The Stranger on the Train Read Online Free PDF Page A

Bap’s” spelled back to front. But just inside that, where she would have expected to see Ritchie with his flushed, sleepy face, and Antonia with her flicky blond hair, there was a gap. Ritchie’s pushchair was gone. The table by the window was empty.
    Emma didn’t start to worry straightaway. They were here somewhere. She just wasn’t seeing them. She came out into the main part of the café and looked around. The tabletops were sticky and yellow in the fluorescent light. The bearded old man sat with his eyes closed. The man behind the counter was still nowhere to be seen.
    Uncertain, Emma stood in the middle of the room. What was happening here? What was going on that she didn’t understand? Then she got it. They’d gone outside! Antonia’s husband had arrived. They’d got Ritchie ready and put him back in his buggy. They were all out there, waiting for her in the street.
    She went to the door and yanked it open. She looked up the street and then down. Cars and buses on the main road. Some shops still open, their lights glistening on the pavement. Music thumping from one of them, an unfamiliar Eastern beat. Groups of bearded men, some wearing round, colored hats. No sign of a woman in a furry jacket pushing a buggy.
    A few feet along, the street turned onto another side road. Emma went to it and looked down. Railings along the pavement, three buses in a row. Blocks of flats, a pub.
    No woman with a buggy.
    Trying hard not to panic, Emma hurried back to the café. This was ridiculous. They must be here! Antonia must have taken Ritchie to some other table, some section of the restaurant Emma hadn’t noticed before. She really should have told her first, though. This was definitely the last straw. When she found Ritchie now, she really was just going to take him and go.
    But even as she quickly examined every wall of the restaurant, and all around the counter, she knew what she’d known when she’d first walked into the place: that it was just one square room, with the window and door to the street at the front. There were no stairs, and no corner. No tables she hadn’t seen. No other section to the café at all.
    Emma hurtled down the passage to the toilet. She flung open the door, just in case there was a second toilet in there and she’d missed it. But there was just the one stinking room.
    Hands shaking, she ran to the front of the counter.
    â€œExcuse me,” she called, her voice high-pitched. “Exc­use me.”
    The colored plastic strips moved. The man with the stubbly beard poked his head through.
    â€œDid you see them?” Emma asked.
    â€œWho?”
    â€œMy son.” Emma looked past him, through the colored strips. “Are they in there? Did they go into your kitchen?”
    The man began to lift his hands in incomprehension. Emma opened the flap on the counter. She ran to the doorway and shoved her way through the strips. Behind them was a steel kitchen, cluttered with pots and piles of plates and smelling of rotting food. No Ritchie. No Antonia.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” The man was behind her.
    Emma turned on him.
    â€œThere was a woman.” She struggled to stay calm. “By the window, with my son. Did she take him? Where did they go?”
    â€œI didn’t—”
    â€œDid she leave him on his own?” Emma was shouting now. “Did she take him, or did someone else? You must have seen something, are you blind?”
    The man backed away, looking alarmed.
    â€œI didn’t see nobody,” he said. “I don’t know where they go.”
    Emma pushed past him, back to the shop. The old man by the wall was peering up at her. His eyes had a bluish film on the front.
    â€œDid you see them?” Emma begged.
    The man just gripped his cup. He was more elderly than she’d thought, shaky and vague. She couldn’t tell if he even understood what she was saying.
    â€œCall the