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

together and make some kind of false assumption about what the pair of us might be up to outside of work. But then I dismiss the thought and tell myself that I don’t care even if a colleague does see us heading for the exit together. That’s because, just like the situation with the woman at the door, I am innocent. I am sick of feeling bad for things I haven’t done wrong, and I am doing nothing wrong now, so I have nothing to feel bad about. This is just a drink with a colleague, a colleague who has helped me out enormously today. That’s all it is.

In the end, my brief worry that somebody from work might see us leaving the office was wasted anyway because there was nobody else around. Everyone has already gone home, so Maria and I left without being seen.

Or at least I thought we had.

It turns out that I had been seen, though.

And I had been seen by the worst possible person.

35

REBECCA

I’d gone to Sam’s office because I wanted to show him the letter that I had perhaps prematurely thrown into the bin after I had first read it. I had taken it out and put on my coat before boarding a train and heading into London with the intention of confronting him with it at his place of work. I could have done it elsewhere, but I wasn’t patient enough to wait, and I knew exactly where he would be, so I went ahead and reached his office. I had then spoken to the man on the reception and asked if Sam was in, which had been confirmed, before being seconds away from asking if I could see him. But then I had paused, suddenly aware that this might not be the best thing to do in my situation.

As much as I was feeling angry and betrayed at the contents of the letter, which had only backed up my fears after all the other things had happened, there had still been some part of me that had realised that an argument with my husband in his workplace might not have been the fairest thing to do to him. Just because his personal life was falling apart around him, it didn’t mean that his professional life had to take a hit too. Even though he was in the wrong and I was in the right, I still cared about him enough to give him the respect of not embarrassing him in front of his colleagues. That was why I had left the reception and gone back outside, deciding that I was going to wait until he was finished with his duties before speaking to him about the letter.

I had gone and bought myself a coffee from the stall on the corner before taking a seat on a bench opposite Sam’s office and keeping my eyes on the door to make sure I didn’t miss him when he came out. It had been late afternoon then, so I knew it wouldn’t have been too long until he finished, and I was happy enough to wait because it was either this or go back to my empty house and think about how I would probably have to sell it now because it held too many memories of the man who had let me down.

It had also been pleasant to sit in the sunshine that had been peeking through the gaps in the tall buildings in this busy part of London, and I had almost enjoyed my time on that bench, even if I knew that darker times were ahead when Sam came out of that door and I told him about the letter. But time had gone by, as it has a nasty habit of doing, and the sun had slipped away behind the tall buildings leaving me sitting in the shade and feeling much colder than I had been feeling earlier. I had seen several people leaving the office as they finished their shifts, but none of them were my husband, and I wondered if he was going to be working late, meaning I would need to text him to let him know that I was here instead of ambushing him when he came out. It had been as I had taken out my phone to make contact with him when I had seen him finally leaving the office.

But he hadn’t been on his own.

I had watched from my seat on the bench as my husband had walked away with another woman, laughing and joking as they went. As much as I had been hating my husband for what had happened recently, the fact that he had always protested his innocence had made me wonder if he was struggling when I wasn’t around and finding it hard to come to terms with his marriage being on the rocks. But I guess that was silly of me to think like that because Sam was clearly not struggling.

He looked perfectly fine to me, and why wouldn’t he be? He was walking away with a very attractive woman, and as I came to find out, he wasn’t just walking with her to the train station.

He walked with her all the way into a bar.

I had wanted to go into that same bar behind them and see for myself just how much of a good time they were having in there, but I decided against it because I simply didn’t have the energy for a potential argument. That’s because I felt winded, as if someone had punched me in the stomach and I was struggling to get my breath while they stood over me and laughed. That was how it felt when I saw Sam walking away from his office with a big grin on his face while his pretty colleague smiled beside him.

How could he go for a drink with another woman when his marriage was falling apart?

How could he go out and have fun when he