by Daniel Hurst
I had asked her to give me the news over the phone, simply to save time and to give me a faster way of knowing if I could call Rebecca and tell her that I had something concrete to back up my claims, but Erica insisted that we meet to discuss her findings in person. That is why I am scurrying around London now on my way to the meeting point in front of The Shard.
I am seconds away from getting some answers.
As I leave the murky darkness of London Bridge station and step out into the bright sunshine of a clear day in the capital, I feel my phone vibrating in my trouser pocket, and I take it out to see it is a text message from Maria back at the office. She is telling me that Ed, my grumpy manager, came by my desk and asked to see me, but she covered for me and said I had gone to see a client. Better that than telling him that I was out on personal business when I was supposed to be finishing up a report that was already overdue. I send a quick message back to Maria, thanking her for covering for me once again, seeing that this is the second time after she saved me in the meeting this morning. Then I put my phone away and focus on the task at hand, which is not an easy one.
I have to try and spot Erica on this busy street.
Looking around through a sea of commuters and tourists, I struggle to catch a glimpse of my PI and wonder why she picked such a busy place to hold this meeting. Surely a coffee shop or a park bench would have been better than outside one of the busiest train stations in one of the busiest cities in the world.
But then I see her. She is standing about twenty yards away from me in a black blouse with a handbag over her shoulder. To the untrained eye, she looks like an ordinary woman on her lunch break. But I know who she really is.
She is a woman of means.
Or at least I hope she is.
Rushing over towards her whilst almost being run down by a cyclist going way too fast down the road, I eventually reach her and get the greetings over quickly so I can move on to the important stuff.
‘What do you have?’ I ask her, and Erica wastes no time going into her handbag and taking out a brown envelope.
Feeling like I’m in some kind of espionage movie, I take the envelope from her and open it up. That’s where I see two photographs of the woman I have been looking for.
The woman at the door.
‘You found her?’ I ask, studying the two images carefully to make sure that it really is her. But it definitely looks like the woman in Steve’s CCTV footage.
‘Yeah, I found her,’ Erica replies casually as if it was easy work, which it may very well have been. But I don’t care if she didn’t have to work very hard for the money I am paying her. I just care that she did her job and found this woman. But I’m not quite ready to hand over £1000 yet. I still need to know more.
‘Who is she?’ I ask,
‘Her name is Alexandra Burton. She is thirty six years old, and she lives in Clapham in South London.’
It feels good to finally have a name to put to the face that has tormented me for so long. Now my thoughts of frustration and revenge can be spliced with more personal details rather than just an image of a blonde woman walking away from my house. These photographs show Alexandra sitting outside a cafe enjoying the sunshine.
Enjoying her life while mine falls apart.
‘Okay, so why is she doing this?’ I ask as I put the photos back into the envelope.
‘That’s what I am still looking into,’ Erica replies as the lunchtime hordes of London rush by all around us.
‘How did you find her?’
‘I was able to get access to further CCTV footage near your home based on the direction in which she had been walking. From that, I was able to see her getting into a vehicle on a street around the corner from yours. A search on the registration plate of that vehicle gave me her name, date of birth and address.’
I’m impressed by Erica’s work, although it is precisely the kind of work that I am paying her to do.
‘That’s great, thanks. This is a good start.’
‘Yes, it is. I will continue to watch Alexandra and see what I can learn from her movements but finding out exactly what she is doing and why will require much deeper investigative work.’
I already know from the way Erica said those words that she means it is going to cost me more money if I want her to carry out that “deeper investigative work.”
‘How much?’ I ask, cutting to the chase because we are standing in the middle of a city that was built on that mindset.
‘I’ll need another thousand pounds. That’s for bugs.’
‘Bugs?’
‘Recording devices. I can place them in her home if I can gain entry or even access her phone records.
‘That sounds illegal.’
‘That’s because it is.’
Suddenly an additional thousand pounds doesn’t seem too steep. Instead, I’m more worried about the fact that we are now entering territory that could see one or both of us fall foul of the law.
‘I don’t know if I want anything like that,’ I confess, starting to sweat a little and not just because of the sun beaming down on us from overhead.
‘I appreciate that, but it might be the only way to find out what she is doing. Other than going and asking her to her face, of course.’
‘Can’t you do that?’ I suggest, perhaps a little naively.
‘I could, but why would she tell me? And all it would serve to do then would be to tip her off to the fact that someone has been looking into her. She could start being more cautious or disappear completely, and then you would never know what she was really up to.’
I nod my head because Erica has a point. She is obviously good at her job and has been doing this long enough to know all the outcomes of all the different moves she could make. That’s comforting, but it’s offset somewhat by the fact that she isn’t as clean-cut of a PI as I thought she was.
No wonder her website was so basic.
She probably has just as much to hide as the people she investigates.
‘Do I have to decide now?’ I ask, wiping a bead of sweat from my forehead and glancing around nervously at some of the people rushing past us as if they can tell that this conversation might not be a legitimate one.
‘No, like I said. I will keep an eye on her and see what I can find out that way. I appreciate that you don’t want to go down the more extreme route, and I would prefer not to do that either. I was just letting you know that it may be the only way.’
I nod at Erica and try to give her a smile, although it feels like more of a grimace. Then she tells me that I can keep the photographs because she has copies already before she turns and walks away, only needing a few seconds before she disappears from view on the crowded street.
