped going, because I didn’t like it. Past the pub, past the shops. I don’t want to go far, just a little circuit, to stretch my legs.

It’s nice being out early, before the school run, before the commute gets going; the streets are empty and clean, the day full of possibility. I turn left again, I walk down to the little playground, the only rather poor excuse for green space we have. It’s empty now, but in a few hours it will be swarming with toddlers, mothers and au pairs. Half the pilates girls will be here, head to toe in Sweaty Betty, competitively stretching, manicured hands wrapped around their Starbucks.

I carry on past the park and down towards Roseberry Avenue. If I turned right here I’d go up past my gallery – what was my gallery, now a vacant shop window – but I don’t want to, because that still hurts a little. I tried so hard to make a success of it. Wrong place, wrong time – no call for art in suburbia, not in this economy. Instead, I turn right, past the Tesco Express, past the other pub, the one where people from the estate go, and back towards home. I can feel butterflies now, I’m starting to get nervous. I’m afraid of bumping into the Watsons, because it’s always awkward when I see them; it’s patently obvious that I don’t have a new job, that I lied because I didn’t want to carry on working for them.

Or rather, it’s awkward when I see
her
. Tom just ignores me. But Anna seems to take things personally. She obviously thinks that my short-lived career as a nanny came to an end because of her or because of her child. It actually wasn’t about
her child
at all, although the fact that the child never stops whinging did make her hard to love. It’s all so much more complicated, but of course I can’t explain that to her. Anyway. That’s one of the reasons I’ve been shutting myself away, I suppose, because I don’t want to see the Watsons. Part of me hopes they’ll just move. I know she doesn’t like being here: she hates that house, hates living among his ex-wife’s things, hates the trains.

I stop at the corner and peer into the underpass. That smell of cold and damp always sends a little shiver down my spine, it’s like turning over a rock to see what’s underneath: moss and worms and earth. It reminds me of playing in the garden as a child, looking for frogs by the pond with Ben. I walk on. The street is clear – no sign of Tom or Anna – and the part of me that can’t resist a bit of drama is actually quite disappointed.

Scott’s just called to say he has to work late, which is not the news I wanted to hear. I’m feeling edgy, have been all day. Can’t keep still. I need him to come home and calm me down, and now it’s going to be hours before he gets here and my brain is going to keep racing round and round and round and I know I’ve got a sleepless night coming.

I can’t just sit here, watching the trains, I’m too jittery, my heartbeat feels like a flutter in my chest, like a bird trying to get out of a cage. I slip my flip-flops on and go downstairs, out of the front door and on to Blenheim Road. It’s around seven thirty – a few stragglers on their way home from work. There’s no one else around, though you can hear the cries of kids playing in their back gardens, taking advantage of the last of the summer sunshine, before they get called in for dinner.

I walk down the road, towards the station. I stop for a moment outside number twenty-three and think about ringing the doorbell. What would I say? Ran out of sugar? Just fancied a chat? Their blinds are half open but I can’t see anyone inside.

I carry on, towards the corner, and without really thinking about it, I continue down into the underpass. I’m about halfway through when the train runs overhead, and it’s glorious: it’s like an earthquake, you can feel it right in the centre of your body, stirring up the blood. I look down and notice that there’s something on the floor, a hair band, purple, stretched, well used. Dropped by a runner, probably, but something about it gives me the creeps and I want to get out of there quickly, back into the sunshine.

On the way back down the road, he passes me in his car, our eyes meet for just a second and he smiles at me.

I
AM EXHAUSTED
, my head thick with sleep. When I drink, I hardly sleep at all. I pass out cold for an hour or two, then I wake, sick with fear, sick with myself. If I have a day when I don’t drink, that night I fall into the heaviest of slumbers, a deep unconsciousness, and in the morning I cannot wake properly, I cannot shake sleep, it stays with me for hours, sometimes all day long.

There is just a handful of people in my carriage today, none in my immediate vicinity. There is no one watching me, so I lean my head against the window and close my eyes.

The screech of the train’s brakes wakes me. We’re at the signal. At this time of morning, at this time of year, the sun shines directly on to the back of the trackside houses, flooding them with light. I can almost feel it, the warmth of that morning sunshine on my face and arms as I sit at the breakfast table, Tom opposite me, my bare feet resting on top of his because they’re always so much warmer than mine, my eyes cast down at the newspaper. I can feel him smiling at me, the blush spreading from my chest to my neck, the way it always did when he looked at me a certain way.

I blink hard and Tom’s gone. We’re still at the signal. I can see Jess in her garden, and behind her a man walking out of the house. He’s carrying something – a mug of coffee, perhaps – and I look at him and realize that it isn’t Jason. This man is taller, slender, darker. He’s a family friend; he’s her brother or Jason’s brother. He bends down, placing the mugs on the metal table on their patio. He’s a cousin from Australia, staying for a couple of weeks; he’s Jason’s oldest friend, best man at their wedding. Jess walks towards him, she puts her hands around his waist and she kisses him, long and deep. The train moves.

I can’t believe it. I snatch air into my lungs, I realize that I’ve been holding my breath. Why would she do that? Jason loves her, I can see it, they’re happy. I can’t believe she would do that to him, he doesn’t deserve that. I feel a real sense of disappointment, I feel as though
I
have been cheated. A familiar ache fills my chest. I have felt this way before. On a larger scale, to a more intense degree, of course, but I remember the quality of the pain. You don’t forget it.

