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

JAMES

I hate waiting. I feel as if it’s what I’ve spent most of my day doing so far. Waiting for the right time to call around at Louise’s flat. Waiting for the safe code. And now finally, waiting for the train that will take me out of England and help me leave behind the women I stole from and the partner I screwed over in the process.

I just want to get moving. I hate inaction. But there is still twenty minutes until the Eurostar is due to depart, so for the time being, I’m stuck here in this departures lounge with the rest of the passengers who are waiting to go to Amsterdam.

It’s not that I’m nervous about being caught before I can flee the country. My chances of being stopped now are slim, mainly because I’m moving so fast that I’ll be long gone before anyone can catch up with me. I suspect my partner is still sitting in that pub on the Brighton seafront, and while he has surely figured out by now that he has been double-crossed, he will have no idea where I am and how to stop me. Our plan was to board the Eurostar to Paris tomorrow morning, so perhaps he thinks he will be able to catch me at this station then. But he’ll be disappointed when he doesn’t see me here because I’ll be long gone by then.

Looking down at the rucksack by my feet, I long to unzip it and take another look at the contents. All that money just waiting to be spent. I’m going to have some serious fun with it soon, but this is not the time to draw any attention to myself. Right now, I just need to look like a normal English tourist heading to Holland for some fun.

I glance up at the screen above my head to double-check that the service is still running on time, which it is, before I plan to close my eyes and have a moment’s rest after what has been an eventful day. But the vibration from my mobile phone in my pocket disrupts me, and I take it out to see that it’s my partner calling me again. He’s already tried me several times, as well as having sent me a series of text messages, but they have all gone unanswered, just like this one will. I’m tempted to just turn my phone off, but then he will know for sure that I’ve screwed him—leaving it on at least makes it plausible that I’m currently distracted and unable to get back to him. The longer he is uncertain about what I have done to him, the better, and the text message that flashes up on my phone now confirms that he still has no idea what I am up to.

“Where are you? I’m getting worried. Can you still make it to the pub?”

I smile at my partner’s naivete and feel tempted to text back that I’m on my way. But I don’t want to play with him too much. The poor man will be suffering enough once he learns that all his hard work following Amanda over the last weeks has gone to waste, as well as everything that he went through on that train with her today. But I don’t feel bad for him. Not one bit. That’s because I know he can be equally as ruthless as I am being right now. I learnt that in prison when I watched him stand by as a fellow inmate whom he called a friend was beaten by several other prisoners, and he did nothing to step in and help. There is a cold streak beneath that slick persona of his, and I have no doubt that he would have looked to screw me over at the first opportunity at some point in the future if I didn’t get in there first.

Nor do I feel sorry for Christine, my ex-girlfriend, who kindly offered me a place to stay upon my release from prison, only for me to ditch her and disappear while she slept. She’s not a bad person, but she’s hardly a winner, and I can’t hope to go far in life taking somebody like her along for the ride. That’s why I sneaked out of her flat this afternoon while she was asleep, stuffing the few belongings I had into my rucksack and heading round to Louise’s to put the plan into action. Christine has probably woken up by now and realised that my stuff has gone, and she probably feels hurt that I used her, but she’ll get over it, just like my partner will. Besides, she’s no saint either. I know she’s been stealing money from that casino she works at, and the only reason I didn’t try to get a piece of that action was because the potential profit was too small. She’s happy skimming a few pounds here and there from her employers, but I need so much more than that to make it worth my time. That’s why she’s still stuck in that grotty flat in Brighton with a few pounds to her name, and I’m about to board a train to Amsterdam with thousands of pounds to mine.

That just leaves Louise as the other person I have betrayed today. Unlike my partner and Christine, as far as I know, she has never been guilty of a crime and so probably doesn’t deserve what I have done to her and her mother. She’s just a typical teenager, unsure of her path in life and thinking that every guy that shows an interest in her is doing so because he loves her. I’ll have taught her several important lessons today, the most important one of which is that she shouldn’t trust anybody, and that even extends to her mother, who clearly had way more money saved in that safe than she had been letting on.

What does Amanda think about what has happened today? Does