by Daniel Hurst
As I push the button for the fourth floor, my head is throbbing as I try to process what has just happened to me. One second I was lying in bed waiting for my wife to come and join me and the next, I was banging on the bathroom door after she had locked herself in after finding some underwear in her drawer that didn’t belong to her. I can see how that might look bad, but I genuinely have no idea how that item of clothing came to be there.
Just like the lipstick.
And just like the woman at the door.
It’s clear that there is a pattern here, but it’s not one that covers me in any glory. There’s only so many times that I can tell Rebecca that I don’t know what is going on before she has a right to call me a liar and a cheat, and I have to see this from her point of view. Through her eyes, the pattern of events is one that proves I have been unfaithful. But I just wish she would try and see it from my point of view as well because, through my eyes, this pattern suggests one thing.
I’m being set up.
It’s an extremely troubling thought, but it’s the only one that makes sense, and it’s the overriding conclusion I came to while I was sitting in the back of the taxi this evening on my way to check in to this hotel again. I came to the conclusion based on something Rebecca had said during our last argument, which I had brushed over at the time but is now lodged in my mind.
Having been in a tailspin and trying to come up with a plausible excuse as to why somebody else’s underwear was in my wife’s drawer, I had said that somebody else must have put it there. In her rage, Rebecca had snarled back that “she put them here! Right after she fucked you in our bed!” While that last part had been terribly upsetting to hear because it simply wasn’t true, it was the first part of that sentence that has stuck with me.
“She put them here!”
It has to be her. The woman at the door. She must have got into my home and planted the underwear in Rebecca’s drawer. She must have put the lipstick on the shirt too. This is all happening because of her, and it all started on the night she came to our house and knocked on our front door. That’s the only explanation I can think of. But my wife isn’t buying it. In her mind, the only explanation is that I have been caught in a lie and that I have betrayed her. Worryingly, that means it is unlikely that I’m going to be allowed back home to be with my wife again unless I can change her mind about things. But there’s only one way to do that.
As the elevator doors slide open to deposit me onto the fourth floor, I take out my mobile phone with my free hand and go searching for the text message from the private investigator. I find the message as I carry my overnight bag towards the door for room 414, and I call the number for the PI as soon as I’m inside the room and the door has closed behind me.
I drop my bag onto the bed, the same bed that I had hoped I’d seen the back of when I had left to go home earlier, before walking over to the window and hoping that I get a good enough phone reception in this position because hotels are notoriously bad for giving poor phone signal. Thankfully, I can hear the call connecting, and I’m relieved that I’m not going to have to go back downstairs and stand outside to try and get a good line to hold this conversation on.
‘Hello, Sam.’
The PI’s welcome is a simple one, but this conversation is about to get a lot more complex.
‘Erica. Thanks for picking up. I need your help.’
‘What is it?’
‘My wife’s just kicked me out again. She found a pair of women’s underwear in her drawer at home, but I have no idea how they got there. The only thing I can think of is that the woman who came to the door broke into my home and planted them there sometime this week.’
‘Okay, slow down,’ Erica advises me, but that’s easier said than done in my current state.
‘She’s doing all of this! I don’t know why but it has to be her! She’s trying to ruin my marriage!’
‘I understand, but I need you to keep calm and be patient. I’m looking into her, but it’s going to take a little time.’
‘I don’t have time! My wife is going to divorce me!’ I cry, and just uttering the dreaded ‘D’ word sends a shiver down my spine.
Is this who I am going to be, one of those men who society shuns because they cheated on their partner and ends up living out of a suitcase in a hotel whilst all their family and friends rally around the innocent party in the marriage? People will gossip about me and shake their heads in disgust, wondering how I could do such a thing to such a beautiful person like Rebecca. They will stop inviting me to things, either because they disagree with what I did or because their partners do, and they no longer wish to have anything to do with me. I won’t just lose my wife, I could lose my whole social circle, and worse, I could lose my respect as a human being. I’d have to start from scratch and rebuild a whole new life, and who wants to do that at any age, let alone mine? Not only that but I don’t want to have to start a new life. I like my life, and I love being married to Rebecca. Everything was great. Everything was perfect.
Or at least everything was until that woman came to the door.
‘I’ll give you a call tomorrow when I might have something,’ Erica tells me. ‘But in the meantime, I want you to take a few deep breaths and try and relax because trust me, if there is something going on here then we will get to the bottom of it.’
‘There is something going on! That’s what I’m trying to tell you!’
‘Goodbye, Sam.’
Erica hangs up, probably because nobody likes being shouted at down the phone, but I worry it’s also because she is unsure about the credibility of my claims. She either thinks that I’m telling the truth, in which case I am a very unlucky man. Or she will think that I have been cheating on my wife, and I’m now running through this whole elaborate scheme of hiring a private investigator just to make it look like I’m innocent. I really hope it’s the former, but it could be the latter.
