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

try and kill me. I couldn’t really blame them for hating me. I’d hate me too if I was an innocent wife who had lost her husband because of a lie and a few strategically placed ‘clues.’

That is why I must remain anonymous.

It could literally be a matter of life or death.

But I also have to stay busy because this is a business I’m running, and I’m only as good as my last job. That’s why I’m back to work again today dealing with a new client. I’m in Bristol, and I’ve just had a meeting with a lovely young woman called Zara. She has told me all about her problem, and it’s a very familiar one.

She is in love with a man who has a wife.

Zara gave me the man’s name, the explanation of how she met him at her weekly gym class and a very impassioned description of why she likes him so much. He’s funny, he’s smart, he’s handsome. All the usual things that can make a woman drawn to a man. But he’s also loyal. Zara knows as much because she made a pass at him a month ago while they were together in the corner of a crowded bar after their class went for post-exercise drinks. He had politely turned her down based on the fact that he was married, which was commendable, as well as frustrating. Zara had apologised for her behaviour, afraid that he would hate her for trying something with him, but he had been far too polite to do that, and the pair remained friends, which was good news for my client in one way, but in another way, it was torture.

Zara wanted him.

And she heard that I had ways of potentially making that happen.

I do all my advertising online, but I’m not on social media or anything like that. I simply browse message boards and forums, reading about people who are posting on subjects like unrequited love and what it feels like to find somebody perfect only to have been beaten to them by somebody else. I would sit and read these posts, as well as the comments beneath them from strangers offering their advice.

“Forget about him. You’re not meant to be together.”

“She’s not worth it. There’s someone else out there for you.”

“Unrequited love is the worst. I’m going through the same thing too. I wish I could help.”

It seemed like this was a big problem in society, but more importantly, it seemed like there was nobody out there who was solving it. The advice of “move on and forget about them” was not very helpful to somebody in love. They didn’t want to move on. They wanted to be happy.

And to be happy, they needed the other person.

Having seen this ‘gap in the market’, I had begun to drop myself into these online conversations and provide my own pearls of wisdom. But instead of letting people down gently with token platitudes, I made it clear that there was another option.

I said that the problem was the other man or woman that the subjects were married to.

If they were out of the equation, anything could happen.

It started with one client, as all businesses do. A woman sent me a private message on one of the forums after seeing my group posts, and she asked me what I meant by them. That was when I told her that I had conceived a system that gave people like her a chance with the person they wanted to be with.

I started out by only charging a little. I wasn’t entirely sure if it was going to work on demand, after all. But it did. I knew I had something when I got a message from that same woman a few months later telling me that she was now dating the man she desired after he had left his wife due to accusations of cheating levelled against her by me.

My system worked.

It needed ironing out, but it worked.

Thus, my business was born.

But I already knew that because I had tried it before that first customer. I had tried it in my personal life. How do you think I came to be online browsing forums about unrequited love in the first place?

I knew what it was like to want somebody that I couldn’t have.

I also knew the kind of things that needed to be done to get them.

21

REBECCA

It’s Saturday night, but this is no longer my favourite night of the week. That’s because it doesn’t consist of any of the things that it used to. There’s no takeaway on the sofa. There’s no movie on the TV. And there’s no Sam sitting beside me laughing.

There’s just me, alone in the house, with nothing to do but worry.

I told my husband that I needed some space last night during our ill-fated meal with Ally and Phil. He was shocked when I told him that, but I had to say it because it’s the truth. I do need space. I need to think about things, and I can’t do that with him around because it’s only making me more confused. Sam assumed it was just going to be a one night thing and that he would be able to come back home today. But I told him that I needed more time than that, which is why he has taken a few more of his things and gone back to his hotel.

Just like me, he is going to be spending Saturday night alone.

At least I assume he is.

Who knows what he will really be up to?

I’m standing by the toaster, waiting for my bread to pop up because this is all I’m having for dinner tonight. I could have got a takeaway even though I’m on my own, but I’m not in the mood for it. I just want to eat enough to keep me going and then climb into bed and close my eyes. This is not what weekends are about, and I hope