The Passenger by Daniel Hurst (great book club books TXT) 📕

The Passenger

Daniel Hurst

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Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

STRANGER

Chapter 2

AMANDA

Chapter 3

LOUISE

Chapter 4

AMANDA

Chapter 5

STRANGER

Chapter 6

JAMES

Chapter 7

AMANDA

Chapter 8

STRANGER

Chapter 9

AMANDA

Chapter 10

STRANGER

Chapter 11

AMANDA

Chapter 12

STRANGER

Chapter 13

LOUISE

Chapter 14

JAMES

Chapter 15

AMANDA

Chapter 16

AMANDA

Chapter 17

AMANDA

Chapter 18

LOUISE

Chapter 19

JAMES

Chapter 20

STRANGER

Chapter 21

AMANDA

Chapter 22

AMANDA

Chapter 23

AMANDA

Chapter 24

AMANDA

Chapter 25

AMANDA

Chapter 26

LOUISE

Chapter 27

AMANDA

Chapter 28

AMANDA

Chapter 29

AMANDA

Chapter 30

AMANDA

Chapter 31

JAMES

Chapter 32

AMANDA

Chapter 33

AMANDA

Chapter 34

AMANDA

Chapter 35

AMANDA

Chapter 36

LOUISE

Chapter 37

JAMES

Chapter 38

STRANGER

Chapter 39

AMANDA

Chapter 40

STRANGER

Chapter 41

AMANDA

Chapter 42

JAMES

Chapter 43

AMANDA

Chapter 44

JAMES

Chapter 45

AMANDA

Chapter 46

JAMES

Chapter 47

AMANDA

Chapter 48

AMANDA

About the Author

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Rights Info

Prologue

The sound of the body going underneath the train was heard by all of those inside the station that night.

A sickening combination of shattering bone and squealing brakes was not what most people were expecting to experience as they made their way along the platforms at the end of another long day.

Most people heard only the sound of the screams from fellow travellers as the desperate driver brought the train to a stop as quickly as possible, but there were a few who had been unlucky enough to see the incident itself. Those unfortunate souls would be going home with several distressing pictures flashing through their minds.

They would see the image of the man as he fell from the safety of the platform and down onto the hard track below. They would have the memory of the blood as it sprayed up the front of the train and across the windscreen in front of the startled driver. And it would be impossible to forget the looks of horror on the faces of their fellow witnesses who had all seen such a gruesome sight.

But there was one more thing that the eyewitnesses would recall about this terrible event.

They would recall the woman who had pushed that man in front of the train.

She had blonde hair and wore dark sunglasses. She displayed a calm expression while everyone around her wore one of shock. And she had hurried away while everybody else had stayed still.

There were many unforgettable things about that evening in the train station, and many questions for the witnesses, police, and paramedics to try to answer afterwards. Questions like:

Why did this happen?

Who was the unlucky man on the tracks?

And most important of all: Who was the woman who pushed him?

1 STRANGER

THREE HOURS EARLIER

There aren’t many better spots to people-watch than at a London train station in rush hour. You get all kinds of people in a place like this. Young, old. Rich, poor. Happy, sad. Mainly sad. All of them buzzing about like little bees, desperate to get to their next destination as quickly as possible, and none of them caring about who they have to shoulder-barge out of the way to get there.

I could spend hours standing here and watching them all rush by, one, because I have the patience after spending so much time in prison, and two, because I find it fascinating. Everyone has their own story to tell, their own tales of love, regret and bad luck. But I don’t have that much time to give to such a passive pursuit now. That’s because there is one person in this crowd whom I have my eye on in particular: the brunette woman currently standing several yards to my left on this crowded platform.

There are dozens of people in between us, but I am making sure to keep my eyes on her more than anybody else. Unlike all these strangers whose life is still a mystery, this particular woman holds no secrets for me. I have been watching her for a while now, and I know everything about her, but importantly, she knows nothing about me.

Yet.

Her name is Amanda Abbott, and she is thirty-seven years old. She is from Brighton and lives in a two-bedroom flat near the town’s train station with her seventeen-year-old daughter, Louise. Every weekday, Amanda catches the 07:40 train and makes the sixty-minute commute from the coast into London, where she works a nine-to-five office job as a purchasing administrator. Then she boards the 17:35 service back home again. If her weekday routine seems dreary, her weekend one is even worse. She spends most of it cooped up in her flat, leaving only for food shopping or a short walk along the windy seafront. Her love life is non-existent, and her social life seems just as scarce. From what I have gathered, this is not down to any lack of looks or social skills, but rather a dogged determination to use almost every spare minute she has outside of her employment to focus on her number one goal in life.

Amanda wants to be an author.

I haven’t read any of Amanda’s work yet, and I’m not planning on doing so. I don’t need to know what she dreams up in her imagination every day. I only need to know what her reality is, and after the last few weeks, I have a pretty good idea of that. She’s just an average woman, working an average job, dreaming of bigger and better things. I doubt she is any different from any of the other people standing between us on this platform right now. A commuter preparing for another commute.

How ordinary.

But there is one thing that makes Amanda stand out from this crowd. It’s the thing that has kept me awake at night with excitement and anticipation of this day right here. It’s the fact that unlike most sensible people in society, Amanda doesn’t keep her money in a bank.

It’s easy in my position at one of the busiest train stations in Central London to get pushed off course by a stream of rude passengers or be deafened by all the chatter, the public address system, and screeching of brakes as the locomotives go up and down the tracks. If I had to do this every day, then I’d probably kill myself, and I’m only slightly exaggerating. I’d definitely rather be back in prison, that’s for sure.