Free The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins Page A

front of her. The child, for once, is silent. She looks at me and nods and gives me one of those weak smiles, which I don’t return. Usually, I would pretend to be nice, but this morning I feel real, like myself. I feel high, almost like I’m tripping, and I couldn’t fake nice if I tried.
Afternoon
    I fell asleep in the afternoon. I woke feverish, panicky. Guilty. I do feel guilty. Just not guilty enough.
    I thought about him leaving in the middle of the night, telling me, once again, that this was the last time, the very last time, we can’t do this again. He was getting dressed, pulling on his jeans. I was lying on the bed and I laughed, because that’s what he said last time, and the time before, and the time before that. He shot me a look. I don’t know how to describe it, it wasn’t anger, exactly, not contempt – it was a warning.
    I feel uneasy. I walk around the house; I can’t settle, I feel as though someone else has been here while I was sleeping. There’s nothing out of place, but the house feels different, as though things have been touched, subtly shifted out of place, and as I walk around I feel as though there’s someone else here, always just out of my line of sight. I check the French doors to the garden three times, but they’re locked. I can’t wait for Scott to get home. I need him.

RACHEL
Tuesday, 16 July 2013
Morning
    I’ M ON THE 8.04, but I’m not going into London. I’m going to Witney instead. I’m hoping that being there will jog my memory, that I’ll get to the station and I’ll see everything clearly, I’ll know. I don’t hold out much hope, but there is nothing else I can do. I can’t call Tom. I’m too ashamed, and in any case, he’s made it clear. He wants nothing more to do with me.
    Megan is still missing; she’s been gone more than sixty hours now and the story is becoming national news. It was on the BBC website and MailOnline this morning; there were a few snippets mentioning it on other sites, too.
    I printed out both the BBC and
Mail
stories; I have them with me. From them I have gleaned the following:
    Megan and Scott argued on Saturday evening. A neighbour reported hearing raised voices. Scott admitted that they argued, and said that he believed his wife had gone to spend the night with a friend, Tara Epstein, who lives in Corly.
    Megan never got to Tara’s house. Tara says the last time she saw Megan was on Friday afternoon at their pilates class. (I knew Megan would do pilates.) According to Ms Epstein, ‘She seemed fine, normal. She was in a good mood, she was talking about doing something special for her thirtieth birthday next month.’
    Megan was seen by one witness walking towards Witney train station at around seven fifteen on Saturday evening.
    Megan has no family in the area. Both her parents are deceased.
    Megan is unemployed. She used to run a small art gallery in Witney, but it closed down in April last year. (I knew Megan would be arty.)
    Scott is a self-employed IT consultant. (I can’t bloody believe Scott is an IT consultant.)
    Megan and Scott have been married for three years; they have been living in the house on Blenheim Road since January 2012.
    According to the
Daily Mail
, their house is worth £400,000.
    Reading this, I know that things look bad for Scott. Not just because of the argument, either; it’s just the way things are: when something bad happens to a woman, the police look at the husband or the boyfriend first. However, in this case, the police don’t have all the facts. They’re only looking at the husband, presumably because they don’t know about the boyfriend.
    It could be that I am the only person who knows that the boyfriend exists.
    I scrabble around in my bag for a scrap of paper. On the back of a card slip for two bottles of wine, I write down a list of most likely possible explanations for the disappearance of Megan Hipwell:
    1. She has run off with her boyfriend, who from here on in I will refer to as