I walk away from him as fast as I can, but the train jolts and sways and I almost lose my balance. I grab on to a seat back to stop myself from falling. People are staring at me. I hurry through to the next carriage and all the way through to the one after that; I just keep going until I get to the end of the train. I feel breathless and afraid. I can’t explain it, I can’t remember what happened, but I can feel it, the fear and confusion. I sit down, facing in the direction I have just come from so that I’ll be able to see him if he comes after me.

Pressing my palms into my eye sockets, I concentrate. I’m trying to get it back, to see what I just saw. I curse myself for drinking. If only my head was straight . . . but there it is. It’s dark, and there’s a man walking away from me. A woman walking away from me? A woman, wearing a blue dress. It’s Anna.

Blood is throbbing in my head, my heart pounding. I don’t know whether what I’m seeing, feeling, is real or not, imagination or memory. I squeeze my eyes tightly shut and try to feel it again, to see it again, but it’s gone.

ANNA

•   •   •

SATURDAY, AUGUST 3, 2013

EVENING

Tom is meeting some of his army buddies for a drink and Evie’s down for her nap. I’m sitting in the kitchen, doors and windows closed despite the heat. The rain of the past week has stopped at last; now it’s stiflingly close.

I’m bored. I can’t think of anything to do. I fancy going shopping, spending a bit of money on myself, but it’s hopeless with Evie. She gets irritable and I get stressed. So I’m just hanging round the house. I can’t watch television or look at a newspaper. I don’t want to read about it, I don’t want to see Megan’s face, I don’t want to think about it.

How can I not think about it when we’re here, just four doors away?

I rang around to see if anyone was up for a playdate, but everyone’s got plans. I even called my sister, but of course you’ve got to book her at least a week in advance. In any case, she said she was too hungover to spend time with Evie. I felt a horrible pang of envy then, a longing for Saturdays spent lying on the sofa with the newspapers and a hazy memory of leaving the club the night before.

Stupid, really, because what I’ve got now is a million times better, and I made sacrifices to secure it. Now I just need to protect it. So here I sit in my sweltering house, trying not to think about Megan. I try not to think about her and I jump every time I hear a noise, I flinch when a shadow passes the window. It’s intolerable.

What I can’t stop thinking about is the fact that Rachel was here the night Megan went missing, stumbling around, totally pissed, and then she just disappeared. Tom looked for her for ages, but he couldn’t find her. I can’t stop wondering what she was doing.

There is no connection between Rachel and Megan Hipwell. I spoke to the police officer, Detective Riley, about it after we saw Rachel at the Hipwells’ house, and she said it was nothing to worry about. “She’s a rubbernecker,” she said. “Lonely, a bit desperate. She just wants to be involved in something.”

She’s probably right. But then I think about her coming into my house and taking my child, I remember the terror I felt when I saw her with Evie down by the fence. I think about that horrible, chilling little smile she gave me when I saw her outside the Hipwells’ house. Detective Riley doesn’t know just how dangerous Rachel can be.

RACHEL

•   •   •

SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 2013

MORNING

It’s different, the nightmare I wake from this morning. In it, I’ve done something wrong, but I don’t know what it is, all I know is that it cannot be put right. All I know is that Tom hates me now, he won’t talk to me any longer, and he has told everyone I know about the terrible thing I’ve done, and everyone has turned against me: old colleagues, my friends, even my mother. They look at me with disgust, contempt, and no one will listen to me, no one will let me tell them how sorry I am. I feel awful, desperately guilty, I just can’t think what it is that I’ve done. I wake and I know the dream must come from an old memory, some ancient transgression—it doesn’t matter which one now.

After I got off the train yesterday, I hung around outside Ashbury station for a full fifteen or twenty minutes. I watched to see if he’d got off the train with me—the red-haired man—but there was no sign of him. I kept thinking that I might have missed him, that he was there somewhere, just waiting for me to walk home so that he could follow me. I thought how desperately I would love to be able to run home and for Tom to be waiting for me. To have someone waiting for me.

I walked home via the off-licence.

The flat was empty when I got back, it had the feeling of a place just vacated, as though I’d just missed Cathy, but the note on the counter said she was going out for lunch with Damien in Henley and that she wouldn’t be back until Sunday night. I felt restless, afraid. I walked from room to room, picking things up, putting them down. Something felt off, but I realized eventually that it was just me.

Still, the silence ringing in my ears sounded like voices, so I poured myself a glass of wine, and then another, and then I phoned Scott. The phone went straight to voice mail: his message from another lifetime, the voice of a busy, confident man with a beautiful wife at home. After a few minutes, I phoned again. The phone was answered, but no one spoke.

“Hello?”

“Who is this?”

“It’s Rachel,” I said. “Rachel Watson.”

“Oh.” There was noise in the background, voices, a woman. His mother, perhaps.

“You . . . I missed your call,” I said.

“No . . . no. Did I call you? Oh. By mistake.” He sounded flustered. “No, just put it there,” he said, and it took me a moment to realize he wasn’t talking to me.

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

“Yes.” His tone was flat and even.

“So sorry.”

“Thank you.”

“Did you . . . did you need to talk to me?”

“No, I must have rung you by mistake,” he said, with more conviction this time.

“Oh.” I could tell he was keen to get off the phone. I knew I should leave him to his family, his grief. I knew that I should, but I didn’t. “Do you know Anna?” I asked him. “Anna Watson?”

“Who? You mean your ex’s missus?”

“Yes.”

“No. I mean not really. Megan . . . Megan did a bit of babysitting for her, last year. Why do you ask?”

I don’t know why I ask. I don’t know. “Can we meet?” I asked him. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“About what?” He sounded annoyed. “It’s really not a great time.”

Stung by his sarcasm, I was ready to hang up when he said, “I’ve got a house full of people here. Tomorrow? Come by the house tomorrow afternoon.”

EVENING

He’s cut himself shaving: there’s blood on his cheek and on his collar. His hair is damp and he smells of soap and aftershave. He nods at me and stands aside, gesturing for me to the enter the house, but he doesn’t say anything. The house is dark, stuffy, the blinds in the living room closed, the curtains drawn across the French doors leading to the garden. There are Tupperware containers on the kitchen counters.