She could just be humouring me and looking for a way to make a thousand pounds. She might think that I’m guilty as sin and that I deserve everything that is happening to me. She might be on Rebecca’s side, just like everybody else will be when my wife starts telling them all what has happened.
I slump down onto the bed beside my bag and bury my head in my hands. This is a disaster. My life is in ruins, and I haven’t done anything wrong.
What’s the point of that? What’s the point of playing by the rules if you’re going to lose anyway? I might as well have had an affair and had some fun because then at least I would have got something out of all this. Instead, I’m being treated like an adulterer when I’ve been nothing but faithful.
This is outrageous.
But this is now my life.
28
REBECCA
It’s very rare that I phone in sick from work, but I think I can be excused for making an exception today. I called my manager at six o’clock while the sun was still down because I knew that he would already be up and on his way to the site. There aren’t many construction workers who aren’t morning people. Thankfully, he bought my story about me having a terrible headache and a temperature, and he told me to get myself right and only come back to work when I’m feeling up to it. I know he would have been disappointed on the inside, not least because we have several important milestones coming up this week in the project, but he can hardly tell a sick woman to drag herself into the office, can he? I feel guilty for letting him down, but then again, I’ve been let down too.
I’ve been let down by the man I trusted more than anybody else in the world.
Sam is out of the house again, but this time, he is out for good. I’m not letting him back in again, no matter how much he might beg or tell me that he is innocent and hasn’t done anything wrong. I have to stay strong now and not waver in my treatment of him. He is the one who has made the mistake, so he is the one who should be punished.
So why must I be punished too?
It’s easy to look at the offending party in a marriag
e breakdown like this and think that they are the only ones who have been punished. After all, Sam has been booted out of his house and is now forced to live out of a bag in a poxy hotel room, far removed from home comforts and familiar faces. It seems like he has lost and I have won. But there are no winners here, nor is my husband the only one to be punished. I have been punished too because now I am the one sitting in an empty house, and I will be the one who has to put on a brave face in front of family and friends when they offer me their sympathies and ask if I am okay. Of course I’m not okay, I’m far from okay, but my struggle is internal while Sam’s is external. Everybody will see him moving out and starting again somewhere else, but they won’t see the damage this has caused to me on the inside.
The sucker punch to my stomach. The stab in the back.
The broken heart.
With work being one less thing to worry about today, I can try and get started on tackling some of my other problems, the overriding one being what to do about the complete disaster that is my marriage. To say I felt sick to discover another woman’s underwear in my bedroom would be an understatement, and that sickness hasn’t left me yet, even several hours since I first found those knickers in my drawer. They are no longer in the house, although I’m not exactly sure where they are now. That’s because I came out of the bathroom as Sam was leaving through the front door, and I threw them out at him as he went. I hope he picked them up off the driveway and disposed of them correctly, but he might have just left them lying there for any pedestrians to see as they stroll past my house. I imagine some people would get a good giggle at spotting ladies’ underwear outside a house, while some people might be mortified.
But one thing is for sure.
Their reaction to seeing it will never top mine.
Before I go over to the window and look out to see if there is any incriminating evidence on the driveway, I decide to pick up the phone and call my parents. So far, it’s only Ally who knows about my recent problems with Sam, but it’s time I let some more people in on the news. I purposely hadn’t told Mum and Dad about the woman at the door or the lipstick because I was still holding out hope that there was a more innocent explanation and, in that case, I wouldn’t have wanted to worry them, nor judge Sam sceptically if it did turn out that he had done nothing wrong. But now there is little doubt that he has been up to no good so it’s time to tell my parents about it and they can judge him all they want.
Mum and Dad always liked Sam and I know they will be shocked at what I am about to tell them he has done. Mum will probably feel that same wave of sickness in her stomach while Dad will most likely be consumed by an anger that I too have felt over these last few days. Mum will be disappointed while Dad will want revenge, but one thing that they will both have in common is that they will want what is best for me. It’s that knowledge that is making me call them now because I need the security that comes from having people who have my back unconditionally without making any judgements against me.
As the phone rings, I feel a strange sense of guilt come over me because I know that I am about to ruin my mum and dad’s day. They’re retired now, so they have most likely got a relaxing Monday planned, pottering around the garden or taking a drive out to the seaside for a nice walk. That’s what they tend to do during the week these days, and it’s nothing less than they deserve after a lifetime of hard work and providing for me as I grew up. But their pleasant existence is about to be shaken to its core by my admission that my perfect marriage is not as perfect as it once was, and now I am in desperate need of their support again. They would have thought that I was all settled in life with my husband, my home and my career and that they had done a great job in setting me up for adulthood, safe in the knowledge that I was well taken care of when they eventually came to pass away. But now I’m about to let them know that is not the case and that I’m in as much of a mess now at the age of thirty-eight as I was back when I was eighteen and coming home drunk with no idea what I was going to do with my life.
