The Woman At The Door

by Daniel Hurst

  ‘How is he going to do that?’

  ‘He will create a distraction so that he can gain access to Alexandra’s home and plant the recording devices that will hopefully give us more insight into what she is up to.’

  ‘Okay. That’s good. You say you’re doing this tonight?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You can’t do it right now?’

  ‘I’m going as fast as I can.’

  ‘I understand.’

  It’s not fast enough for me, but I’ll have to be patient. If bugs are being planted around Alexandra’s home this evening then we may very well have some answers by the morning.

  ‘What else are you doing?’ I ask.

  ‘My assistant is keeping watch of her while I see what I can do about accessing her phone records.’

  ‘You think you can do that?’

  ‘If you are asking if I have done it before then yes, I have. Can I do it for Alexandra? I don’t know yet, but if I can then be sure it will be done.’

  ‘That’s good. Please, do what you can. I just want my wife back.’

  Erica says nothing, and I wonder if it’s because she is too professional to offer sympathy or whether it’s because she feels too awkward to reply. In the end, I just tell her to call me soon and then hang up.

  With that call taken care of, I pick up the two suitcases that my wife ever so kindly put outside the house for me and drop them into the back of my car before getting behind the wheel and starting the engine. As I drive back in the direction of the hotel where I will spend yet another lonely night, my thoughts are not on what might happen with Erica, her assistant and Alexandra tonight but rather the fact that my wife saw me leaving the office with Maria yesterday. I have to admit that would not have been a good look for me to have been seen going into a bar with a woman while my marriage was on the ropes. I obviously had no idea that Rebecca was going to see me doing that, but that’s not the point. The point is that I should have kept refusing Maria’s invitation for a drink until she got the message before going back to the hotel and having an early night. That way, Rebecca would have had one less thing to be mad at me about, and I would have looked more like a sorrowful guy rather than a guy who was in the mood for drinks with a pretty woman.

  Not going for the drink would have also meant not having the awkward moment when Maria tried to kiss me, and it was that awkward moment that led to several more awkward moments in the office today. I guess it was slightly optimistic of me to think that things between the two of us could go back to normal after she made a pass at me and I turned her down. We’re still both professional enough to get on with our jobs, but it was evident today that there is a tension between us now, and it’s one that means things might never be the same again. This time yesterday, I thought Maria was just friendly to me because we worked together, but now I know that it is because she likes me. How can that not change the dynamic between us? With my awkwardness and her embarrassment, I’d say it’s going to be a while before we are having a conversation that doesn’t feel loaded with subtext and confusing thoughts.

  As I drive on back to my dreary room for the night, I decide that I am going to make more of an effort to let Maria know that I want us to still be good friends. As inappropriate as what she did was, I can put myself in her shoes because I know how it feels to be lonely. I’m feeling lonely right now, and the only way to combat loneliness is to seek out the company of another human being. That is all Maria was doing yesterday. She was trying to combat her loneliness. Therefore, I can’t be too hard on her, nor should she be too hard on herself.

  Bringing my car to a stop at a set of traffic lights, I find myself checking my phone again as if there is going to be a message or a missed call from Erica with some new information that is going to get me out of the mess that I find myself in. But there isn’t, and that is hardly a surprise considering it’s been less than ten minutes since I last spoke to her. I need to give her time to work, and I need to be patient. But that’s easier said than done when I’m driving around with my suitcases in the back of the car while Rebecca sits in our house and searches online for cheap divorce lawyers in the area.

  Hopefully, tonight will be the night when I finally get some good news. Hopefully, tonight will be the night when I can prove my innocence to my wife.

  And hopefully, tonight will be the night when Alexandra’s little game is over.

  40

  ALEXANDRA

  I sometimes get frustrated with how slow my days can be when I’m waiting for my methods to work and for my client to confirm that I have successfully broken up a marriage. But today is not one of those days. That’s because the sun has been shining over South London, and I took the chance to get out and enjoy it, spending a lovely afternoon on Clapham Common with a good book and a bottle of wine. I was feeling a little tipsy when it came time to stand up and walk home but fortunately, my flat isn’t far from the common, so I didn’t have too much distance to cover before I made it to the comfort of my living room sofa. That is where I am parked now with my feet up on my coffee table and the TV playing a film in front of me.

  It’s eight in the evening, and I am winding down, just like the day is. I expect I will be in bed within the hour, an early night for sure, but I could use the sleep. It could be any day when I get the word that Rebecca and Sam’s marriage is over, and that will mean I get paid before I begin this whole process all over again.

  Find a new client. Lay some new traps. Break some more hearts.

  And make plenty more money.

  At least an early night was the plan anyway. But that idea was shattered by the fire alarm in my complex sounding, ruining the peace and causing me to get up from my comfortable position to go and look for my shoes.

  ‘Damn it,’ I mutter under my breath as I put on some suitable footwear before grabbing my jacket and heading for the door.

