The Girl on the Train: Anna: Seven Summary & Analysis

Saturday, August 17, 2013. Anna is crying—she and Tom have just had yet another fight about Rachel. Anna believes there’s something going on between Tom and Rachel—and she is furious at the idea that Tom would ever pick Rachel over her. Anna recalls hiding the note that Rachel left for Tom—and how when Tom found out that Anna had kept it from him, he accused her of acting like Rachel. The comment, Anna, says, made her burst into tears. Rather than comforting her, Tom announced that he was going to the gym.

Now, Anna cries and drinks as she works to crack Toms laptop password. Once she figures it out, she hunts through his emails, but she finds no incriminating messages. Feeling guilty, she decides to change the sheets and make the bedroom nice for Tom so that when he comes home, they can have sex. As Anna readies the bed, however, she feels something beneath the frame: Tom’s gym bag. She thinks it’s odd that he wouldn’t have come back for it if he forgot it—and she starts to believe all over again that he is out having an affair with Rachel.

Anna goes through the bag and discovers a cell phone she’s never seen before. The phone is dead, so Anna hurries downstairs to find a charger for it. When the phone finally turns on, Anna finds several messages from an unknown number discussing meeting times. The meetings, Anna finds, go back almost a year—to when Evie was just months old. Anna has been keeping a written log of Rachel’s calls and visits to the house. She checks it against the messages and finds that many dates don’t line up. Anna returns the phone to the bag and shoves it back under the bed. She drinks some wine while she waits for Tom to come home. When he arrives, he is drunk. He says he decided to go the pub. He asks what Anna has been up to. She kisses him to silence his questions.

Sunday, August 18, 2013. Anna wakes in the early morning darkness. She retrieves the phone and brings it downstairs with her, then takes it outside to investigate its contents further. There are no voicemails on the phone—but when Anna listens to the outgoing greeting, she is shocked and terrified as she realizes that she recognizes the female voice on the voicemail box. She is startled as a light upstairs flicks on.