The Woman At The Door by Daniel Hurst (manga ebook reader .TXT) 📗

I am a professional homewrecker, after all. But that’s not why I behave this way. I am cold and calculating, not because it’s my job to be, but because it’s the woman I have to be now in order to survive. If I let my emotions get the better of me, I would break down in tears every day at the loss of Devon and the state of my life without him. That’s why I keep all emotion out of it. I have shut myself off from the world, and nothing can get in now.

I have no regrets. I have no conscience. I have no rules.

There is no limit to what I will do these days, simply because I have nothing to lose.

I’ve already lost the only person I care about in the world.

So why would I care if somebody else loses that person too?

31

REBECCA

In normal circumstances, I enjoy being back home with Mum and Dad. It’s a chance to relax in familiar surroundings, with a fully-stocked fridge and all the other comforts that one associates with the place where they grew up. But these are not normal circumstances, and I’m not enjoying being here. Neither are my parents enjoying having me home. That’s because instead of doing what they usually do when I visit, which is keeping me well-fed and watered, they are trying to get me to stop crying and explain to them exactly what has gone wrong in my seemingly happy marriage.

I’ve been doing my best to give them the full run-down of events, from the woman at the door to the discovery in my underwear drawer, but I’ve been too upset to make much sense, and I realise that my parents are still a little unclear as to how and why I came to learn that my husband had been unfaithful. I need to start making more sense, but I also need to let my emotions out before I do, rather than keeping them bottled up because if I can’t be myself here then where can I be?

My mother has her arm around me and is telling me that everything is going to be okay, even though she can’t possibly know that, while my father has gone into the other room to find me a box of tissues. He had brought me one a moment ago, but one is not going to be enough, so he has scurried away for reinforcements. I wipe my red eyes with my hand as I wait for him to return while Mum continues to tell me that everything is okay, just like she did when I was a child when I would burst into tears after falling over in the playground. But this situation is far worse than any of those innocent times because this isn’t about a scratched knee or a sore arm. I’m not crying because of a bruised bone or a bruised ego. I’m crying because somebody has broken the most important commitment to me that they could ever break.

The man who chose to forgo all other women in favour of me has broken that word and left me looking like a fool.

As Dad returns with more tissues, I thank him and take a handful before holding them over my face and weeping some more. If I was to look up, I’m sure that I would see my parents exchanging a troubled glance. But I don’t look up. I just keep my face in the tissues because it’s easier for me that way.

After a few more minutes of letting my emotions run free, as well as several more useless platitudes from Mum about how I’m going to be fine, I get a grip of myself and stop the pity party. A couple of deep breaths later and I am finally ready to stop being treated like a child and start talking like an adult.

I tell Mum and Dad everything. The surprise visitor at the front door. The shocking thing that she said. Sam’s theory about it being some kind of prank. How I had taken his word over hers. How I had then discovered lipstick on his shirt collar. The drunken argument. Sam’s move into a hotel. The reconciliation. The feeling that the worst was over. Then the moment I saw that underwear in my drawer, which has led to Sam going back to that hotel again and me being here right now on this sofa blubbing away.

The only thing that I leave out is the near-miss I had on site last Monday. They don’t need to know that their daughter almost died because she was worried about her husband’s potential lies.

They are going to hate Sam enough as it is without me throwing that into the mix too.

By the time I am done speaking, Mum is no longer telling me that everything is going to be okay. How could she if she had listened to what I had just said? There is nothing okay about all of that, and not even a mum with the best will in the world could pretend that there is.

‘He still won’t admit to anything?’ Dad asks me after he has taken a seat in his armchair opposite the sofa where Mum and I are sitting.

‘No,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘He still maintains he is innocent.’

‘I’ll see what he has to say about that when I go and speak to him.’

‘Dad, no! I don’t want you getting involved!’

‘But I am involved! You’re my daughter, and he is my son-in-law, and look what he has done to you.’

‘Dad, please!’

‘I’ve got a good mind to go to his office right now.’

‘Christopher, that’s not helping!’

Mum’s stern voice, as well as the use of my father’s full Christian name, lets both him and I know that the matriarch of the family has spoken, and her word is final.

Dad wisely decides to stop talking for a moment and let his wife come up with a plan instead.

‘I can’t believe Sam would do something like this,’