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

them as the woman at the door last night. It’s highly unlikely that she would. These people are supposed to be friends of mine, not foes, but it might be worth a shot, and at least it will show her that I am serious about trying to get to the bottom of this. I think the worst thing I could do when it comes to this situation is to try and sweep it under the rug because that might look suspicious. Instead, I’m going to tackle it head-on and hopefully get to the bottom of it.

If somebody was playing a game with us then they are going to wish that they hadn’t.

Tapping my thumb on the app that I do all my social networking on, I go to my list of friends and start scrolling, looking out for any and all blondes on there. I feel like I’m some seedy guy hunting around for a specific type of woman on a seedy website, but my intentions are pure.

I just want to know who that bloody woman was at the door.

It doesn’t take long for me to find a few blondes, and I screenshot their images for later use. It seems silly to do this because many of these women are either good friends or have been in my real-world life for years, but I can’t discriminate. I don’t have much to go off other than hair colour, so that is what I will work on.

After ten minutes of scrolling and screenshotting, I’m a little surprised at how many blonde women I have on my friends list. It’s not exactly a harem, but there’s a few. Five more minutes go by before I reach the bottom of the list and feel satisfied that I have done all I can there. I will wait for Rebecca to wake up and then show her the images if she wants to see them, and perhaps we get lucky and find the culprit. Or maybe it would be unlucky because if the woman is on my friends list, she is no longer a friend of mine.

Returning my phone to the bedside table, I long to stand up and stretch out, but Rebecca seems so peaceful beside me that I don’t want to cause her to stir. I’m just glad she is sleeping because I had been worried that she would be up all night thinking about all sorts of things regarding that damn woman. But the gentle sounds of her soft snoring let me know that she must have enough peace of mind to get some rest, and I’m happy for her to stay that way for as long as possible. Besides, it’s Sunday morning, and if a person can’t have a lie-in on a Sunday morning, when can they?

I’ve always liked Sundays, sometimes more than Saturdays. Some people don’t like them because it’s the day before another working week begins, but that doesn’t bother me. Unlike most people, I don’t hate my job and spend half the weekend dreading going back to it. I know Rebecca dislikes Sunday nights with a passion and is very much a Saturday girl, but I’m a Sunday guy all the way. Newspapers in the morning, a good roast dinner in a pub in the afternoon, and an entertaining couple of episodes of a British boxset in the evening. It’s hard to beat that.

Let’s just hope today goes better than yesterday.

It’s a couple of minutes later when I feel Rebecca moving beside me in the bed, and I look over to see her opening her eyes and squinting in the bright light penetrating that pathetic excuse for a curtain.

Maybe today will be the day when I go and buy that black-out blind.

Or maybe not.

As Rebecca’s eyesight adjusts, I smile at her, and she gives me a smile back, although it’s not as warm as it usually is. Or maybe I’m just reading too much into it. She’s just woken up, after all. I need to give her a chance. But to make sure that things really are still okay between us, I reach out an arm and put it over her waist, letting her know that she is to snuggle in closer to me, and she takes the invitation, which is a good sign. As we kiss, I feel like everything is okay, and I’m almost tempted not to bring up the screenshots on my phone for her to look at. But then she speaks, and it lets me know that the awkward situation last night is still very much on her mind.

‘I dreamt about giving that woman a slap,’ she says, and I laugh when I realise that she is joking.

‘I wish I’d seen her so I could visualise that too. She definitely deserves it.’

‘I’m not sure that a man beating up a woman is okay, even in a dream,’ Rebecca replies, and she might have a point.

‘Fair enough,’ I say before reaching over and picking up my phone from the bedside table.

‘I’ve had a couple of ideas while you were sleeping about possibly figuring out who this woman might be,’ I say before running her through my two ideas which consist of the screenshots and asking Steve for a look at his camera footage.

She tells me that they’re both worth a shot, so I give her my phone, and she starts looking at the images.

I let her go through them in silence so as not to distract her, but it seems we have no luck.

‘No, it’s not any of them,’ she tells me after a couple of minutes, and I feel disappointed, although this was hardly a fool-proof plan.

‘Oh well, it was worth a try,’ I say, taking back my phone. ‘I’ll get dressed and call around at Steve’s later then.’

‘Can I come?’ she asks me, and I’m a little surprised that she wants to considering that I know she doesn’t like Steve, or rather, she doesn’t like his attitude towards women. It’s not that Steve