The Woman At The Door, Daniel Hurst [world best books to read TXT] 📗

THE WOMAN AT THE DOOR

DANIEL HURST

www.danielhurstbooks.com

Copyright © 2021 by Daniel Hurst

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by an electronic or mechanical means, including information storage or retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

PROLOGUE

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

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47

A Letter from the Author

Also By Daniel Hurst

About The Author

PROLOGUE

It all started with a knock on the door.

If only I hadn’t answered it, all of this might never have happened. Things certainly would have been different.

My perfect marriage wouldn’t have been blown up.

My love for my husband wouldn’t have been put to the test.

I certainly wouldn’t have kicked him out.

But the past can’t be changed. The fact remains that there was a knock at the door, and I went and answered it. That was the moment that my whole life changed. Such a simple, stupid moment. It should have been a completely forgettable thing, like taking out the bin bags or stubbing a toe on the corner of a doorframe.

A non-event. Tediously dull.

Just life.

But that knock at the door was so much more than that. It changed my life forever.

That’s because it was the first time that I saw her.

The woman at the door changed everything. Nothing was ever the same again after she came calling. I hated her, yet in some twisted way, I also feel like I admired her. She was my complete opposite in almost every single way, and there was something fascinating in that.

There was something so simple about the way in which she broke my life apart.

I can’t stop thinking about her.

The woman at the door.

Why did you have to knock?

1

REBECCA

You can’t beat a Saturday night. For my money, it’s the best time of the week, and I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking that. Friday nights are great, don’t get me wrong, but they are often laced with the fatigue that comes at the end of five full working days. Those evenings were much livelier when I was younger and sleep deprivation wasn’t a factor in my life, but these days, I’m usually in bed at ten on a Friday. Maybe I shouldn’t admit that. I’ve still got two years to go until my fortieth birthday, so I can hardly put my end-of-week weariness down to age. But it is what it is.

Fridays used to be the best.

But not anymore.

Sunday nights have been, are and always will be the worst night of the week. I think we can all agree on that. I’ve hated them since childhood when my parents would make me take a bath in preparation for a new school week, and I continue to hate them to this day as I get ready to go back to the office on Monday morning. Sunday nights are a dead zone. It’s technically still the weekend, but you can’t do any fun weekend things like getting drunk or having a night away in a hotel room in the country. That’s because you have to be ready to go in the morning when the rat race commences again, and it’s hard to do that if you’re hungover or on the other side of the country from wherever your workplace might be.

I got drunk on a Sunday night once.

The Monday morning was so bad that I’ve never done it again.

Yes, there’s no doubt in my mind that Saturday nights are the best night of the week. Fresh from a good night’s sleep and a long lie-in, the first day of the weekend can be spent doing whatever I wish. Shopping for too many things. Eating too many calories. Drinking too many calories. Saturdays are fun, and it means that by the time the evening comes around, I’m feeling refreshed, revitalised and ready for romance. My husband and I have a Saturday night tradition. We order an Indian takeaway, we pick a good movie to watch, and we curl up on the sofa to spend an enjoyable few hours in each other’s company. We don’t judge the other one on how much curry we eat, and we don’t fight over what film to watch. That’s because we’re far too comfortable with each other to care.

I’ve been married to Sam for three years, but we were together for eight years before that. That’s a long time in anybody’s book, well, anybody’s except my parents. They have been together for fifty years and make jokes about how my relationship is still in its infancy. But eleven years is definitely a long time, and it explains why Sam and I are so settled with each other. Some people in their late thirties might want to spend their Saturday nights out on the town, clinging onto their last remnants of youth by drinking in dodgy pubs and trying to hold a conversation where the music is too loud to hold one. But not us. We’re happy to hurtle headlong into middle age right here on our sofa with a masala and a couple of poppadoms in front of us and the smug and satisfied glow that comes with knowing that we are everything that the other person needs.

‘Have you got any naan bread left?’

Sam’s query is a simple one, and I reply with a simple answer.

‘Yeah. Help yourself.’

I see Sam’s hand reach out for the large piece of bread sitting by my plate and smile, not because he is taking my food but because I knew he would. He does this every week. He starts by telling me that he is cutting down on carbs, so he will not be ordering any naan from the takeaway. I ask him if he is sure because I know how much he likes to dip the bread