The Girl on the Train

Kamal tilts his head to one side, gives me half a smile. I feel my insides flip. ‘It sounds nice. But do you think you are romanticizing? “The restless grey sea”?’

‘Never mind that,’ I say, waving him away. ‘And no, in any case. Have you been to north Norfolk? It’s not the Adriatic. It is restless, and relentlessly grey.’

He holds his hands up, smiling. ‘OK.’

I feel instantly better, the tension leaching out of my neck and shoulders. I take another sip of the wine; it tastes less bitter now.

‘I was happy with Mac. I know it doesn’t sound like the sort of place I’d like, the sort of life I’d like, but then, after Ben’s death and everything that came after, it was. Mac saved me. He took me in, he loved me, he kept me safe. And he wasn’t boring. And to be perfectly honest, we were taking a lot of drugs, and it’s difficult to get bored when you’re off your face all the time. I was happy. I was really happy.’

Kamal nods. ‘I understand, although I’m not sure that sounds like a very real kind of happiness,’ he says. ‘Not the sort of happiness that can endure, that can sustain you.’

I laugh. ‘I was seventeen. I was with a man who excited me, who adored me. I’d got away from my parents, away from the house where everything, everything reminded me of my dead brother. I didn’t need it to endure, or sustain. I just needed it for right then.’

‘So what happened?’

It seems as though the room gets darker then. Here we are, at the thing I never say.

‘I got pregnant.’

He nods, waiting for me to go on. Part of me wants him to stop me, to ask more questions, but he doesn’t, he just waits. It gets darker still.

‘It was too late when I realized to … to get rid of it. Of her. It’s what I would have done, had I not been so stupid, so oblivious. The truth is that she wasn’t wanted, by either of us.’

Kamal gets to his feet, goes to the kitchen and comes back with a sheet of kitchen roll for me to wipe my eyes. He hands it to me and sits down. It’s a while before I go on. Kamal sits, just as he used to in our sessions, his eyes on mine, his hands folded in his lap, patient, immobile. It must take the most incredible self-control, that stillness, that passivity; it must be exhausting.

My legs are trembling, my knee jerking as though on a puppeteer’s string. I get to my feet to stop it. I walk to the kitchen door and back again, scratching the palms of my hands.

‘We were both so stupid,’ I tell him. ‘We didn’t really even acknowledge what was happening, we just carried on. I didn’t go to see a doctor, I didn’t eat the right things or take supplements, I didn’t do any of the things you’re supposed to. We just carried on living our lives. We didn’t even acknowledge that anything had changed. I got fatter and slower and more tired, we both got irritable and fought all the time, but nothing really changed until she came.’

He lets me cry. While I do so, he moves to the chair nearest mine and sits down at my side so that his knees are almost touching my thigh. He leans forward. He doesn’t touch me, but our bodies are close, I can smell his scent, clean in this dirty room, sharp and astringent.

My voice is a whisper, it doesn’t feel right to say these words out loud. ‘I had her at home,’ I say. ‘It was stupid, but I had this thing about hospitals at the time, because the last time I’d been in one was when Ben was killed. Plus I hadn’t been for any of the scans. I’d been smoking, drinking a bit, I couldn’t face the lectures. I couldn’t face any of it. I think … right up until the end, it just didn’t seem like it was real, like it was actually going to happen.

‘Mac had this friend who was a nurse, or who’d done some nursing training or something. She came round, and it was OK. It wasn’t so bad. I mean, it was horrible, of course, painful and frightening, but … then there she was. She was very small. I don’t remember exactly what her weight was. That’s terrible, isn’t it?’ Kamal doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t move. ‘She was lovely. She had dark eyes and blonde hair. She didn’t cry a lot, she slept well, right from the very beginning. She was good. She was a good girl.’ I have to stop there for a moment. ‘I expected everything to be so hard, but it wasn’t.’

It’s darker still, I’m sure of it, but I look up and Kamal is there, his eyes on mine, his expression soft. He’s listening. He wants me to tell him. My mouth is dry, so I take another sip of wine. It hurts to swallow. ‘We called her Elizabeth. Libby.’ It feels so strange, saying her name out loud after such a long time. ‘Libby,’ I say again, enjoying the feel of her name in my mouth. I want to say it over and over. Kamal reaches out at last and takes my hand in his, his thumb against my wrist, on my pulse.

‘One day we had a fight, Mac and I. I don’t remember what it was about. We did that every now and again – little arguments that blew up into big ones, nothing physical, nothing bad like that, but we’d scream at each other and I’d threaten to leave, or he’d just walk out and I wouldn’t see him for a couple of days.

‘It was the first time it had happened since she was born – the first time he’d just gone off and left me. She was just a few months old. The roof was leaking. I remember that: the sound of water dripping into buckets in the kitchen. It was freezing cold, the wind driving off the sea; it had been raining for days. I lit a fire in the living room, but it kept going out. I was so tired. I was drinking just to warm up, but it wasn’t working, so I decided to get into the bath. I took Libby in with me, put her on my chest, her head just under my chin.’

The room gets darker and darker until I’m there again, lying in the water, her body pressing against mine, a candle flickering just behind my head. I can hear it guttering, smell the wax, feel the chill of the air around my neck and shoulders. I’m heavy, my body sinking into the warmth. I’m exhausted. And then suddenly the candle is out and I’m cold. Really cold, my teeth chattering in my head, my whole body shaking. The house feels like it’s shaking too, the wind screaming, tearing at the slates on the roof.

‘I fell asleep,’ I say, and then I can’t say any more, because I can feel her again, no longer on my chest, her body wedged between my arm and the edge of the tub, her face in the water. We were both so cold.

For a moment, neither of us move. I can hardly bear to look at him, but when I do, he doesn’t recoil from me. He doesn’t say a word. He puts his arm around my shoulder and pulls me to him, my face against his chest. I breathe him in and I wait to feel different, to feel lighter, to feel better or worse now that there is another living soul who knows. I feel relieved, I think, because I know from his reaction that I have done the right thing. He isn’t angry with me, he doesn’t think I’m a monster. I am safe here, completely safe with him.