The Girl on the Train (6 page)

I have to lie down. If I don’t lie down, I’m going to pass out, I’m going to fall. I’ll clean up later.

Upstairs, I plug in my phone and lie down on the bed. I raise my limbs, gently, gingerly, to inspect them. There are bruises on my legs, above the knees, standard drink-related stuff, the sort of bruises you get from walking into things. My upper arms bear more worrying marks, dark, oval impressions that look like fingerprints. This is not necessarily sinister, I have had them before, usually from when I’ve fallen and someone has helped me up. The crack on my head feels bad, but it could be from something as innocuous as getting into a car. I might have taken a taxi home.

I pick up my phone. There are two messages. The first is from Cathy, received just after five, asking where I’ve got to. She’s going to Damien’s for the night, she’ll see me tomorrow. She hopes I’m not drinking on my own. The second is from Tom, received at ten fifteen. I almost drop the phone in fright as I hear his voice; he’s shouting.

‘Jesus Christ, Rachel, what the hell is wrong with you? I have had enough of this, all right? I’ve just spent the best part of an hour driving around looking for you. You’ve really frightened Anna, you know that? She thought you were going to … she thought … It’s all I could do to get her not to ring the police. Leave us alone. Stop calling me, stop hanging around, just leave us alone. I don’t want to speak to you. Do you understand me? I don’t want to speak to you, I don’t want to see you, I don’t want you anywhere near my family. You can ruin your own life if you want to, but you’re not ruining mine. Not any more. I’m not going to protect you any longer, understand? Just stay away from us.’

I don’t know what I’ve done. What did I do? Between five o’clock and ten fifteen, what was I doing? Why was Tom looking for me? What did I do to Anna? I pull the duvet over my head, I close my eyes tightly. I imagine myself going to the house, walking along the little pathway between their garden and the neighbour’s garden, climbing over the fence. I think about sliding open the glass doors, stealthily creeping into the kitchen. Anna’s sitting at the table. I grab her from behind, I wind my hand into her long blonde hair, I jerk her head backwards, I pull her to the floor and I smash her head against the cool blue tiles.

Someone is shouting. From the angle of the light streaming in through my bedroom window I can tell I have been sleeping a long time; it must be late afternoon, early evening. My head hurts. There’s blood on my pillow. I can hear someone yelling downstairs.

‘I do not believe this! For God’s sake! Rachel! RACHEL!’

I fell asleep. Oh Jesus, and I didn’t clear up the vomit on the stairs. And my clothes in the hallway. Oh God, oh God.

I pull on a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt. Cathy is standing right outside my bedroom door when I open it. She looks horrified when she sees me.

‘What on earth happened to you?’ she says, then raises her hand. ‘Actually, Rachel, I’m sorry, but I just don’t want to know. I cannot have this in my house. I cannot have …’ She tails off, but she’s looking back down the hall, towards the stairs.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I’m so sorry, I was just really ill and I meant to clear it up …’

‘You weren’t ill, were you? You were drunk. You were hung-over. I’m sorry, Rachel. I just can’t have this. I cannot live like this. You have to go, OK? I’ll give you four weeks to find somewhere else, but then you have to go.’ She turns around and walks towards her bedroom. ‘And for the love of God, will you clean up that mess?’ She slams her bedroom door behind her.

After I’ve finished cleaning up, I go back to my room. Cathy’s bedroom door is still closed, but I can feel her quiet rage radiating through it. I can’t blame her. I’d be furious if I came home to piss-soaked knickers and a puddle of vomit on the stairs. I sit down on the bed and flip open my laptop, log into my email account and start to compose a note to my mother. I think, finally, the time has come. I have to ask her for help. If I moved home, I wouldn’t be able to go on like this, I would have to change, I would have to get better. I can’t think of the words, though, I can’t think of a way to explain this to her. I can picture her face as she reads my plea for help, the sour disappointment, the exasperation. I can almost hear her sigh.

My phone beeps. There’s a message on it, received hours ago. It’s Tom again. I don’t want to hear what he has to say, but I have to, I can’t ignore him. My heartbeat quickens as I dial into my voicemail, bracing myself for the worst.

