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

be solved, like a game of Sudoku on a train or a Rubik’s cube on Christmas morning. But it’s not a puzzle. It’s so much more than that.

It’s our relationship.

My anger has subsided a little now, and that is how I’m able to finally stop pacing around and take a seat on the sofa. Sam seems relieved by that and comes to join me, sitting down beside me, although he opts not to try and take my hand again until he knows for sure that I’m not going to reject him for a second time.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ I confess, shaking my head and feeling my eyes watering. ‘I can’t believe this has happened.’

‘Neither can I. But it’s not true, Bec. I swear to God it’s not true.’

Sam sometimes calls me Bec, usually when he wants something or is trying to cheer me up. I guess in this case it is the latter, although it could be both. I guess he wants me to believe him.

But do I?

I wipe my eyes and take a deep breath as Sam gets up from the sofa and goes in search of a box of tissues. While he’s gone, I think about the man I married and everything I know about him because that is an important thing to do now. It’s important because it will be how I decide whether I believe him or not.

What do I know about him? I know that he is extremely caring, a trait he demonstrated when we first met after he gave up his seat for me on the tube one busy morning in London. I know that he is charming, a trait he proved when he chatted to me for the remainder of that tube journey before he asked me out for a drink later that week. And I know that he is generous, which he proved when he paid for not just one drink on that first date but several of them, as well as the meal we went on for our second date.

I know him to be a funny man, and he has made me laugh every day that I have been with him and never more so than during his speech on our wedding day. I know him to be a hardworking man, and he regularly puts in long days at the office where he works as a project consultant. And I know that he is honest because I have never caught him in a lie before and the only time that he kept something from me was when he had organised a surprise for Valentine’s Day last year.

Perhaps most importantly, I know that he is loyal, a quality he has demonstrated with his dedication to his employers, his support of his favourite football team, his availability to friends and family, and best of all, to me.

He adores me. He worships me.

He loves me.

So with all that I know about him, what is the verdict? Do I believe him, or do I believe that woman at the door?

I have my answer when he walks back into the room carrying a box of tissues for me.

See, there’s that caring side.

‘Here you go,’ he says as he re-takes his seat next to me and hands me the box.

I thank him and pull out a couple of tissues before wiping my eyes and dabbing at my nose. I hardly ever get emotional, not because I’m cold-hearted but because I’m usually able to stay in control and look at things logically. That’s one of my traits, which is why I have ended up working as an engineer for a small construction company. It’s also why I was able to process things and move on when a specialist told me that I wasn’t able to have children. I did shed some tears that day, but I was able to pull myself together fairly quickly thanks to the way my brain works. It sees a problem and it tries to solve it. This might be a very unexpected problem that I have to try and solve, but it doesn’t mean that I can’t do it.

Or rather, it doesn’t mean that we can’t do it.

‘I believe you,’ I say to Sam, reaching out for his hand and giving it a squeeze.

He looks relieved to hear me say it, but I’m afraid it’s not going to be that simple.

‘We need to find out who that woman was,’ I tell him, fixing him with a determined stare. ‘I need to know who she is. Otherwise, it’ll be impossible to forget about it.’

Sam nods his head and tells me that he understands. But he swears to me again that he has done nothing wrong and that he loves me. I smile and tell him that I know, then we hug.

The film is still on pause in the background, and until we find out who that mystery woman was, I feel like our relationship is on pause too.

4

SAM

The first thing that I needed to do was calm my wife down and make her believe me when I said that I had done nothing wrong with that woman. The second thing to do is figure out who the hell that woman was, and all I have to go on is what Rebecca can tell me about her.

‘What did she look like? Was she young? Old?’

‘I think she was around our age.’

‘What colour hair did she have?’

‘Blonde.’

‘Blonde...’ I repeat, mentally visualising all the blonde women that I have known in my life. But there’s been a few, although none of them who I could imagine would turn up on my doorstep and make false accusations.

‘Was she tall or short?’ I ask, although that’s probably not going to help me narrow it down much because of all the women I do know, none of them are tall.

‘I don’t know. I didn’t pay much attention to her looks. I was more concerned with what she was telling me.’

I think about that because it seems that it