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

thousands of pounds richer. The only person who isn’t happy in the end is Stella, but not everyone can be a winner. But she’ll move on and find somebody new eventually, so I don’t spend too much time worrying about her.

That’s my business. That’s how it works. And that’s exactly what I am doing to Rebecca and Sam right now for my client. I am planting seeds. I am creating distrust. And I am about to bring their whole marriage tumbling down.

How exciting.

Is it any wonder that I can’t wait to get back to work?

16

REBECCA

I’m glad it’s Friday because that means work is over for another week. But as every female knows, a woman’s work is never done, and so it proves now because while I have finished at my workplace, I still have plenty of chores to be getting on with around the home. The first task is to put a wash on, so I pick up the basket in the bedroom and carry it downstairs. Working in construction tends to mean an early finish on a Friday, and I’ve always enjoyed that about the industry. In my younger days, it would mean that I was able to start drinking earlier than my other friends ahead of our Friday nights out, but now that I’m older and somewhat more sensible, it simply means I can get home quicker and get some menial tasks out of the way so that I don’t have to do them on the weekend. Nobody wants to do dirty washing, but it has to be done, so I might as well get it out of the way.

But I’m not completely boring these days. I do have more exciting plans tonight after the chores are done. Sam and I are going out with one of my best friends and her partner for a meal, and it should be fun. But before the fun comes the chores.

Reaching the utility room, I put the basket down and take off the lid before pulling out the dirty garments inside and tossing them into the washing machine. I’ve decided to do a white wash, so I filter the clothes going into the machine, making sure that I don’t make a mistake and put something colourful in there. It’s mainly Sam’s work shirts that are going in, and I roll down the sleeves and open up the collars on all of them so that they get a thorough wash during the cycle. But it’s as I am opening up the collar on the third white shirt that I’m about to put into the machine when I see it.

A red mark on the collar.

Lipstick?

It certainly looks that way. But how has lipstick come to be on my husband’s shirt? It certainly isn’t mine because I don’t wear lipstick during the week and that’s when Sam wears these shirts. It must have come from somebody else. But who? And how did it get on here?

I know it’s important not to overreact and read too much into something because the chances are that it has a simple and innocent explanation, but these are not simple or fully innocent times. This is still the same week that a woman came to my door and told me that my husband had cheated on me. While that was shocking, there was no evidence anywhere at all to back up that claim.

But now there might be.

I decide to keep the suspicious shirt out of the wash so that I can show it to Sam when he gets in and ask him if there is any reason why there is lipstick on his collar. Maybe there is. Maybe there is a perfectly good explanation, and there’s nothing to worry about.

But maybe that woman at the door was telling me the truth.

Maybe my husband has been up to things that he shouldn’t have been behind my back.

I grit my teeth and tell myself to not get too emotional or worked up until I have spoken to him. But that’s easier said than done, and I decide to take out my phone to give him a call and see where he is. Hopefully he has left his office now and is almost home, so I don’t have too long to wait to have this conversation. I could ask him about the lipstick over the phone, but I want to be able to see his face when I do.

I want to see his reaction to my discovery.

I hold my mobile to my ear as I wait for him to pick up but he doesn’t, so my call goes to voicemail. I hang up before leaving a message and decide to type out a quick text instead.

What time will you be home?

Then I put my phone down on top of the washing machine beside the incriminating item of clothing and take a deep breath.

I’m going to have to be patient.

But it doesn’t mean I have to be sober.

Walking into the kitchen, I go into the fridge and take out a small can of vodka and tonic. I like these little cans because they’re not too big and they’re much easier than having to pour the drink myself. All I have to do is crack the lid open and take a sip.

The alcohol is refreshing as it should be on a Friday night after what has been an eventful week. It was Monday when I almost died at work, so I think this drink is well earned, regardless of what I have discovered tonight. It’s now almost been a week since that woman knocked on my front door, and I’d like to say that the time has flown since then, but it hasn’t. Every day has just been a dreary drag and filled with all sorts of worries and doubts about what she said to me. It’s funny to think that this time last week, I was a happy woman without a care in the world. I certainly didn’t have anything to worry about