‘Rachel, will you phone me back?’ He doesn’t sound so angry any longer and my heartbeat slows a little. ‘I want to make sure you got home all right. You were in some state last night.’ A long, heartfelt sigh. ‘Look. I’m sorry that I yelled last night, that things got a bit … overheated. I do feel sorry for you, Rachel, I really do, but this has just got to stop.’

I play the message a second time, listening to the kindness in his voice and the tears come. It’s a long time before I stop crying, before I’m able to compose a text message to him saying, I’m very sorry, I’m at home now. I can’t say anything else because I don’t know what exactly it is I’m sorry for. I don’t know what I did to Anna, how I frightened her. I don’t honestly care that much, but I do care about making Tom unhappy. After everything he’s been through, he deserves to be happy. I will never begrudge him happiness, I only wish it could be with me.

I lie down on the bed and crawl under the duvet. I want to know what happened; I wish I knew what I had to be sorry for. I try desperately to make sense of an elusive fragment of memory. I feel certain that I was in an argument, or that I witnessed an argument. Was that with Anna? My fingers go to the wound on my head, to the cut on my lip. I can almost see it, I can almost hear the words, but it shifts away from me again. I just can’t get a handle on it. Every time I think I’m about to seize the moment, it drifts back into the shadow, just beyond my reach.

I
T
’
S GOING TO RAIN
soon, I can feel it coming. My teeth are chattering in my head, the tips of my fingers are white with a tinge of blue. I’m not going inside. I like it out here, it’s cathartic, cleansing, like an ice bath. Scott will come and haul me inside soon anyway, he’ll wrap me in blankets, like a child.

I had a panic attack on the way home last night. There was a motorbike, revving its engine over and over and over, and a red car driving slowly past, like a kerb crawler, and two women with buggies blocking my path. I couldn’t get past them on the pavement, so I went into the street and was almost hit by a car coming in the opposite direction, which I hadn’t even seen. The driver leaned on the horn and yelled something at me. I couldn’t catch my breath, my heart was racing, I felt that lurch in my stomach, like when you’ve taken a pill and you’re just about to come up, that punch of adrenaline that makes you feel sick and excited and scared all at once.

I ran home and through the house and down to the tracks, then I sat down there, waiting for the train to come, to rattle through me and take away the other noises. I waited for Scott to come and calm me down, but he wasn’t at home. I tried to climb over the fence, I wanted to sit on the other side for a while, where no one else goes. I cut my hand, so I went inside, and then Scott came back and asked me what had happened. I said I was doing the washing-up and dropped a glass. He didn’t believe me, he got very upset.

I got up in the night, left Scott sleeping and sneaked down to the terrace. I dialled his number and listened to his voice when he picked up, at first soft with sleep, and then louder, wary, worried, exasperated. I hung up and waited to see if he’d call back. I hadn’t disguised my number, so I thought he might. He didn’t, so I called again, and again, and again. I got voicemail then, bland and businesslike, promising to call me back at his earliest convenience. I thought about calling the practice, bringing forward my next appointment, but I don’t think even their automated system works in the middle of the night, so I went back to bed. I didn’t sleep at all.

I might go to Corly Wood this morning to take some photographs; it’ll be misty and dark and atmospheric in there, I should be able to get some good stuff. I was thinking about maybe making little cards, seeing if I could sell them in the gift shop on Kingly Road. Scott keeps saying that I don’t need to worry about working, that I should just rest. Like an invalid! The last thing I need is rest. I need to find something to fill my days. I know what’s going to happen if I don’t.

Dr Abdic – Kamal, as I have been invited to call him – suggested in this afternoon’s session that I start keeping a diary. I almost said, I can’t do that, I can’t trust my husband not to read it. I didn’t, because that would feel horribly disloyal to Scott. But it’s true. I could never write down the things I actually feel or think or do. Case in point: when I came home this evening, my laptop was warm. He knows how to delete browser histories and whatever, he can cover his tracks perfectly well, but I know that I turned the computer off before I left. He’s been reading my emails again.