I found out the way everyone seems to find out these days: an electronic slip. Sometimes it’s a text or a voicemail message; in my case it was an email, the modern-day lipstick on the collar. It was an accident, really, I wasn’t snooping. I wasn’t supposed to go near Tom’s computer, because he was worried I would delete something important by mistake, or click on something I shouldn’t and let in a virus or a Trojan or something.

‘Technology’s not really your strong point, is it, Rach?’ he said after the time I managed to delete all the contacts in his email address book by mistake. So I wasn’t supposed to touch it. But I was actually doing a good thing, I was trying to make amends for being a bit miserable and difficult, I was planning a special fourth-anniversary getaway, a trip to remind us how we used to be. I wanted it to be a surprise, so I had to check his work schedule secretly, I had to look.

I wasn’t snooping, I wasn’t trying to catch him out or anything, I knew better than that. I didn’t want to be one of those awful suspicious wives who go through their husband’s pockets. Once, I answered his phone when he was in the shower and he got quite upset and accused me of not trusting him. I felt awful because he seemed so hurt.

I needed to look at his work schedule, and he’d left his laptop on, because he’d run out late for a meeting. It was the perfect opportunity, so I had a look at his calendar, noted down some dates. When I closed down the browser window with his calendar in it, there was his email account, logged in, laid bare. There was a message at the top from
[email protected]
. I clicked. XXXXX. That was it, just a line of Xs. I thought it was spam at first, until I realized that they were kisses.

It was a reply to a message he’d sent a few hours before, just after seven, when I was still slumbering in our bed.

I fell asleep last night thinking of you, I was dreaming about kissing your mouth, your breasts, the inside of your thighs. I woke this morning with my head full of you, desperate to touch you. Don’t expect me to be sane, I can’t be, not with you.

I read through his messages: there were dozens, hidden in a folder entitled ‘Admin’. I discovered that her name was Anna Boyd, and that my husband was in love with her. He told her so, often. He told her that he’d never felt like this before, that he couldn’t wait to be with her, that it wouldn’t be long until they could be together.

I don’t have words to describe what I felt that day, but now, sitting on the train, I am furious, nails digging into my palms, tears stinging my eyes. I feel a flash of intense anger. I feel as though something has been taken away from
me
. How could she? How could Jess do this? What is wrong with her? Look at the life they have, look how beautiful it is! I have never understood how people can blithely disregard the damage they do by following their hearts. Who was it said that following your heart is a good thing? It is pure egotism, a selfishness to conquer all. Hatred floods me. If I saw that woman now, if I saw Jess, I would spit in her face. I would scratch her eyes out.

There’s been a problem on the line. The 17.56 fast train to Stoke has been cancelled, so its passengers have invaded my train and it’s standing room only in the carriage. I, fortunately, have a seat, but by the aisle, not next to the window, and there are bodies pressed against my shoulder, my knee, invading my space. I have an urge to push back, to get up and shove. The heat has been building all day, closing in on me, I feel as though I’m breathing through a mask. Every single window has been opened and yet, even while we’re moving, the carriage feels airless, a locked metal box. I cannot get enough oxygen into my lungs. I feel sick. I can’t stop replaying the scene in the coffee shop this morning, I can’t stop feeling as though I’m still there, I can’t stop seeing the looks on their faces.

I blame Jess. I was obsessing this morning about Jess and Jason, about what she’d done and how he would feel, about the confrontation they would have when he found out and when his world, like mine, was ripped apart. I was walking around in a daze, not concentrating on where I was going. Without thinking, I went into the coffee shop that everyone from Huntingdon Whiteley uses. I was through the door before I saw them, and by the time I did it was too late to turn back; they were looking at me, eyes widening for a fraction of a second before they remembered to fix smiles on their faces. Martin Miles with Sasha and Harriet, a triumvirate of awkwardness, beckoning, waving me over.

‘Rachel!’ Martin said, arms outstretched, pulling me into a hug. I wasn’t expecting it, my hands were caught between us, fumbling against his body. Sasha and Harriet smiled, they gave me tentative air kisses, trying not to get too close. ‘What are you doing here?’

For a long, long moment, I went blank. I looked at the floor, I could feel myself colouring and, realizing it was making it worse, I gave a false laugh and said, ‘Interview. Interview.’

‘Oh.’ Martin failed to hide his surprise, while Sasha and Harriet nodded and smiled. ‘Who’s that with?’

I couldn’t remember the name of a single public relations firm. Not one. I couldn’t think of a property company either, let alone one which might realistically be hiring. I just stood there, rubbing my lower lip with my forefinger, shaking my head, and eventually Martin said, ‘Top secret, is it? Some firms are weird like that, aren’t they? Don’t want you saying anything until the contracts are signed and it’s all official.’ It was bullshit and he knew it, he did it to save me and nobody bought it, but everyone pretended they did and nodded along. Harriet and Sasha were looking over my shoulder at the door, they were embarrassed for me, they wanted a way out.

‘I’d better go and order my coffee,’ I said. ‘Don’t want to be late.’

Martin put his hand on my forearm and said, ‘It’s great to see you, Rachel.’ His pity was almost palpable. I’d never realized, not until the last year or two of my life, how shaming it is to be pitied.

The plan had been to go to Holborn Library on Theobalds Road, but I couldn’t face it, so I went to Regent’s Park instead. I walked to the very far end, next to the zoo. I sat down in the shade beneath a sycamore tree, thinking of the unfilled hours ahead, replaying the conversation in the coffee shop, remembering the look on Martin’s face when he said goodbye to me.