The Girl on the Train: Megan: Three Summary & Analysis

Thursday, January 10, 2013. It is a dark, cold morning, and Megan wishes that she could stay home watching TV, having sex, and eating junk food with Scott forever. She is dreading having to go out to therapy later this afternoon. After talking with Dr. Abdic about her restlessness, her marriage, and the loss of her brother, Megan feels that she’s getting close to “the whole truth” about her past—particularly what happened to her years ago when she was with a man named Mac, a friend of her Ben’s. Megan admits to feeling relief that Abdic can never tell anyone about her secrets because of doctor-patient confidentiality. She feels badly telling Abdic—whom she’s begun to call Kamal—things that she isn’t comfortable telling Scott.

In therapy, Megan tells Kamal about how she met Mac while living in Ipswich as a runaway after Ben’s death. She was just 15, and she and Mac started having sex when she turned 16. They lived together in an old cottage in the countryside, cut off from civilization—there was an old abandoned railway track by the house, and sometimes Megan would wake in the night thinking she could hear trains. Megan tells Kamal that she stayed with Mac until she was 19. Kamal asks what made her leave, and she tells Kamal that Mac broke her heart—though this is not the full truth. After returning home from therapy, Megan uses her computer to try to look Mac (whose full name is Craig McKenzie) up on the internet, but she can’t find him.

Friday, February 8, 2013. Megan takes a morning walk through the woods and spies a flock of magpies. Scott is away taking a course in Sussex until tonight. Before he left, Megan told him that she was headed to the cinema with Tara again. In a recent therapy session, Megan told Kamal about Scott’s need to keep tabs on her—and the fight he picked when he realized she’d been researching someone named Craig McKenzie on the internet. Kamal warned her that Scott’s behavior was tantamount to emotional abuse. Megan laughed and shrugged it off, insisting that she didn’t care about Scott’s snooping on her computer.

At the end of the session with Kamal, Megan recalls, she asked him out for a drink. When he said it wouldn’t be appropriate, she kissed him on the lips. Kamal begged her not to do something they’d both regret, so she left. Now, however, Megan fears that that she will never soothe her restlessness or find what she’s looking for. On the way back home from the woods, Megan runs into Anna pushing her baby in a carriage.

Megan takes a nap and wakes up in the middle of the afternoon feeling feverish and guilty. She remembers her lover leaving her bed in the middle of the night last night, insisting that this time was the last time. She recalls laughing, knowing again that it wasn’t true. Now, Megan feels uneasy and unsettled. She wants Scott to come home—she feels that she needs him to ground her.