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

But you didn’t deserve to find out that way. Maybe I should have just written a letter and told you like that instead of standing on your doorstep and blurting it out. I imagine it must have come as quite a shock to you. I hope you are okay. Please understand that it was never my intention to hurt you. I was just trying to get back at your husband after he hurt me.

Sam and I slept together just over a month ago like I said last week. I know it was wrong, of both him and me, but it happened. Even though I hate him now, I cared deeply for him after that and thought there was the chance of something more between us. He had certainly led me to believe that there would be. But in the end, he decided to stop communicating with me, as if he could just forget about what had happened and go back to his life without a second thought for me.

But that wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t fair on me, and it wasn’t fair on you.

You didn’t deserve what we did behind your back, but you did deserve to find out about it, so you have all the facts and know exactly what kind of man you are married to.

I hope you are okay but understand that things might not be easy for you now. Again, I am sorry about this, though I don’t expect to ever earn your forgiveness. I just wish you all the best, whatever you decide to do.

I turn the piece of paper over to check that there isn’t any more writing on the back, but it’s blank. This is all there is, although there’s more than enough here to wrap my head around. It’s a letter from the woman who my husband cheated on me with.

It’s a letter from the woman who came to the door.

She has clarified her comments that night, as well as expressed remorse at her actions, both that evening and the evening over a month ago when she slept with a married man. While any apology from this woman is not worth the paper it’s written on, I do still find it intriguing that she has decided to make contact with me this way. As much as I hate her and despise what she did, the fact that she seems sorry suggests that she isn’t the biggest villain in all of this.

That would be Sam, the man who has screwed us both, literally and figuratively.

I put the letter down and decide that I need a drink before I read it again. Going into the fridge, I’m relieved to find that there is one more can of vodka and tonic at the back, and I take it out and open it up. Then I retake my seat and study the letter again as I drink, my eyes scanning the words that were composed by the hand of the woman who tempted my husband to break my heart. I remember her being attractive from the night I saw her at my front door, but it’s clear from the way she has written this letter that she is also smart too. It is very well put together and structured, even though I hate every word of it, and I wonder which quality it was exactly that proved irresistible to my husband in the end.

Her brains or her beauty?

It was probably a combination of the two, just like Sam said it was a combination of those two attributes that had caused him to want to see me again after our first date.

To him, I had beauty and brains, and he liked that.

He obviously liked it about this other woman too.

Damn him and his weakness for the opposite sex. I wish this woman had been boring and plain so he would never have been interested in her. But I also wish that I had been boring and plain that day on the tube too because then Sam might never have given up his seat for me and started talking to me, and he would never have ended up being the man who I fell in love with and walked down the aisle for.

But it’s too late for that now.

What’s done is done. This letter is proof of that.

I decide to treat it like the politicians’ leaflets and screw it up before tossing it into the bin to join them. I don’t need to read that letter again.

Nor do I ever need to see the man who is mentioned in it either.

34

SAM

I’m emboldened by the fact that my private investigator has been able to track down the woman who has ruined my life. I’m also feeling sick about the fact that I could soon be giving the word to my PI to undertake illegal activities. It’s been quite the day, and the envelope sitting on my desk is just one more crazy part of it.

I lean forward and pick it up, taking out the photos inside and looking again at the images of Alexandra. Everything about the pictures irritates me. The way she is holding her cup of coffee. The way she is sitting bathed in glorious sunlight. And the fact that I had to pay somebody a thousand pounds just to take these damn pictures.

The next time I see Alexandra, I hope I get more pleasure from it. A photo of her being hauled into the back of a police car would be nice, but there’s a long way to go until Erica and I can prove any wrongdoing on this woman’s part. I’ll see what the PI can dig up by more legal means before I go ahead and give her the word to sneak into Alexandra’s home and start planting things. But it’s the thought that Alexandra must have snuck into my home and planted things of her own which means I am willing to fight fire with fire if I have