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I check my phone for news updates but Paul is still every bit the wanted man he was when I last looked half an hour ago. His face remains on all the major news sites. Some of the tabloids have started digging around and have discovered he has been married atleast four times to women double his age and who died in accidents soon after. While they have stopped short of accusing him of anything, it’s not hard to read between the lines. And the charity where he – and I, albeit briefly – volunteered has temporarily closed while managers launch an immediate investigation into their screening procedures. I keep reminding myself that in a country with more CCTV cameras than people, it’s only a matter of time before he’s caught.
Meredith plied me with tea all day so now my bladder is fit to burst. There’s a bathroom further up the same carriage, and once I’ve double-checked that I’ve locked the door, I wipe the seat with a tissue and sit. But almost immediately, the train slows down and the chants of the rugby team fade. We must be approaching Bletchley. Now we’re stopping and I can hear them leaving. I don’t like this. I press my ear closer to the door and hear someone getting on: it sounds as if they’re alone. My chest tenses, my breath shortens and my face feels flushed until they walk past me and into the next carriage. This toilet has suddenly become unbearably cramped, the climate control isn’t working, and if I didn’t know better, I’d swear the ceiling was gradually getting lower. I don’t want to be in here. I don’t want to be on this train. I need to get out. I quickly pull up my jeans and am moving to unlock the door when I hear the beeping of the train doors closing. Damn it, I’ve left it too late. I’ll never get out of here quickly enough and back on to the platform.
I have no choice but to stay where I am. So I remain standing, silent, refusing to listen to the part of my brain that’s telling me my behaviour is borderline insane. I try and count slowly to twenty to calm myself and it seems to work. And as the train pulls away from the platform, I prepare myself to leave. But it’s the whoosh of the door that separates the first-class carriage from mine that grabs my attention now, followed by a solitary pair of feet approaching thetoilet. Thump, thump, thump. They’re heavy, like a man’s. And they stop when they reach the door.
I spot the shadow of their footwear under the door. I freeze as the handle turns, once, then twice and then nothing. I count to five before it moves again; this time it’s an aggressive yanking followed by the banging of a fist. It’s Paul, I know it is. He’s been following me all day, it wasn’t in my head. A third bang follows, and then a fourth and a fifth and over and over again, it continues, growing faster and faster, louder and louder. The noise is unbearable and I look around and spot the emergency cord and furiously yank it. I haven’t seen a guard on the train but there must be one because all trains are legally obliged to have them. A woman’s voice pipes up. ‘Please help me,’ I shout, ‘I’m locked in the toilet and someone is trying to get to me.’
‘I’m on my way, luv,’ she replies.
‘Be careful, he’s dangerous,’ I continue but she doesn’t reply.
Now I worry I’ve put her at risk too. I should have called the police instead. I grab my temporary new phone from my pocket. I have wi-fi but no phone-signal bars. It’s the longest minute in memory as the banging continues and I scream at Paul to leave me alone. Eventually I hear another door open and the voice of the guard.
‘Sir, can you step away from the door, please. There’s someone inside who doesn’t appreciate you banging on it.’
The reply is male, and it’s slurred, like he’s drunk. I listen carefully but it doesn’t belong to Paul. ‘I need to piss,’ he begs.
‘There’s another bathroom two carriages along,’ she continues.
I hear the shuffling of his feet and he’s away again. I’m so embarrassed as slowly, I open the door and thank the guard. She can see how scared I am and walks me to a seat. ‘He’s had one too many.’ She winks and I taste the tears of sweet relief on my lips. ‘I can stay here for the rest of the journey if you like, luv?’
I want to say yes, but I shake my head. I remind myself that I’m a grown woman and I’m not going to be intimidated by a shadow.
We both turn our heads quickly when an alarm sounds through the speakers. It’s a loud, continuous beeping and different to the one I sounded. The guard apologises as she hurries through my carriage and slips a key into a panel and resets it. Moments later, it appears again. It’s so shrill that I cover my ears. Twice more she tries to stop it before picking up a handset attached to the wall and calling the driver, I assume.