I don’t really mind, there’s nothing to read in there. (A lot of spam emails from recruitment companies and Jenny from pilates asking me if I want to join her Thursday-night supper club, where she and her friends take turns cooking each other dinner. I’d rather die.) I don’t mind, because it reassures him that there’s nothing going on, that I’m not up to anything. And that’s good for me – it’s good for us – even if it isn’t true. And I can’t really be angry with him, because he has good reason to be suspicious. I’ve given him cause in the past and probably will again. I am not a model wife. I can’t be. No matter how much I love him, it won’t be enough.

I slept for five hours last night, which is longer than I have done in ages, and the weird thing is, I was so wired when I got home yesterday evening I thought I’d be bouncing off the walls for hours. I told myself that I wouldn’t do it again, not after last time, but then I saw him and I wanted him and I thought, why not? I don’t see why I should have to restrict myself, lots of people don’t. Men don’t. I don’t want to hurt anybody, but you have to be true to yourself, don’t you? That’s all I’m doing, being true to my real self, the self nobody knows – not Scott, not Kamal, no one.

After my pilates class last night I asked Tara if she wanted to go to the cinema with me one night next week, then if she’d cover for me.

‘If he calls, can you just say I’m with you, that I’m in the loo and I’ll ring him straight back? Then you call me, and I call him, and it’s all cool.’

She smiled and shrugged and said, ‘All right,’ she didn’t even ask where I was going or who with. She really wants to be my friend.

I met him at the Swan in Corly, he’d got us a room. We have to be careful, we can’t get caught. It would be bad for him, life-wrecking. It would be a disaster for me, too. I don’t even want to think about what Scott would do.

He wanted me to talk afterwards, about what happened when I was young, living in Norwich. I’d hinted at it before, but last night he wanted the details. I told him things, but not the truth. I lied, made stuff up, told him all the sordid things he wanted to hear. It was fun. I don’t feel bad about lying, I doubt whether he believed most of it anyway. I’m pretty sure he lies, too.

He lay on the bed, watching me as I got dressed. He said, ‘This can’t happen again, Megan. You know it can’t. We can’t keep doing this.’ And he was right, I know we can’t. We shouldn’t, we ought not to, but we will. It won’t be the last time. He won’t say no to me. I was thinking about it on the way home, and that’s the thing I like most about it, having power over someone. That’s the intoxicating thing.

I’m in the kitchen, opening a bottle of wine, when Scott comes up behind me and puts his hands on my shoulders and squeezes and says, ‘How did it go, with the therapist?’ I tell him it was fine, that we’re making progress. He’s used now to not getting any details out of me. Then: ‘Did you have fun with Tara last night?’

I can’t tell, because my back’s to him, whether he’s really asking or whether he suspects something. I can’t detect anything in his voice.

‘She’s really nice,’ I say. ‘You and she’d get on. We’re going to the cinema next week, actually. Maybe I should bring her round for something to eat after?’

‘Am I not invited to the cinema?’ he asks.

‘You’re very welcome,’ I say, and I turn to him and kiss him on the mouth, ‘but she wants to see that thing with Sandra Bullock, so …’

‘Say no more! Bring her round for dinner afterwards, then,’ he says, his hands pressing gently on my lower back.

I pour the wine and we go outside. We sit side by side on the edge of the patio, our toes in the grass.

‘Is she married?’ he asks me.

‘Tara? No. Single.’

‘No boyfriend?’

‘Don’t think so.’

‘Girlfriend?’ he asks, eyebrow raised, and I laugh. ‘How old is she then?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Around forty.’

‘Oh. And she’s all alone. That’s a bit sad.’

‘Mmm. I think she might be lonely.’

‘They always go for you, the lonely ones, don’t they? They make a beeline straight for you.’

‘Do they?’

‘She doesn’t have kids, then?’ he asks, and I don’t know if I’m imagining it, but the second the subject of children comes up, I can hear an edge in his voice and I can feel the argument coming and I just don’t want it, can’t deal with it, so I get to my feet and I tell him to bring the wine glasses, because we’re going to the bedroom.

He follows me and I take off my clothes as I’m going up the stairs, and when we get there, when he pushes me down on the bed, I’m not even thinking about him, but it doesn’t matter because he doesn’t know that. I’m good enough to make him believe that it’s all about him.