The girl is Rachel, divorced, dissatisfied
and drinking to excess; the train is a commuter bone shaker – the 8:04 into
London or the 17:56 back. During a regular but unscheduled stop at signals
Rachel habitually gazes out of the carriage window at the lives of those whose
houses back onto the line just there.
Two houses hold particular interest for her.
At one she is enthralled by a couple (she christens them Jason & Jess)
living the idyll – morning coffee on the terrace, sharing a glass of wine in
the evening, always touching each other, and to all appearances clearly in
love. At another house, a few doors down, she used to live but it is now the
home of her ex-husband with his new wife and baby.
Rachel begins the narrative in an almost
diary fashion, musing on the events of her day, how she feels and reflecting
(bitterly) how she got into her current state; though in all aspects she is
hampered by alcohol induced memory gaps. But what becomes clear is that
something is happening with ‘Jess’ – Rachel sees her kissing another man, then
she disappears from view.
Not just from Rachel’s view either – a
missing persons case is reported in the local paper. The search is on for Megan
Hipswell, who is clearly ‘Jess’ in real life.
Now Megan’s voice is heard, but her
narration, in similar diary format, begins a year earlier. It alternates with
Rachel’s, but while Rachel’s moves forward day by day Megan’s skips weeks and
months progressively catching up to what became a fateful day.
Rachel can’t help getting involved, her
voyeurism somehow entitling her to befriend Megan’s husband Scott (the real
‘Jason’), which in turn brings her back into the ambit of ex-husband Tom and
his wife Anna. This brings a third narrator, Anna, into the mix, and the story
bounces between the three women, revealing some tangled history while bringing
out some clever nuances in perspective.
The action, plot and reveal is good enough
for any thriller, but the unusual construction and the forensic unpicking of
the protagonists’ lives (the real ones behind the outward impressions) lift the
book well above the norm.
Highly recommended.
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