The Stranger on the Train Read Online Free PDF Page B

searching the same places over again or different ones, they all looked the same, the same people and roads and buildings. Had she missed him, gone right past him? Was she flying around in circles, not making any progress at all, while all the time he was getting further and further away?
    The flashes were coming faster. She screamed his name all around her, again and again and again.
    â€œRitchie! Ritchie! Ritchie!”
    Then she knelt in the road and shrieked, no words coming out, just sounds. Car horns blared. Through the flashing lights came voices:
    â€œLook at her. She’s not well.”
    â€œIs it drugs?”
    Emma’s head was full of noise. There was too much color and movement. She couldn’t cope; everything was coming too fast. She couldn’t think. Too many things to think about. Too urgent. Too much. She fell forward onto her hands. The road rushed at her face.
    â€œAre you all right?” a woman asked.
    â€œSomeone call an ambulance.”
    They swirled, blurred, and were gone.

Chapter Three
    The light was blue and dim. Gentle on her eyes. Outside the patterned curtain, a muffled symphony of voices and footsteps; inside, a little square of hush where she was. She was in a bed and her knees were sore and stiff. She’d had a terrible dream that Ritchie had died. No, she’d left him on a train. She couldn’t remember. It was all right now anyway. She was awake. It was over.
    At the end of the bed, a girl in a blue tunic was busy writing something into a folder. Emma watched her drowsily. She felt sleepy, comfortable and secure; a sensation of well-being such as she hadn’t had for a long, long time. The girl turned a page, checked something, turned back and wrote again. She had a delicate way of moving her fingers. Soothing. Hypnotic. As a child, sleeping at her gran’s house, Emma had woken one night to see her mum sitting at the dresser under the window, going through some old letters. The lamp was tilted low, the only light a yellow pool over the paper. Emma had lain there for a long time, cozy and safe, listening to the rustlings and watching her mother’s fingers turn the pages.
    After a while she murmured to the girl in blue: “Where am I?”
    The girl glanced up quickly. “Oh. You’re awake.”
    She put the folder down and hurried over to Emma.
    â€œYou’re in hospital, Emma. The Royal London Accident and Emergency department. Do you remember the ambulance bringing you in?”
    Ambulance? Emma frowned. Something struck her then, and she pulled herself up in the bed. She stared around the quiet blue cubicle.
    â€œWhere’s Ritchie?” she asked. “Where’s my little boy?”
    â€œExcuse me.” The nurse dipped under one side of the curtain and beckoned to someone outside. The curtains shadowed, bulked, pulled aside. A shaven-headed man came in. He wore a short-sleeved white shirt and bulky black vest. A radio jutted from his left shoulder.
    Emma’s heart sank.
    â€œRitchie.” She sat up further. “What’s happened to Ritchie?”
    The policeman didn’t say anything. Emma began to sob wildly. “Ritchie,” she cried. “Ritchie, where are you?” It wasn’t a dream, then. Ritchie was gone. But what was wrong with her? She felt so sluggish and strange. Why couldn’t she remember what had happened?
    â€œFind him,” she begged the policeman. “Please. You have to find him.”
    â€œWe’re trying to,” the policeman assured her. “The problem is, there’s been some confusion as to exactly what happened. You’ve been unconscious for the last two hours. I believe you’ve had some kind of”—he glanced at the nurse—“sedative?”
    The nurse said defensively: “She was screaming when the ambulance brought her in. Trying to run back into the street. A danger to herself. We didn’t know.”
    It was as if they