The Woman At The Door

by Daniel Hurst

  As the taxi comes to a stop outside my house, I rush towards it, and I am there to greet my wife as she climbs out of the back seat. She’s unsteady on her feet, which could be down to the wine she has consumed tonight, or perhaps it’s all the shock and adrenaline of what my investigator has uncovered wreaking havoc on her body. Whatever it is, I am there to take her in a big hug and let her know that things are going to be okay now.

  She is home. I am home. We are back together again. That is all we need.

  But of course, life isn’t as simple as that is it. People don’t just need things to go back to normal after they have been betrayed.

  They need revenge.

  46

  ALEXANDRA

  My winning streak is over. My luck has run out. My business is collapsing.

  And now it’s time to get the hell out of here.

  If I thought the wardrobe door being open was a sign that someone had been in my flat then the text message from my client had confirmed it. In the message, Ally had told me that a private investigator was looking into me and that I should be careful. While I appreciated the warning, it seems it has come far too late. I gathered as much when Ally phoned me a short while after sending that message, and I heard her panicked voice as she told me how she had been exposed and that our targets knew everything about what we had been up to.

  I tried to ask Ally exactly what she knew and how much we had been compromised, but I couldn’t get much sense out of her because she was hysterical, so I just hung up, leaving her to have her meltdown in peace. Besides, it’s not really worth getting hung up on the details. All that matters is that my lies have been revealed, and there are going to be serious repercussions from that.

  I’m not sure whether it is the police that I have to worry about or just the revenge of an angry couple whose marriage I tried to tear apart, but either way, I’m not planning on hanging around long enough to find out. Since hanging up on Ally, I have thrown all my important possessions into a suitcase before throwing everything else into black bags and disposing of it all in the bins outside my flat. Now I am in a taxi headed to the airport with my passport in my handbag, and I plan on taking the first flight out of here. I don’t care where I go. I just need to get away because there are going to be some angry people looking for me, and some of them might want to hurt me.

  I’ve committed various offences over the years, both moral and legal, and it remains to be seen just how many of them are going to be exposed. But while I can’t change anything incriminating that has already come out, I can ensure that I don’t add to my woes by admitting to anything else that I have done wrong. That is why I have disposed of my mobile phone too, ensuring that any recording devices or trackers that a private investigator might be using on me should have been taken care of, allowing me to make my escape in good time.

  Of all the targets I have had over the years, I had not expected Sam and Rebecca to be the ones to bring me down. Why couldn’t they be like all the other couples and just get a divorce? Why did they have to fight back? Ally’s message told me that it was Sam who had hired a PI, and while I admire his fighting spirit, I am unsure as to how he and any investigator were able to track me down and uncover my secrets. That unanswered question is going to bug me for a long time, but it can bug me while I am sitting on a beach abroad rather than in a police station in the UK where I am awaiting questioning.

  All the homes I broke into. All the lies I told.

  All the lives I destroyed.

  Business was good while it lasted, and maybe I’ll be able to start up again one day in the future, but for now, I have no one to blame for this mess but myself. Maybe I got complacent, or perhaps I was just due some bad luck after getting away with so much for so long. Maybe I was always going to get found out in the end. Whatever has happened in the past, all I can affect now is the immediate future and my immediate future lies overseas.

  I can see the lights of the airport terminal up ahead, and I’m impressed with how quickly my taxi driver has gotten me here. He obviously doesn’t know that I am potentially running from the law right now, but I appreciate his haste anyway. What I don’t appreciate is the fact that it’s approaching midnight, and it’s unlikely that I am going to be able to get a flight out of here this evening. I will go in and check, but I’m expecting to be told that the next flight will be leaving at dawn, so I might have to make do with a room at the airport hotel for the next few hours. But it’s worth a try anyway, and I waste no time in dragging my suitcase out of the back of the taxi and pulling it behind me into the terminal.

  My shoes clatter across the marble floor as I approach the desk, but the fact there are no queues anywhere suggests that I am right in thinking that there are no flights taking off from here over the next few hours. The pretty woman behind the desk is polite enough to confirm that information for me, and my eyes watch her lipstick red lips as she tells me about the first available plane seat being on a 06:40 flight to Lisbon tomorrow morning. I tell her that will do and make the necessary booking before enquiring about a room for the night at the nearby hotel. Fortunately, there is some availability, so I make my way back out of the airport and take the shuttle bus that will drop me at the hotel door.

  After checking in and reaching my room, it is a relief to close the door and drop my suitcase onto the bed. I’m not a fan of running but it has to be done, and I will keep running until I am sure that I am safe. I underestimated Sam and the lengths he would go to in order to prove his innocence. That was my mistake. But I won’t be making any more mistakes. And maybe I won’t be knocking on any more front doors again either.