  I know it’s not a drill because the building manager would never do a drill at this time of night, but I’m hoping that it’s just a mistake and there isn’t really a fire somewhere in this building now. If there is then it could be a while before I am allowed back into my flat, and that would be annoying.

  It’s not that I have much in here that I’d be afraid to lose in a fire.

  I just really want to have that early night.

  Unlocking my door, I step out into the corridor and see a couple of my neighbours leaving their homes, looking just as confused and irritated about this whole thing as I am. I’ve never made much of an effort to be friendly with the people who live in the flats next to me, and that is perhaps why none of them say hello to me or ask me how I have been as we all head for the staircase and start descending down.

  I can’t see or smell any smoke, so that has to be a good sign, but I carry on going downstairs and go outside to the front of the building to join my neighbours at the designated meeting point where we are all to wait until the fire brigade get here and give us more information. I assume those fire engines are on their way towards us right now because they are supposed to get an automatic notice from the security company who manages this building whenever an alarm sounds. But it will take some time for them to arrive, and all there is to do until then is cross my arms and try and stay warm until I go back inside.

  It was warm earlier when the sun was beaming down on the common, but it’s chilly now that it has disappeared behind all these buildings and plunged London into darkness. I’m just glad I managed to get my jacket on before leaving the flat. I can see at least two people out here in their pyjamas.

  As me and the rest of the displaced residents continue to find out whether or not their address is at risk of burning to the ground, the alarm continues to blare, and it’s giving me a headache, so I could do with a distraction. I reach into my pocket for my phone, but it isn’t there and I realise I must have left it in my flat in the rush to leave. That’s annoying but it’s hardly as if my phone was going to give me much entertainment anyway. I’d like to
say that I would have several unread messages waiting for me from all my family and friends to show how popular I am, but there will be nothing as usual. That’s my own fault because I’ve purposefully withdrawn myself from all the people who I used to know in my former life, which is how I refer to the time when I wasn’t going around the country ruining people’s relationships. Moving to Clapham was a big step for me because I’m originally from the North of England and knew nobody in London, which was precisely why I chose it. It has helped me out professionally because I don’t have to worry about telling anyone I know what I actually do for a job, but it’s not been much good for me when it comes to receiving messages. The only messages I receive these days are from clients giving me updates and while that’s good for business, it’s not great for my social life.

  I’m all alone down here, or at least I am if you don’t count the people standing near me in their pyjamas. That means there isn’t much to occupy me, and I’m almost fearing that I might have to strike up an inane conversation with one of my neighbours just to speed time up a little when I hear the fire engine coming towards us.

  I appreciate that some women get a kick out of seeing a man in uniform and especially one wielding such a phallic symbol as a hosepipe, but I’ve never been one of those women. To me, a fireman is just that. A fireman. A guy doing a job. Nothing sexual about it.

  They certainly don’t have a patch on Devon, my hunky personal trainer who would be keeping me warm if he was here with me now.

  I’m better off not thinking about the man I lost, so I just watch the firefighters going into the building to make their checks, and it’s a good sign that they aren’t taking their hosepipes inside with them. I like to think that means that there is no fire and this is all just one misunderstanding, and sure enough, that much is confirmed twenty minutes later. A bald chap who looks far too chubby to be a fireman takes off his helmet and tells us all that we are okay to go back inside. There is a stampede for the entrance doors as one might expect, and I join the hordes heading back into the warmth, trudging my way up the staircase before reaching the door to my flat and going inside.

  It’s a relief to close the door and hear the silence that comes from the alarm no longer being activated. It’s also a relief to go into my bedroom and start getting ready for bed. Unlike some of my neighbours, I’m not in my pyjamas already, but it doesn’t take me long to change that, and it’s only seconds later when I’m under the duvet preparing to turn out the light. But just before I do, I notice something wrong in my bedroom. It’s only a minor thing, but I know when something is out of place. That is why I get out of bed again and go over to investigate.

  Reaching the wardrobe door, I look closely at it and see that it is open slightly, just as I suspected. That’s no big deal if I had left it open myself, but I know that I didn’t. I always ensure that the wardrobe is closed completely, and when it is, the edge of the door is flush with the rest of the unit. But the door now is ajar slightly, and that’s how I know that somebody has been in here. That would be disconcerting at the best of times for somebody who lives by themselves, but it’s made even worse by the fact that I keep important things in my wardrobe.

  That’s why I always ensure the wardrobe is closed.

  It’s because I know what could be found if somebody other than me was to open it.

  Opening the wardrobe door fully, I frantically go inside it and start moving the strategically placed boxes that I keep on the top shelf. As I do, I silently curse myself for never getting a better security system for some of my paperwork than this makeshift system that I came up with. I should have got a safe or at least some kind of locked box, but I didn’t. I just naively assumed that these things would be safe as long as they were out of view because why would anybody ever break in here anyway?

