The Woman At The Door

by Daniel Hurst

  ‘I’m waiting on some test results from the doctors,’ I say. ‘I’m sure it’s fine, but it’s hard to concentrate on anything else while I wait.’

  The reason I am a bad liar is because I hate doing it and especially about something as serious as health, but I had to say something to get Maria to stop probing, and health is usually a good call. People tend to respect matters like that and leave it for the doctor to deal with. But I appreciate that saying things like that can cause worry and now Maria looks very concerned.

  ‘I’m so sorry. I had no idea,’ she says, looking like she really means it.

  ‘It’s fine,’ I say, batting the air dismissively.

  ‘You should tell HR. Maybe they could get Ed to go easy on you for a few weeks.’

  ‘I don’t really want anybody knowing. It’s personal, you know?’

  ‘I understand.’

  Maria and I sit in silence for a moment, and I feel terrible for whatever sadness she is feeling right now. For all I know, she could be imagining me dying from some terrible disease after what I have just told her, which is not a nice thing to put somebody through. But I had to think fast and I’d rather this than have everybody around the office know that I’m living in a hotel because my wife found another woman’s pair of knickers in our bedroom.

  ‘How about a drink?’

  Maria’s sudden invitation is an appealing one as well as a little surprising because we’ve never been out for drinks before as just the two of us. I tend not to go drinking that much with work colleagues, but if I have done then it has always been as part of a larger group. I would like a stiff drink right now, and a busy bar would sure beat that lonely hotel room. But I better not. I can’t be going out for a drink with another woman while I’m trying to figure out a way of getting my wife to trust me, even if it is just Maria, my long-standing colleague.

  ‘Thanks, but I better get some work done. Ed still wants that report tomorrow,’ I say, making an excuse even though I’m sure I could just get it done for my boss first thing in the morning before he gets in.

  But once again, Maria surprises me.

  ‘Don’t worry about that. I’ve already done it,’ she says with a smile.

  ‘You have?’

  ‘Yeah, I had a couple of hours free this afternoon, so I jumped on it, and it’s all done. Sorry, I should have sent you an email.’

  ‘No, that’s great! Thank you!’

  I’m genuinely impressed at my colleague’s help, and it does feel nice that I at least get treated well here.

  If only I had this kind of treatment at home.

  ‘So, you’ve got no excuse now, have you?’ Maria tells me, and I guess she is right.

  ‘Okay, one drink,’ I say. ‘But I’m buying. You’ve already done more than enough for me for one day.’

  ‘I’m not going to argue with that.’

  I laugh as I get up from my chair and grab my jacket before pulling it on and logging off my computer. I definitely feel like I could use a good drink and a laugh, and this might be just the thing I need to take my mind off my troubles for at least an hour or so. Those troubles will still be waiting for me in the morning, as evidenced by the photos of Alexandra still sitting in the envelope buried underneath the papers on my desk, but for now, I’m going to try and switch off from the world, just like I’m switching off my desktop monitor after another day of work is at an end.

  As I follow Maria out of the door, I have a moment of worry that somebody else in the office might see us leaving 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 becau
se 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 knew that I was falling apart too?

  There is only one way I can see that is possible, and it is that he can do it because he is the kind of man who is able to put his own selfish desires ahead of thoughts for anybody else. Seeing him with his colleague looking like he didn’t have a care in the world has made me realise that he really doesn’t have a care in the world. He doesn’t care that he cheated on me, nor does he care that I found out about it. For him, it looks like life goes on, and I have to wonder now how many times he has been going for drinks with this woman in the past when I thought that he was just working late. Where else have they gone together? Have they ever gone back to a hotel? Have they ever gone back to her place?

  And have they ever gone back to ours?

  As I stood outside that bar glaring at the entrance knowing that my husband was inside there enjoying a drink with another woman, I thought about how it could have easily been this person who came to my doorstep and told me that Sam had cheated. Why not? I feel like Sam could have been seeing all sorts of women behind my back. He sure looks like he is a hit with the ladies. It makes me mad that he protested so angrily when I accused him of cheating, but it was clearly just a defence mechanism because he had been caught out. What a guy he turned out to be.

  And what an idiot I turned out to be.

  I decided to walk away from that bar and not go inside to see if he was even closer with that woman than their walk into it had suggested because there had simply been no point. I’m done. I’m done with him, and I’m done with this marriage. Forget what he has done with that bloody woman who came to our door and wrote me a letter, although that is bad enough. The thing that has hurt me the most is actually seeing him smiling as he left the office because here I am dying on the inside. Who knows, but maybe if I had seen him looking all glum and moody then it might have at least given me a sign that he was missing me and couldn’t go on without me. But no. Not Sammy boy. He’s perfectly fine, and now he’s probably getting perfectly drunk with that perfectly good-looking woman he is out with tonight.

  I’m back home now, the letter is back in the bin, and I’m thinking about going back to my parents. But then I decide to do something else. I head upstairs into the bedroom, the one I spent so many years sleeping in beside the man I loved, and I take out a couple of suitcases. Then I open up the wardrobe doors and all the drawers in here and start taking out Sam’s stuff.

  His shirts. His trousers. His shoes. His socks. His gym gear.

  Everything of his that I can find is going into these suitcases.

  By the time I am finished, the room is looking a little bare, although not too bare because I always did have more clothes than him, so there’s still plenty of things hanging in the wardrobe and filling up the drawers. But at least his stuff is no longer clogging up my space.

  After zipping up the suitcases, I carry them out of the bedroom and down the stairs, feeling the strain in both my arms, but my determination overpowers my muscle fatigue, and I make it to the front door. Unlocking it, I step outside and dump the suitcases on the driveway, ready for Sam to pick them up when I tell him where they are. Then I go back inside and close the door, leaning against it and breathing heavily.

  As I get my breath back after my excursion down the stairs with the luggage, I feel better for what I’ve just done. I’ve begun the process of moving on. At least superficially, anyway. But the real moving on won’t happen unless I make my separation from my husband official.

  That means getting a divorce.

  And that means everybody knowing about it.

  36

  SAM

  I’m glad I went for a drink with Maria. It helped to take my mind off things for a short while, and it felt good to have a reminder that not every woman in the world hates me at the moment. Alexandra hates me, although I still don’t know why. Rebecca hates me because of what Alexandra has done. And I’m sure that Rebecca’s mum hates me after I have upset her daughter.

  But at least Maria doesn’t hate me. She’s a good colleague and a good friend, and she is also a good drinker. She had plenty of wine while we were in the bar after work, and that is why I can excuse what she did at the end of the night when it came time to say goodbye.

  She made a pass at me.

  Of all the shocking things that have happened to me recently, my colleague moving in to give me a kiss is perhaps the winner. I had no idea that Maria even liked me in that way. To be fair to her, she had apologised immediately and told me that she had made a mistake before saying that she knew I was married and she had simply had too much wine that night. While I had been stunned at the unpredictable turn of events, I had told her that it was okay and that I didn’t think any less of her for what she had done. She seemed relieved about that but no less embarrassed, and she had made a hasty exit then, hailing a taxi and fleeing the scene as if I was the police and she was a criminal with a bag full of stolen money.

  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.