  This might be the sign I needed to have a change of career. I got thrown into this life after my experience with Devon, but that doesn’t mean that is the best life for me. I could find something else to do. It probably won’t pay as well, but it won’t hurt as many people either.

  I’m just about to start getting undressed before climbing into bed and getting a few hours of shuteye before my early morning flight when I hear the knock on my hotel room door.

  I have no idea who it is. I’m not even sure I want to answer it. But just like all those people whose front doors I knocked on over the years, I might not have a choice.

  I am going to have to open it.

  47

  REBECCA

  What started with a knock at the door is going to end with one too. I am standing outside this hotel room waiting for the door to open so I can come face to face again with the woman who sent my life into a tailspin not so long ago. This will be the first time I have seen this woman since she came to my house and told me that my husband had cheated on me, and that night, she had all the power. But now it is me who has the upper hand.

  I’m the one knocking.

  And she will be the one who is sent into a tailspin.

  After several seconds have passed without the door being opened, I decide to knock again but much firmer this time.

  ‘Who is it?’

  I detect fear in the enquiry from the other side of the door, but that isn’t going to stop me. It only makes me knock again.

  I take a deep breath as I wait, knowing how important it is to stay calm so that I am able to say what I came here to say when I finally get the chance. I don’t have to wait too long after that because I hear the sound of the handle turning, and two seconds later, the door is open.

  Alexandra looks afraid, as she might well be, but she also seems a little relieved that I am on my own. She might have been expecting the police or possibly Sam, but instead, she’s just got me.

  She might think that it will be easier to handle me.

  But she would be wrong.

  ‘Nice to see you again,’ I say with a straight face. ‘I thought it was my turn to come and surprise you.’

  ‘How the hell did you find me?’ Alexandra asks as her eyes dart past me and into the corridor beyond, but I keep my gaze firmly on her.

  ‘The same way I found out your
name and what you do for a living,’ I reply. ‘The same way my husband was able to prove to me that he didn’t cheat on me and stop me from divorcing him.’

  ‘The private investigator,’ Alexandra mutters, and I nod to confirm her answer.

  ‘You’ve been watched for a while now, so I wouldn’t feel too bad about it. Once they knew who you were, you never stood a chance.’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry for what I did, but it wasn’t personal. It was just a job.’

  ‘Just a job,’ I repeat with a laugh. ‘My whole life was just a job, was it?’

  ‘That’s not what I mean.’

  ‘Then tell me what you do mean.’

  Alexandra looks like she is starting to realise that I might not be an easier touch than my husband would have been if he was here instead.

  ‘You don’t know what it’s like to love somebody you can’t have.’

  Alexandra’s words catch me off guard a little.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m talking about people who are lonely and have to spend their lives alone because their dream partner is already taken. I’m talking about your friend, Ally, having to watch you be happy with Sam while she was secretly pining for him.’

  ‘Ally had no right to try and break my marriage apart. And neither did you!’

  ‘You’re correct, but what gives you the right to be happier than somebody else just because you got there first?’

  ‘I got there first?’

  ‘Yes, you met Sam before Ally did. But what is to say that he might have been meant for her instead? What is to say that he might have been happier with her over you?’

  I’m not entirely sure what I had been expecting to happen when I came here, but one thing I wasn’t banking on was Alexandra giving an impassioned defence of my former best friend.

  ‘You’re deluded. You and all the people who pay you to do this crazy thing. What you have done is wrong, and you know it.’

  ‘So what do you want from me? An apology? Fine, I’m sorry. But you got your husband back, so it all worked out well in the end. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to get some sleep.’

  Alexandra goes to close the door on me, but I shoot out a hand to stop her.

  ‘I haven’t finished,’ I say as I look at her face through the small gap where the door is still open. But Alexandra doesn’t want to know what else I came here to say, and she tries to close the door again.

  If it was just me then I might have had a problem keeping her from closing it, but fortunately, Sam accompanied me here this evening and he has been lurking around the corner of the door during this conversation, ready to make an appearance if needed. Now he is needed, and he gives me some assistance in pushing back on the door and getting it fully open again, much to Alexandra’s dismay.

  Then we force our way into the room and close the door behind us.

  Alexandra goes for the hotel room phone, presumably to try and call reception and tell them that two people have just entered her room against her will, but Sam pulls the cord from the wall before she can make the call.

  ‘What are you doing? Get away from me!’ Alexandra cries, and I’m aware that some of the other guests on this floor might be able to hear all the commotion, so my husband and I better make this quick.

  ‘You have no idea how much I want to hurt you, and I will do unless you sit down on the bed and shut up.’

  Sam’s command is a stern one, and it’s a little disconcerting to hear him talk in that manner, but his words do the job in getting Alexandra to stop making so much noise, and she takes a seat on the bed in front of us.

