WMG / Nocturnal Animals

There is no book.

The entire film is presented from Susan's perspective. We know that Susan is not sleeping, is forgetting things, is having hallucinations. So it's not unreasonable to question the reality that we're presented with.

It's possible then that there never was a book Nocturnal Animals. She concocted the notion out of her guilt about what happened to her late husband, who committed suicide after she aborted his child and left him for another man. That's why Edward doesn't show up to their dinner at the end of the film - he died years ago.

In this novel she's imagined for herself, she envisions herself as Ray. Laura doesn't represent her - if she did, she'd be played by Amy Adams, just like how Tony, who does represent Edward, is played by the same actor as Edward. Laura instead represents the idea of Susan that Edward invented (after all, when Edward tells Susan what he thought of her in high school, she compliments him on the imaginative fictional character he's come up with). No, Susan is represented in the novel by Ray, whose gang are clearly the "nocturnal animals" of the title, just as Edward used to call Susan a "nocturnal animal". And Ray does in the novel what Susan blames herself for: he kills Tony/Edward's child (Susan's phone call to her daughter was imagined as well; she aborted that child, never had a daughter), he kills Laura (the cherished "fictional" image of Susan was destroyed when she betrayed Edward), and he ultimately breaks Tony/Edward down emotionally, making him feel weak and useless, and leading to him ending his own life.

Susan didn't have the abortion.

The sequence involving the abortion clinic involved her and Hutton showing up to assess the option and set an appointment. Seeing Edward outside the car both scared and guilted Susan out of it, choosing instead to have the baby. This is supported by the fact that, upon reading the scene in the novel where Tony's wife and daughter are discovered dead, Susan immediately calls... her daughter, who is 1) played by someone who resembles the daughter in the novel, and 2) is "introduced" in the exact same position as the dead body in the book. In other words, she is also Edward's daughter.

So why does Edward seem to think otherwise? Well, the entire film established that he has a hard time admitting he is in the wrong about anything, and once he feels hurt about something, he throws himself into a "victim" mentality. Upon discovering Susan and Hutton outside the clinic, he assumed the worst. And it's indicated from the beginning that he hasn't returned Susan's calls for years. In other words, Susan had tried to call him after the incident to explain that their daughter is still alive, but he wouldn't even pick up the phone. Susan's guilt comes mainly from driving him away and causing him to believe the worst about her, with no chance for reconciliation.

• Actually upon reading the screenplay adapted by Tom Ford it says there that the girl we see is Samantha Morrow, and she's only 16, living in a Boarding School (hence the whole unsupervised boyfriend thing). So, no, Susan did have the abortion back then.