The Woman At The Door by Daniel Hurst (books successful people read .TXT) 📕

‘Something’s going on here. Somebody else has put these here.’

He holds up the knickers, but I lash out at them and send them flying away into the corner of the room.

‘She put them here!’ I say. ‘Right after she fucked you in our bed!’

Sam is clearly stunned at my outburst and choice of words, but I’m only saying what I’m thinking. But I need to get away from my cheating rat of a husband, and I need to do it now. But if he won’t go and get out of my sight then I will have to go somewhere myself so that I don’t have to look at him anymore.

Storming into the bathroom, I slam the door behind me and quickly lock it so that he can’t come in after me. I hear him trying the handle before banging on the door, but I ignore it and put the toilet lid down to take a seat on it.

‘Rebecca! Open the door!’ Sam calls out as he continues to knock, but I’m not planning on letting him anywhere near me.

Not tonight. Maybe not ever.

‘Just pack your things again and get out!’ I scream back at him.

‘I’m not going anywhere until you open this door and let me explain this.’

‘What is there to explain?’ I cry back before I feel my breath catch in my throat and a wave of nausea come over me.

Am I going to be sick? I think I might be, so I quickly get up off the toilet lid and open it up so that I’m prepared just in case.

The reason for my sudden sickness is that I feel like this is going to be the moment when Sam confesses to sleeping with that other woman and, in the process, destroys the whole concept of our marriage as well as the plans I had for the next forty years of my life.

This is it. This is the moment when the truth comes out.

This is the moment when my world comes crumbling down.

Is it any wonder I’m going to be sick?

‘I haven’t cheated on you, Rebecca. I swear.’

Sam’s words through the bathroom door are not a confession. Instead, they are a continuance of the same thing he has been telling me all week. Even now, after the evidence is becoming insurmountable, he still refuses to do me the decency of telling me the truth.

Who does he think I am?

‘Then how did those knickers get in here?’ I scream back at him. ‘Answer me that!’

‘I don’t know,’ he replies.

‘You’re going to have to do better than that!’

‘It’s the truth. I honestly don’t know, but I swear I’ve never seen them before!’

‘I’m sick of you swearing things. I’ve had enough of it. Just go!’

The sickness has passed for the time being, but the tears are coming on strong now, and my eyes start stinging as I take several deep breaths and do my best not to have a nervous breakdown right here on my bathroom floor.

‘Rebecca. Please open the door,’ Sam tries again.

‘Just leave me alone!’

The volume of my voice and the venom in my words comes as a shock to me, but I guess it also comes as a shock to Sam because he stops trying the door handle.

Ten seconds later and I can hear him opening and closing the wardrobe door in the bedroom, which suggests that he is doing as I have asked and is packing up his things to make a return to that hotel. But I’m not going to go out and see him before he leaves. I’m going to stay in here until I hear the front door close behind him. Maybe I’ll stay in here all night, kneeling down on the bathroom floor with my arms resting on the toilet seat and my face over the bowl.

Why not?

It’s not as if I have anything to come out of here for anymore.

27

SAM

I’m getting a feeling of deja-vu as I stand in this hotel lobby and ask the woman behind the desk to provide me with a keycard so I can access my room. That’s because it was only a couple of nights ago when I checked in here after Rebecca had kicked me out the first time. Now I’m checking in again, although technically I’m not because I still have a room booked for tonight after assuming I would need it before my wife and I made up at the pub. But that reconciliation has already broken down again, and here I am, back at the hotel and back to square one.

‘Here’s your card, sir,’ the polite receptionist tells me as she slides the white keycard across the desk towards me.

She can probably see on the system that I already checked out early this afternoon, but she hasn’t bothered asking me why I’m back, which is a relief. It’s also a relief that my room is still available and they didn’t give it to somebody else because that would have been another problem for me and I’ve already got enough of those. Thankfully, the keycard is back in my hand and that means I can now go up in the elevators and get into my room where I can put my bags down and try and figure out what the hell I’m going to do next.

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