I glance out the window and notice how dark and unfamiliar my surroundings are. There must only be about three stops left before I reach home. It can’t come soon enough.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ the guard begins a few minutes later through the same speaker system. ‘I’m afraid that due to an error with our alarm system, our next stop in Favrington will be our last.’ Favrington? Where the hell is that? ‘But there will be another train arriving approximately fifteen minutes after this one.’
As if I wasn’t on edge enough already, her message sends me almost teetering over the brink. I’m being forced to leave this train and wait in an unfamiliar station. I clench my fists so tightly that my knuckles whiten.
I can barely see Favrington station when the train pulls in. There are hardly any lights on and I look in vain for a café or indoor waiting room but both are closed. I can only assume it isn’t used much at night so they lock it up. I stand by the doors to my carriage as they open, and poke my head outside, waiting until everyone else has disembarked. I only leave when I’m convinced Paul wasn’t onboard.
I cross a bridge above the track to a second platform where the next train is due and where I stand alone, but close enough to the other half-dozen passengers to shout if I need help. But that’s not going to happen, I know that now. I’ve let my imaginationrun away with me and I’m ashamed of what that guard must have thought of me.
Sixteen minutes pass – I know this because I keep checking the time on my phone – before a bend in the track behind me is lit by the headlamps of another train. As it pulls into the station, the doors open and I cautiously approach them. I’m relieved when I see a handful of others already in the carriage. Once again I look at their faces to assure myself there’s no Paul inside.
A ‘mind the gap’ announcement comes through the train’s speakers and I do what I’m told and look down as I lift my foot high enough to step inside. But then, without warning, something thick and heavy moves under my chin and presses deep on my throat. Before I can push it aside, I realise it’s an arm and I’m being dragged down on to the platform floor.
I see a flash of his eyes. It’s Paul.
CHAPTER 60
CONNIE
I try to yell, to scream my lungs out, but his arm is placed so forcefully against my throat that nothing comes out. Not even air. He covers my body with the weight of his own to stop me moving, pressing me tight against the cold concrete. Just above us, the passengers already onboard and waiting for the train to move are so wrapped up in their gadgets and conversations that they’re completely oblivious to what’s happening to me below them.
And then his arms tighten even further around me, gripping me like a boa constrictor as he rocks his body, left and right, left and right, faster and faster until we pick up enough movement. Before I know it, we are rolling off the side of the platform, through the gap between it and the carriage and on to the track below. We land on our sides, both of our heads connecting hard with the steel of the tracks and the gravel scattered between them. It dazes me but I don’t know about him. He rolls on top of me again, pinning me down, and both of us are no longer moving. I draw desperate breaths through my nose: all I can smell is oil, warm metal and the staleness of his skin. The panic I felt on the last train doesn’t comeclose to what I am feeling now. I try and make sense of the madness. Is he trying to kill us both? Surely there must be an easier way.
It’s only when I catch sight of the torchlight above us that I realise why we are down here: he’s hiding us from the train guard who checks the platform is clear before signalling to the driver it’s safe to leave. I’m suddenly aware of how loud the diesel engine is; it’s almost deafening this close up as the train throbs and vibrates, making everything, including my bones, rattle. I want to scream for help, I want the guard to hear me, to look under the train before it pulls away. But their torchlight disappears as quickly as it arrived and the train exits. I can only hope there’s a piece of mechanical equipment hanging low from the carriage that slices, skewers and rips Paul apart as it passes above him.
No such luck. Because moments later, the train has gone and it’s just me and him. There’s no time for me to think because Paul jumps to his feet and then pulls me up with him, pushing me into the wall below the platform. My chest takes the brunt of the force before he grabs my waist and throws me up on to the platform. I scramble to lift myself up and run but I’m way too light-headed and disorientated. He drags me backwards to the darkest corner of the station. We pause there for a moment – I think he’s making sure no one else is here. I feel his stubble graze against my cheeks and smell the sourness of his sweat as he speaks for the first time.
‘What’s wrong, Rachel?’ he begins. ‘Cat got your tongue?’
CHAPTER 61
CONNIE
