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

I have thought about messaging Maria and telling her to forget about it for the fear that she might be up all night worrying about seeing me in the office in the morning, but I’ve decided to leave it. As drunk as she is, I’m just as drunk too, so messaging anybody in my current state is not a good idea. Instead, I’m just going to lie down on my hotel bed and try and get some sleep so I’m not too hungover when I hand that report to Ed tomorrow.

As I sink into the lumpy mattress that contains none of the comfy contours that my bed at home has, I turn my thoughts away from Maria and think of my wife instead. God, I miss her. I just want to see her and ask her how her day was. I just want to make her laugh and witness that smile of hers when I tell her about my day. And I just want to have her head on my chest as we fall asleep together, me stroking her hair while she whispers something about the future and all the exciting things that we have ahead of us.

But that’s not happening. I’m here all alone, and she is elsewhere. Maybe at home or maybe with her parents. Wherever she is, I just hope she is missing me too. But I doubt it.

I expected that I would fall asleep quickly after consuming so many beers tonight, but that isn’t the case, and I’m still awake thirty minutes after lying down and closing my eyes. That’s annoying because these days, sleep is the only way I get to switch off. Being awake means thinking about my troubles, and I’ve had enough of thinking about them.

Getting up off the bed, I go into the tiny bathroom that comes with this hotel room and pour myself a glass of water from the tap. Chugging it down my parched throat, I pour myself another before returning to the bed and slumping down onto the edge of it.

Looking up, I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror on the wall opposite me, and I look as bad as I feel.

Dishevelled. Drunk.

Dire.

It’s easy to see why my wife might be better off without me when I look like this, although it’s also difficult to see why Maria was so interested in making a move on me this evening. I haven’t shaved for days, nor have I slept much, so I was hardly looking my best when she decided to go in for a kiss. But that’s the danger of drinking too much, I suppose.

Alcohol can turn anybody into an oil painting.

As I sit there looking pale and pathetic, I wonder how Maria is feeling. Maybe I should message her, after all. I hope she isn’t awake, fretting over things. I did genuinely mean it when I told her that it was okay and that she should just forget about what she did. But that might be easier said than done. We do have to work together for forty hours a week, and I’m not sure how plausible it is for either of us to completely forget what happened.

I am surprised that she did make a move, even though she was drunk. She knows all about Rebecca because I’ve told her about my wife plenty of times. She must have gotten a glimpse of the wedding ring on my finger every day when I was handing her papers and taking them back in return. And she has definitely seen the photo of Rebecca that I used to keep in my office to look at until Ed took over the company and told all staff to remove personal items from the office because it looked unprofessional.

With all that considered, it is strange that Maria would think that she could try and kiss me and that I might reciprocate. She must have known that I was going to say no, yet she tried it anyway. Maybe she is lonely herself, which is something I had never thought of as being a problem for her. Someone who looks that good surely doesn’t have any trouble finding a man, and I know there are plenty of men in the office who would happily trade in their wives to be with her, but appearances can be deceptive, I guess. She might be just as lonely as anybody else.

She might be just as lonely as me.

I’m glad that I didn’t tell Maria about my problems with Rebecca, although she could surely detect that something is not quite right with me. I’m not sure if she bought my lie about my worries over some ‘test results,’ and I’m almost certain that she saw through my poor attempt at pretending it was “a friend” who was having problems dealing with false accusations of cheating, figuring out that it was me I was talking about instead. But she didn’t probe, and I’m glad about that.

She just tried to kiss me instead.

A shiver runs through me as I think about how awkward it is going to be for the pair of us at work tomorrow. I need a way of breaking the ice quickly, making a joke and letting her know that everything is okay, and we can just carry on being the great teammates that we are. That should be simple enough, and it’s about time I had a simple task.

I’ve got more than my fair share of difficult ones still ahead of me.

As well as dealing with Maria and my hangover tomorrow, I am going to have to contact the private investigator again and tell her to do whatever she has to do to get me some answers. I can’t waste any more time on this. I can’t spend another night in this damn hotel. I’m also going to go back to my house after work and have another go at speaking with Rebecca. It might be a disaster, but I have to keep