Free The Stranger on the Train by Abbie Taylor Page B

hunched forward until her elbows were on her knees. She put her hands to her face.
    â€œDo you remember?” Detective Hill was saying. “Do you remember what you told Dr. Stanford that day?”
    In a low voice, Emma said: “Yes. Yes, I remember.”
    So at least now she knew. The reason they weren’t taking her seriously. From the balcony came a seagull-like cry. Oh, Ritchie. Ritchie. What have I done?
    Lindsay was pulling at her, trying to take her hand. Her face was a blur of smoothness, all professional concern. But her thoughts sprang at Emma as clearly as if she’d spoken them aloud:
    And here we were feeling sorry for you! What kind of mother are you?
    Emma kept her face covered. She couldn’t look at Lindsay. She turned away.

Chapter Six
    From the first, Ritchie had Oliver’s smile, and every time she saw it Emma’s heart skipped a beat. Ritchie was a solemn child; the smile usually had to be coaxed out of him, often appearing around a fist or a toy or a rusk in his mouth, but it was there. Someday, some woman was going to be floored by that smile, and Emma didn’t know whether to pity her or envy her.
    Because, of course, it was that smile that had stopped her in her tracks one evening, halfway across the Blue Grape in Clapham with three drinks in her hands. The owner of the smile wasn’t even looking in her direction at the time, but it knocked the breath out of her for a second.
    â€œWho’s that bloke Barry’s talking to?” Emma hissed, back at the table, sliding Joanne and Claire’s glasses of vodka and cranberry juice over to them.
    Joanne twisted on her high stool to see.
    â€œOh, him,” she said. “Oliver Metcalfe. Works in Barry’s company.”
    â€œHe’s got a girlfriend, if that’s why you’re asking,” Claire Burns said. Claire had been to uni with Emma and Joanne and was one of those people who always seem to know everything about everyone. “I’ve seen him with an Asian girl with hair down to her bum.”
    â€œOh.” Emma was disappointed. The best ones were always taken.
    Still, though, she couldn’t help checking out Oliver Metcalfe as the evening progressed. What was it about him? She hadn’t felt this attracted to a bloke in ages. She watched him over Claire’s and Joanne’s shoulders as he laughed and chatted with his mates. He was tall, half a head higher than most of the people around him, standing under the window with the streetlight in his hair. The hair was dark blond, long enough so that his fringe brushed his eyes. He was part of the work-suited crowd, but where the others had shirts and ties under their jackets, he wore a yellow T-shirt with a picture of Homer Simpson on the front. He had a pair of extremely tatty trainers on his feet. The outfit would look ridiculous on a normal man—Barry, Joanne’s boyfriend, for example, whose pink belly strained at the buttons of his shirt—but Oliver got away with it. Emma guessed he was a person who knew absolutely what he was doing with clothes. They just hung right on him.
    Two sea breezes later, Emma had made her mind up. She slammed her glass on the table and grinned at Claire and Joanne.
    â€œWell,” she said. “I don’t see any Asian girls over there tonight. How about I go and say hello?”
    â€œCheeky bint,” Joanne called as she left the table. “Hasn’t that Brian bloke from your work been begging to take you to dinner for weeks? You never chase men.”
    â€œSo maybe it’s time I started,” Emma muttered. She checked her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. Her new green Topshop dress was holding up well. The neckline was perfect: not too low, not too high. Her hair was freshly washed and shiny. Her mascara was still in place, not yet at the stage where it had begun to slide down her face. Okay, so no one was about to mistake her for Kate Moss’s younger