Girl on a Train Read online

  Girl On A Train

  A NOVEL

  by

  A J WAINES

  For my Mum

  Mary Waines (1926-2012)

  who always had a mystery whodunit on her lap

  Copyright © 2013, A J WAINES

  Contents

  Copyright

  Part One: Anna

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Part Two: Elly

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Part Three: Anna

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  PART ONE

  Anna

  Chapter One

  Sunday Afternoon, September 19th

  It was supposed to be a mindless train journey home. Peaceful. Sleepy. Uneventful.

  I deliberately chose the quiet coach when I boarded at Portsmouth and Southsea. True to form, most people were chatting inanely on their mobile phones or leaking hissing drumbeats from their headphones, so I kept going, looking for an area without cackling post-hen-parties, toddlers or badly tuned radios. There is nothing worse than being forced to listen to other people’s choice of music, except perhaps other people’s children’s choice of music.

  As I entered the next carriage, my foot caught in a loose strap and I found myself spread-eagled over a table occupied by four men in rugby shirts, building a tower of lager cans. I managed to extricate myself from a chorus of Swing low, sweet chariot without too many innuendos and strode on, leaving whoops and cheers in my wake.

  My simple quest for a quiet spot was proving an impossible task. There was far too much exuberance for a Sunday afternoon. I’d anticipated the entire train subdued with a post-Saturday-night slump, not feverish with squeals and giggling. Most people I passed were under twenty, wearing Wellington boots. Then it clicked. Probably returning in droves from late summer festivals on the Isle of Wight. It was the mud caking everything below the knee that gave them away. I was glad my music festival days were over - well, camping out at them at least. Memories of waking up with a soggy backside had put me off sleeping under the stars for life (having pitched the tent after dark and failed to notice the terra wasn’t firma).

  Was it too much to ask for a seat that wasn’t surrounded by dangling wet socks, Indie band posters or discarded soya-milk cartons? I clambered over several three-storey rucksacks, complete with sleeping-bags and rolled up foam mats piled high in the gangway, and settled for an empty airline seat next to a woman looking out of the window. I slung my overnight bag on the rack, dropped my handbag between my feet and sat back with a not unjustified sense of achievement.

  I gave a cordial glance to the woman beside me and felt an immediate kinship with her. She didn’t seem to be part of the raucous melee and looked to be in her late twenties, like me. My smile, however, was wasted as she failed to register my presence. She wore the kind of fixed stare that made me want to flap my hand up and down in front of her face and ask Is anyone there?

  Her straggly hair had a stiff fringe like a yard broom that looked like it would move all at once if touched. Someone should have told her that the specs were all wrong; they were chunky like the ones you get in joke shops that have a plastic nose and moustache attached. The right style might have lifted her appearance out of the plain zone into one bordering on pretty.

  There was something else, however, that struck me as soon as the train left the station. She was edgy, agitated, checking her watch every few moments. I heard her sigh several times and her neck craned back and forth as she looked up and down the aisle. As I tried to settle into my novel, it started to become distracting and after about five minutes, annoying. I turned Michael Bublé up high on my iPod in a bid to block her out.

  Before long, the guard appeared. ‘Waterloo…Waterloo…’ he hummed, like the Abba song, as he clipped tiny boxes into the corner of our tickets. My shoulders dropped. Little Ms Fidget was going to be beside me all the way to the end of the line. As if to confirm my fears, she wriggled in her seat, drummed her fingers on the edge of her bag, sniffed, pushed up her glasses and then started the cycle over again.

  I remembered I’d bought a Sunday paper at the station, so I pulled down the supplement from the rack and offered it to her. Her hands were shaking as she took it and she made an attempt at smiling, but I noticed the magazine stayed rolled up beside her seat. I saw, too, that she hadn’t removed her anorak even though the heating was set for arctic conditions. Was she ill? Mentally unstable? She clung to the overnight bag on her lap as if it contained the crown jewels, although the bag itself looked shabby, made of worn green fabric with a chipped ceramic key fob dangling on the end. The initials read E.S. I tried to entertain myself by imagining what name they stood for, but couldn’t get beyond Ena Sharples.

  I took a deep breath and tried looking out of the window, but it was difficult to focus without seeing E.S. at the edge of my vision, jiggling about. Her left knee was bouncing up and down and she had started clearing her throat in a nervous tic.

  I was beyond the stage of staring at her and tutting loudly. By now, I was on the verge of suggesting, none too politely, that she needed to get a grip and SIT STILL, but without warning, she turned and lifted her hand. I took it to mean she wanted to leave her seat and it crossed my mind that she might not speak English. She gave me a tentative, but swiftly retracted smile as I stood to back up and I watched her hurry away clutching her bag.

  The train shot into a tunnel and when we came out the other side, it was as though someone had lain a grey cloth over the windows: the carriage sank into a dusky gloom. Grey slashes of rain were ravaging the window panes like the slits of a knife.

