Excerpt from The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I think it's the voice. Soft and low. Slightly accented, which I was expecting, because his name is Dr. Kamal Abdic. I guess he must be midthirties, although he looks very young with his incredible dark honey skin. He has hands I could imagine on me, long and delicate fingers, I can almost feel them on my skin.

We don't talk about anything substantial, it's just the introductory session, the getting-to-know-you stuff; he asks me what the trouble is and I tell him about the panic attacks, the insomnia, the fact that I lie awake at night too frightened to fall asleep. He wants me to talk a bit more about that, but I'm not ready yet. He asks me whether I take drugs, drink alcohol. I tell him I have other vices these days, and I catch his eye and I think he knows what I mean. Then I feel as if I ought to be taking this a bit more seriously, so I tell him about the gallery closing and that I feel at a loose end all the time, my lack of direction, the fact that I spend too much time in my head. He doesn't talk much, just the occasional prompt, but I want to hear him speak, so as I'm leaving I ask him where he's from.

"Maidstone," he says, "in Kent. But I moved to Corly a few years back." He knows that wasn't what I was asking; he gives me a wolfish smile.

Scott is waiting for me when I get home, he thrusts a drink into my hand, he wants to know all about it. I say it was OK. He asks me about the therapist: did I like him, did he seem nice? OK, I say again, because I don't want to sound too enthusiastic. He asks me whether we talked about Ben. Scott thinks everything is about Ben. He may be right. He may know me better than I think he does.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2012

MORNING

I woke early this morning, but I did sleep for a few hours, which is an improvement on last week. I felt almost refreshed when I got out of bed, so instead of sitting on the terrace I decided to go for a walk.

I've been shutting myself away, almost without realizing it. The only places I seem to go these days are to the shops, my Pilates classes and the therapist. Occasionally to Tara's. The rest of the time, I'm at home. It's no wonder I get restless.

I walk out of the house, turn right and then left onto Kingly Road. Past the pub, the Rose. We used to go there all the time; I can't remember why we stopped. I never liked it all that much, too many couples just the right side of forty drinking too much and casting around for something better, wondering if they'd have the courage. Perhaps that's why we stopped going, because I didn't like it. Past the pub, past the shops. I don't want to go far, just a little circuit to stretch my legs.

It's nice being out early, before the school run, before the commute gets going; the streets are empty and clean, the day full of possibility. I turn left again, walk down to the little playground, the only rather poor excuse for green space we have. It's empty now, but in a few hours it will be swarming with toddlers, mothers and au pairs. Half the Pilates girls will be here, head to toe in Sweaty Betty, competitively stretching, manicured hands wrapped around their Starbucks.

I carry on past the park and down towards Roseberry Avenue. If I turned right here I'd go up past my gallery—what was my gallery, now a vacant shop window—but I don't want to, because that still hurts a little. I tried so hard to make a success of it. Wrong place, wrong time—no call for art in suburbia, not in this economy. Instead, I turn right, past the Tesco Express, past the other pub, the one where people from the estate go, and back towards home. I can feel butterflies now, I'm starting to get nervous. I'm afraid of bumping into the Watsons, because it's always awkward when I see them; it's patently obvious that I don't have a new job, that I lied because I didn't want to carry on working for them.

Excerpted from The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. Copyright © 1905 by Paula Hawkins. Excerpted by permission of Riverhead Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.