‘Hello, love.’
My father’s voice at the other end of the line instantly brings tears to my eyes because it’s good to hear him. This is one man who I can genuinely trust to never let me down or hurt me. I used to have two men like that in my life, but now it’s just dear old Dad again.
‘Hi, Dad,’ I say, fighting back tears.
‘Is everything okay?’
‘No, it’s not,’ I reply, and I’m already blubbing.
‘What’s happened?’
He sounds concerned, and that only makes me cry even more because I know how much he cares about me and how much he’s going to hate seeing me like this when I go to his house soon.
‘Sam’s gone. I’ve thrown him out.’
‘Why?’
‘He’s been seeing another woman.’
‘He’s been what?’
Dad sounds incredulous, as I had expected, and part of me suddenly worries that he is going to demand to know where Sam is so that he can go round there and sort him out right now.
‘Is it okay if I come home?’ I ask, wiping my eyes. ‘Just for tonight. I need a break from here.’
‘Of course it’s okay. Do you want me to come and pick you up?’
I smile at how kind my father is.
‘No, I’ll drive round myself. I’ll be there soon. Sorry if you had plans.’
‘Don’t be silly. Your mother and I will be here when you arrive.’
‘Thanks, Dad.’
I put the phone down before the emotion really takes hold of me, and I let out several deep sobs as I sink onto the bed and hit the duvet with my fists. At this time on a Monday morning, I should have been on site at work fulfilling my duties in the role that I have worked hard to attain. I should have been bantering with my colleagues without a care in the world, content with my life and everything within it. And I should have been able to enjoy a few pleasant moments when my mind would have drifted to thoughts of Sam and how his Monday morning was going, giving me warm feelings of happiness and satisfaction that there was a person out there in the world who was also thinking the same things about me right then.
Instead, here I am, lying on my bed crying my eyes out and preparing to go back home to my parents, where I will attempt to assess the state of my life and how I can best piece it back together from here.
As Monday mornings go, this has to be the worst one ever.
29
SAM
I knew I should have phoned in sick today. The office is the last place I should be with everything that is going on in my life. I wonder if Rebecca has gone to work. I doubt it. I have tried calling her and I have left her a couple of messages, but unsurprisingly, she hasn’t responded to any of them. I really hope she is okay, but it’s unlikely. Her heart has been broken, completely unnecessarily, but until I am able to figure out a way of proving it then she will continue to be in pain, and I will continue to be on my own.
Except I’m not on my own. I’m sitting in a meeting room with six other people, and I have only just realised that every single one of them is currently looking in my direction.
‘Sorry?’ I say, suddenly sitting forward and trying my best to make it look like I haven’t spent the entirety of this meeting in a daydream.
‘We were just wondering if you could give us any more updates on the Morgan Report.’
That request came from Ed Burnstein, the director of the company I’m employed by and a man that nobody wants to disappoint. Unfortunately, I am going to have to disappoint him.
‘I’m actually still working on the latest figures,’ I mumble back, fumbling around with some of the papers in front of me as if they could possibly help me.
‘We were rather hoping that you would have something to present to us today,’ Ed replies, and even though I am looking down at the paperwork on the boardroom table, I can feel his glare on me as I flounder.
‘Err, yes. I know, and I’m sorry about that but-’
‘We’re j
ust waiting on a new model to come through for us. But we should have the figures for you tomorrow, if that’s okay?’
I look up at the woman who has just tried to save my bacon and see Maria nodding her head at me as if I’m supposed to agree with the little lie she has just told.
‘Tomorrow it is then,’ Ed says, closing the file that was open in front of him. ‘9 AM in my office.’
With that, the meeting comes to an abrupt end, and everybody gets up from their seats to leave the room. I gather up my paperwork, which proved to be of no help to me whatsoever during that meeting because I hadn’t been listening to a word anybody had been saying, and head for the door, where Maria is already waiting for me. As everybody else leaves, she closes the door behind them and turns to look at me with some concern on her face.
‘Is everything okay?’
‘Yeah, fine. Why?’ I reply quickly, but probably a little too quickly for it to be convincing.
I know that I’m a terrible liar, but I’d rather try and make out like everything is fine than admit to my colleague that my marriage is falling apart and I’m currently living in disgrace in a hotel room with sticky stains on the carpet.
‘You seemed distracted in the meeting. I wasn’t sure what was going on with you.’
I realise then that I haven’t thanked Maria for helping me out during the meeting with her intervention when the eyes of my boss and his fellow board members were on me. If she hadn’t interrupted then things could have been very awkward for me indeed because Ed would most likely have realised that I hadn’t been paying attention to him, nor had I done the work that I was supposed to have done before the meeting began.