  The change in the weather took me straight back to the day Jeff and I got married. It was a freak June day of downpours and we’d spent most it trying to avoid trailing my dress through brown puddles. My hair was ruined, the flowers drenched. In the end we surrendered to the rain and embraced the way fate had decided to grace our day with its own brand of crystal confetti. I remember holding Jeff’s hand as we emerged from the church; how we both tipped our heads back in unison, letting the warm spray refresh our skin, like a special blessing.

  That was four years ago. Two of them spent without him.

  In the haven of blissful stillness the woman left behind, I turned to get my first view out of the window, but by now the scene was blurred; reduced to green, brown and grey blobs masquerading as countryside. As it turned out, it didn’t seem to matter anymore - without the irritating side-show, I found myself able to concentrate on my novel at last.

  After a while, I even began to think that the woman had moved carriages and wasn’t coming back, but as soon as the idea entered my head I caught a glimpse of her earnest figure, easing its way back against the tide of people.

  I stood for her again and a waft of heavy perfume drove me back into my seat. It was so strong I had to smother a cough. It didn’t take her long to start up the jittering again. By now, it had mutated into a form of Chinese torture; the anticipation of her next wriggle being just as bad as the event itself. In the end I couldn’t stop myself from saying somethin
g.

  ‘Sorry, I can’t help noticing you seem a bit…unsettled…are you okay?’

  The woman looked startled. ‘Me? Oh…no. I’m fine,’ she said. Her voice was wispy and fragile, with the slight lift in intonation I always associate with south London. She didn’t make eye contact, instead her eyes were wide and busy, flitting from place to place as if she was following the path of a hyperactive insect.

  I was about to respond with something more cutting when my phone beeped:

  Apols for texting on day off - bla, bla - need you to step in with feature asap. Call me. Joan. URGENT.

  Needless to say, I was glad of the distraction.

  ‘Work,’ I said, sending my eyes up to the ceiling - although to be honest, I was playacting in a bid to try to engage with the woman and get her to stop fiddling.

  Her smile conveyed a vacant empathy; the kind of smile someone gives you when they aren’t listening to a word you’re saying. I muttered something about needing to return the call, but she was already staring out of the window again. I punched in Joan’s number.

  ‘Got a pen?’ said Joan. No introductions; never one for idle chit-chat. Before I answered, she was speaking again, ‘I need two thousand words on bullying in the workplace, by first thing Wednesday. You up for it?’ She spoke with the speed of a voiceover rattling through the small-print on a commercial. ‘The original writer’s gone off the rails with it,’ she said. I could hear her tapping her pen against the phone, eager for my response. ‘Needs a complete rewrite…’

  I became a journalist because I like tracking down the truth - the raw nuggets of reality that lie under the sham and bluster with which we smother our lives. Writing felt safer than being a detective or a private investigator - no weapons, no scaling high walls or wasting hours lurking in shop doorways - besides, it meant I could make my own coffee. Most of all, though, I liked playing with words. They are alive and magnetic; I liked shifting them around from one spot to another, like a kid transfixed with Lego.

  ‘Anna, are you there?’ Tap, tap, tap.

  The thought of writing a feature on bullying brought on about as much enthusiasm as a desire to yawn, but I had to take it. Work was thin on the ground these days. As a freelance, I couldn’t afford to turn anything down.

  ‘No problem.’ I said, trying to adopt a sparky tone. ‘You want a particular angle? Same-sex bullying? Homophobia? A racial slant?’

  ‘Find some recent trends and stats. Nothing wish-washy - get some decent quotes from experts - an educational psychologist, occupational therapist and psychiatrist, if you can.’

  I was in the middle of saying, ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ when I realised she’d already rung off. Editors seemed to live at a different pace to everyone else. Just talking to her left me exhausted.

  I pulled out a spiral notebook and wrote Bullying in the Workplace at the top and underlined it twice. My mind went blank. I stared at the title and underlined it again. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the woman next to me glance down at what I’d written.

  ‘Are you an investigator?’ she said, out of the blue.

  I blinked rapidly, startled by her unexpected interest. ‘Journalist,’ I said. ‘Lifestyle pieces mostly, with a psychology angle if I can manage it.’

  She looked intense. ‘You investigate crimes?’

  ‘Er, not really. Not now. I started out as an investigative journalist, but the work’s been drying up lately. It’s terribly competitive.’ Her face came to life, her eyes alert and focused. We must have hit on a subject she was interested in, so I carried on. I was prepared to give her a blow by blow account of my entire life-story if it stopped her fidgeting.

  ‘What kind of crimes?’ Her voice was brittle, as though she couldn’t get enough air into her lungs.

  ‘A broad range…let me think…stalking, phone-hacking, doping in sport…’ Her gaze was still fixed on me. ‘But, in the last year, I’ve been making the most of my degree and focusing on popular psychology.’

  ‘Would you follow up cold police cases..?’

  I pointed to my notebook. ‘Well – not now…like I said, I’m — ’

  She sat forward. ‘Have you ever done that?’ The words came out like sniper fire. She had started tightening her fists, as if she was squeezing a small rubber ball. ‘Looked into an unsolved crime? Brought someone to justice?’