  ‘This is what is going to happen,’ I say, taking over again. ‘We have the names of all the couples you did this to, but what we don’t have is their addresses or the names of the people who paid you to break them apart. But you’re going to give them to us, and you’re going to accompany us as we go around and make sure all those people learn the truth about what has really happened.’

  ‘Why would I do that?’ Alexandra snarls back at me, but I just smile.

  ‘Because if you don’t then the police are going to be getting involved, and I don’t think you want that, do you?’

  ‘Tell the police. I don’t care. You don’t have much evidence.’

  ‘We have plenty, and I have a feeling we have only just started to scratch the surface,’ I say as I stand over Alexandra and glare down at her. ‘The police might not care about the lies you told, but I think they will be interested in the things you left in people’s homes and how you came to be in their homes in the first place.’

  ‘It’s just your word against mine.’

  ‘No, it’s your word against dozens of other couples who have had their lives ruined by you as well.’

  Alexandra takes that on board, and she can see how deadly serious I am about ensuring she gets a criminal conviction if I am forced to go down that route.

  ‘Say I do what you want. How do I know you won’t just tell the police anyway?’

  ‘I guess you’ll just have to trust me. Just like I trusted you when you came to my door and told me a lie.’

  Alexandra has nothing to say to that, and she lowers her head to avoid my stare.

  ‘Just be grateful that neither me or my husband are the kind of people who lose their tempers easily and commit acts of violence against those who have wronged us,’ I say. ‘Otherwise, you would really be in trouble then.’

  With that ominous statement, I tell the room owner that it is time for us to leave her in peace but that she is being watched and that she should not board that flight in the morning if she wants this all to end without the police involved.

  Then I follow Sam to the door, and he opens it to allow me out first.

  ‘How did you find me?’ Alexandra asks just before we leave, and Sam and I pause in the doorway.

  We share a look, and I know we are both deciding whether to tell her about our neighbour’s camera and how this mystery all got unravelled from there. That would surely be a source of comfort for Alexandra to know what mistake she had made, but that’s exactly why neither of us feels like divulging that information to her. We don’t want to give her that closure, nor do we want to give her a heads-up about something she might end up looking out for in the future if she ever does anything like this again. Instead, we just walk through the door and allow it to close behind us, leaving Alexandra alone in that room to think about what she has done and what she is going to do next.

  ‘Do you think she will try and run?’ Sam asks me as we walk away down the corridor.

  ‘No, I think she knows what’s best for her, and I think she understood that I was telling her the truth about not getting the police involved if she stays,’ I say as we reach the lift that will take us back down to the ground floor. ‘Because unlike her, I am not a liar.’

  I press the button to send for the lift, but before it can get to this floor, Sam takes my hand and turns me around so that I am looking right at him.

  ‘I’m not a liar either,’ he tells me and my heart breaks because I know he is right, yet I spent so long believing he had betrayed me.

  I already said it when we were standing outside our house earlier this evening, but I will say it again because I feel like I need to.

  ‘I’m so sorry for not trusting you,’ I tell him, shaking my head. ‘She was just so convincing. She had so many tricks.’

  ‘I know,’ Sam says as he pulls me in for a hug and kisses my head. ‘But it’s over now, and the main thing is that we both know the truth.’

  The lift arrives and the door slides open, but neither of us move, instead content to stay in each other’s arms for another minute. By the time we do decide to get into the lift, we are both ready to go home and get into bed. It will be the first night we have spent the night sleeping beside each other in a while, although I’m not sure how much sleeping will be getting done. I have some making up to do to my husband, and I’m sure he wants to make me feel better about
myself too.

  It doesn’t take long for the lift to deposit us into the reception area, and Sam and I walk hand in hand across the marble floor towards the exit, nodding at Erica as we go. She is staying here this evening to make sure that Alexandra doesn’t vanish again, and she is doing it because we are paying her a bonus to thank her for all that she and her assistant have done for us.

  Our marriage was so close to being over. The lies had threatened to ruin us. The woman at the door almost won. But she didn’t. Instead, I won. Sam won.

  Love won.

  But love is a cruel game and not everybody can win, and as I get into the taxi that will take Sam and I back home, I can’t help but think of Ally, Alexandra and all the other people in the world who do desperate things in order to find love for themselves or others.

  I know that I am lucky to have my husband, and he is lucky to have me. Not everybody is as lucky as us. If they were then Alexandra would never have been able to run a business like she did. That’s why the next thought is a troubling one. It’s the thought that there might be other people out there like Alexandra now, spreading lies and rumours and threatening to break happy couples apart.

  I can’t stop them all. I was barely able to stop one.

  I just hope they never come calling at your door.

  If they do, it’s best if you don’t answer.

  A Letter from the Author

  Thank you for reading The Woman At The Door. I hope you had as much fun delving into the lives of Rebecca, Sam and Alexandra as I had creating them. I love to write and I hope my story gave you a little entertainment and escapism from the realities of the world.