  The items I am looking for now are a series of documents that relate to my clients. I get each of them to sign an agreement before I go into business with them, and while there’s nothing particularly incriminating itself in the wording of the documents, it’s the names within them that could be used against me. The names of every single client I have ever had are on these papers, and while they might not mean much by themselves, together they could be used to piece together my sordid business if somebody knew the significance of what they were looking at.

  That’s why I am frantically looking for the documents now.

  And that’s why I am extremely relieved when I find them.

  Taking out the wedge of papers from beneath one of the empty shoeboxes that they were buried beneath, I quickly count them to make sure that not a single document is missing. I’ve had thirty-one clients in my time, so there should be exactly thirty-one pieces of paper here. Thankfully, that is the number I reach after counting them, so that at least means that nothing is missing. But that still doesn’t explain why my wardrobe door was open.

  The door I am always so careful to keep closed.

  I wonder if a firefighter might have accessed my flat during their checks to make sure that the building was secure, but I find that unlikely because surely they would have had to tell me if they had entered my home. But if it wasn’t them then who? One thing is for sure. Somebody has been in here. But why? And how did they get in? The front door was not damaged in any way. The more I think about it, the more I am convinced it has to be the firefighters. They were looking for all potential sources of fire. They were just being thorough. The owner of the building must have given them a key, and that was how they accessed my home.

  That makes sense, or at least it makes me feel better than the alternative does. It’s the alternative that somebody came in here because they know who I am and what I am up to, and they are looking for evidence to bring me down. But I’m just being paranoid. Nobody knows who I am, and nobody knows about my business other than the people who hire me to carry it out.

  I’m safe.

  Nothing is missing, and that means that nothing is wrong.

  So why do I feel so sick?

  41

  REBECCA

  It’s been a busy day, and not just because it was my first official day back at work after my time off with sick leave. I took the leave because I needed some time to deal with the shock of my marriage collapse, and I’m glad I did, but I couldn’t put off going back forever. Alongside being on site, sitting in meetings with grumpy foremen and dodging excavators as they moved over the mud, I have also been busy making plans for my friend’s hen party, which is scheduled to take place four months from now. Her name is Rachel, and she is an old friend from my school days and Ally and I are her joint maids of honour. That means not only do we get to be with her as she prepares to walk down the aisle on her big day, but we also get to arrange the event that will signal an end of her ‘single’ days and send her headlong into matrimony.

  You might think that helping plan a hen party for an upcoming marriage might be difficult when my own marriage is falling apart around me, and you would be right. But it’s not Rachel’s fault that my husband turned out to be a liar and a cheat, and that’s why she deserves to have me give it my best shot when it comes to helping plan her hen party. I haven’t even told her that I am having trouble with Sam, and I will leave it a while before I do because she has enough going on in her life right now with all the wedding planning without me drawing on her time with sob stories about women at the door and letters through the post. But I am planning on getting plenty of things off my chest tonight, and Ally is the perfect person to help me do that.

  I walk through the wine bar and see my best friend sitting at one of the tables texting on her phone, so I walk over behind her and call out her name, making her jump because she hadn’t noticed me coming.

  ‘You’re such an idiot,’ she tells me as she puts her phone down and gives me a hug, and I laugh before I take my seat and scoop up the wine menu.

  ‘Are you ready for a fun night of hen party planning?’ Ally asks me as she puts her phone into her handbag and zips it
up, letting me know that I have her full attention for the next few hours, not that I would expect anything less.

  ‘I am, actually. This is just what I need to take my mind off things.’

  ‘Things still bad with Sam?’

  ‘I’d say we’ve left bad behind and progressed onto doomed.’

  I let out a sarcastic chuckle to try and keep things light, but Ally doesn’t buy it, and she takes my hand to get me to stop looking at the menu and look at her instead.

  ‘Oh, Becca, what’s happened now?’

  ‘Remember that woman who came to the door? The one who said she slept with Sam. Well, she wrote me a letter too in which she said that she felt guilty about what she had done but that it was still all true.’

  Ally winces, and I bite my lip because I can feel the emotion threatening to overwhelm me again. Fortunately, a handsome waiter arrives at our table at that perfect moment and gives me the distraction that I need to keep the tears at bay and instead focus on the very important task of deciding what bottle we are going to select from the menu.

  My friend and I make a quick decision on what we want to drink for the next hour or so, and the waiter scurries away to fetch it for us so that we can go back to lamenting my poor choice of husband.

  ‘What has Sam said about all of this?’ Ally wants to know. ‘Is he still denying it?’

  ‘Yep. He’s still maintaining his innocence. But I just can’t trust him anymore. It makes no sense for a woman to visit me and write to me if she wasn’t telling the truth. It would be the weirdest thing ever, right?’

  Ally ponders it for a second before reluctantly agreeing.

  ‘So what are you going to do?’ she asks me as I watch the waiter standing by the bar in the distance with an empty tray that will soon be holding our drinks.

  ‘We’re finished. I know that much,’ I reply, shaking my head. ‘I just need to pull myself together enough to start making it official.’