  ‘I helped the police track down a ring of joy-riders, once - and a gang of youths who vandalised a high-rise block in Balham. Digging around beneath the surface - that’s what I like best. The adrenalin of the chase. The features I write now are less exciting, but the money is more consistent. I seem to spend most of my time talking to answer-phones, trying to get quotes.’ I ran my pen along the wire coil of the notebook. ‘That bit’s a drag. Experts never say what you want them to say.’

  ‘Digging around beneath the surface…’ she muttered, echoing my words. I thought she was going to say more, but her attention palpably wandered off again, so I returned to my notes.

  Next thing, she’d dropped something on the floor and was scrabbling around trying to find it. She came up with a small bottle of perfume, the source of the pungent smell that was still coating the back of my throat like a layer of creosote. She looked embarrassed; for the first time possibly aware of the irritation she’d been causing me and slipped it into her bag.

  A background headache that had been brewing ever since I took my seat decided to settle in for the day. I tried to ignore that too. Back to bullying. An hour passed and we pulled into Winchester. More people bundled on to the train and looked in vain for empty seats. I barely registered when the woman bent down to retrieve the Sunday supplement that had made its way to the floor. I nodded absently as she handed it back to me.

  I wasn’t expecting what happened after that. We were pulling into the next station, when the woman suddenly got to her feet and made a move to squeeze past me. As her knees made contact with mine, she turned towards me. Her eyes locked straight onto mine, her eyelids pinned back, with a look I could only describe as sheer dread. In the next second, deep tram-lines formed between her eyebrows and her expression shifted. It was as if she was silently imploring me, entreating me. To do what? I had no idea. I was immobile, her gaze pressing me into my seat by some centrifugal force and I held her stare, unsure of how to react. Just as swiftly, she dropped her eyes and the moment passed. With one final glance behind her, she was swallowed up in the bodies at the door.

  She was getting off. Something wasn’t right.

  The train came to a stop. I craned my neck to see if I could see her on the platform. Hardly anyone had left the train and I spotted her, head down, running on her tiptoes towards the stairs, then I lost sight of her.

  I shuddered. The woman with a ticket to London Waterloo had just got off at an out of the way place, called Micheldever. The wrong stop. Furthermore, right at the last moment, her face had been charged with terror.

  Several minutes passed; the draggy ponderous ones that Sunday delays are made of. A dreary ten minutes later and the train started pulling out. I shifted to the window seat and scribbled a few more notes as a car-park, warehouse and the outskirts of Micheldever slid by in a washed-out blur. I didn’t mind in the least about the view; I was revelling in my newfound peace and quiet.

  It was short-lived.

  Seconds later, there was a massive jolt and the train lurched forward. I watched my pen do a summersault in the air in slow-motion, before hitting the pull-down tray and bouncing into the aisle. Then time switched into double speed and the momentum threw me forward forcing the tray into my ribs, where it tried to take a slice out of my chest. My forehead smacked into the back of the chair in front, before I lost touch with my seat altogether and tumbled to the floor.

  The carriage screeched and careered from side to side, then came to an abrupt halt with a loud thud. There was a horrible grating sound. I heard startled cries around me and bodies were scattered into the aisles, legs and arms scrabbling for sup
port. Someone muttered something incoherent behind me and I realised he was praying.

  I could hear my own frantic voice filling up my head.

  Oh my God, is this it? I’m not ready. Please. Not yet.

  There were a few moments of silence in the carriage as everyone seemed to hold their breath. We were still rocking ominously like the ground was slowly sinking under the rails. The lights flickered and I heard a distant straining sound as though something was buckling. I half expected the train to tip over on to its side and I scrambled back onto my seat, taking hold of the arms, gripping hard.

  Don’t let me die. Please…

  Silence. Nothing happened.

  The rocking gradually steadied into a sinister creaking lullaby and finally stopped. Then the lights went out altogether. An ‘ooh’ billowed through the carriage, like we were all watching a gruesome horror movie. The power seemed to disconnect and we were completely still. It was as if the train had died and we were left sitting inside an inert shell.

  I tentatively ran my hands across my side. My ribs burned, but I didn’t think any were broken. A bump was rapidly swelling above my eye, but when I took my hand away there was no blood. I could hear people moaning, asking each other if they were all right. A man holding a handkerchief over his nose was trying to lift a young woman off the floor. As the red stain rapidly inked its way across the white cotton, I handed him a wad of tissues from my bag.

  ‘What happened?’ I heard a young woman shout.

  ‘I think it might be a derailment,’ came a man’s voice.

  ‘Did we hit something?’

  A small girl was howling, having cracked her forehead on the corner of a table. An adult was soothing her, blowing cool air on the bump. Thankfully, the jumble of overstuffed rucksacks had cushioned the blow for many people. I stood up to see if anyone else needed help, but most people seemed to be either on their feet by now, or had returned to their seats.

  A deadpan voice over the PA system broke through the mounting hum of speculations.