The Girl on the Train: A Novel

SUNDAY, AUGUST 18, 2013

MORNING

I’m not really sure what to do, so I just ring the doorbell. I wonder whether I should have called first. It’s not polite to turn up early on a Sunday morning without calling, is it? I start to giggle. I feel slightly hysterical. I don’t really know what I’m doing.

No one comes to the door. The hysterical feeling grows as I walk round the side of the house, down the little passageway. I have the strongest feeling of déjà vu. That morning, when I came to the house, when I took the little girl. I never meant her any harm. I’m sure of that now.

I can hear her chattering as I make my way along the path in the cool shadow of the house, and I wonder whether I’m imagining things. But no, there she is, and Anna, too, sitting on the patio. I call out to her and hoist myself over the fence. She looks at me. I expect shock, or anger, but she barely even looks surprised.

“Hello, Rachel,” she says. She gets to her feet, taking her child by the hand, drawing her to her side. She looks at me, unsmiling, calm. Her eyes are red, her face pale, scrubbed, devoid of makeup.

“What do you want?” she asks.

“I rang the doorbell,” I tell her.

“I didn’t hear it,” she says, hoisting the child up onto her hip. She half turns away from me, as though she’s about to go into the house, but then she just stops. I don’t understand why she’s not yelling at me.

“Where’s Tom, Anna?”

“He went out. Army boys get-together.”

“We need to go, Anna,” I say, and she starts to laugh.