After watching her go, I look down at the envelope in my hand and think about the woman in these photos inside. I think about what she has done to me, and I think about what she has done to Rebecca. That’s when I realise that I have to know the full story, no matter how I go about learning it. I will give Erica permission to do whatever she needs to do, no matter how risky. That’s because the things she finds out could not only be the key to saving my marriage, but they could be the difference between me having peace of mind again in my lifetime or not.
I’ll never be able to rest until I know why this woman came to my house and told a lie.
I’ll do anything to find out.
Even if it means risking prison.
33
REBECCA
It did me good to go to my family home and spend time with my parents for a couple of days, but now I need to start trying to get a little more normalcy back into my life. That means going back to work after a few days of sick leave. It means going back to my own house after a few days of sleeping elsewhere. And it also means replying to the messages and missed calls I have from my husband after a few days of blanking him completely.
I wonder if he came by our house at all while I was away, either hoping to speak to me or just to get a few more of
his things from his wardrobe. He does still have his key, so he may well have done, and if he did then I’m sure he would have noticed that the bed hadn’t been slept in. It wouldn’t have taken him long to assume that I had gone back to my parents, but if he did figure it out, I’m just glad he didn’t turn up there and try to speak to me. That would have been a bad move on his part for many reasons, not least of which because my father would have likely gone berserk at him and told him to get lost unless he wanted a good punch in the face. Thankfully, that didn’t happen, and my father didn’t have to throw any punches, nor did my husband have to receive any.
It’s not that my dad is a violent man, but he is fiercely protective of me, as any parent would be of their daughter, so he isn’t too happy about the fact that Sam has gone and broken my heart. My mother isn’t best pleased either, and even though she doesn’t express her emotions in quite the same way as her husband does, I could tell that she was deeply hurt and deeply angry at what Sam has been doing behind my back. But of course, my parents are an easy audience for me. I’m always going to find sympathy there no matter what the situation. But that’s not the case out in the big, bad world. There’s little sympathy out there in the cold light of day, and that is where I must go now. I can’t hide away at Mummy and Daddy’s forever.
I have to go back to my own life.
I have to face the music.
Putting my key into the front door, I turn the lock and step inside, noticing the pile of letters on the doormat as I do. There is a couple of days’ worth of post in the hallway, as is to be expected when a homeowner goes away for a couple of days, so I pick it all up and carry it into the kitchen, where I take a seat at the table and start to sort through it.
The first thing requiring my attention is an electricity bill, and it’s a reminder of how even the most mundane parts of life carry on in the most difficult of times. It’s also a reminder of a job Sam didn’t do even though I had asked him to do it several times, which was to request that we get our bills electronically now instead of through the letterbox. Normally, I would be irritated that he hadn’t listened to me, but on a scale of what he has done to me recently, this indiscretion is minor.
The second and third letters are just leaflets from local politicians canvassing for my vote in the upcoming local election, so I scrunch them up and toss them into the bin, not because I have no time for politics on a good day, but just because I have no time for it right now. Then I get to the last letter, and I tear the envelope open without even looking at the front of it, expecting it to be just more of the same kind of thing. Something boring. Something normal. Something for the bin.
But it’s not.
It’s actually something very important.
It is a handwritten letter, though there is no name at the bottom of it to tell me who it is from. The message is a fairly short one which means I am able to read the entirety of it quickly, but I have to go back and re-read it a few more times before I can even start to understand what it might mean.
Hello Rebecca. I am writing to you because I feel bad about what I did the other night. I was just so angry that I had to do something to get back at Sam, and that was the only thing I could think of. But you didn’t deserve to find out that way. Maybe I should have just written a letter and told you like that instead of standing on your doorstep and blurting it out. I imagine it must have come as quite a shock to you. I hope you are okay. Please understand that it was never my intention to hurt you. I was just trying to get back at your husband after he hurt me.
Sam and I slept together just over a month ago like I said last week. I know it was wrong, of both him and me, but it happened. Even though I hate him now, I cared deeply for him after that and thought there was the chance of something more between us. He had certainly led me to believe that there would be. But in the end, he decided to stop communicating with me, as if he could just forget about what had happened and go back to his life without a second thought for me.
But that wasn’t fair.
It wasn’t fair on me, and it wasn’t fair on you.
You didn’t deserve what we did behind your back, but you did deserve to find out about it, so you have all the facts and know exactly what kind of man you are married to.
I hope you are okay but understand that things might not be easy for you now. Again, I am sorry about this, though I don’t expect to ever earn your forgiveness. I just wish you all the best, whatever you decide to do.
I turn the piece of paper over to check that there isn’t any more writing on the back, but it’s blank. This is all there is, although there’s more than enough here to wrap my head around. It’s a letter from the woman who my husband cheated on me with.
It’s a letter from the woman who came to the door.
She has clarified her comments that night, as well as expressed remorse at her actions, both that evening and the evening over a month ago when she slept with a married man. While any apology from this woman is not worth the paper it’s written on, I do still find it intriguing that she has decided to make contact with me this way. As much as I hate her and despise what she did, the fact that she seems sorry suggests that she isn’t the biggest villain in all of this.
That would be Sam, the man who has screwed us both, literally and figuratively.
I put the letter down and decide that I need a drink before I read it again. Going into the fridge, I’m relieved to find that there is one more can of vodka and tonic at the back, and I take it out and open it up. Then I retake my seat and study the letter again as I drink, my eyes scanning the words that were composed by the hand of the woman who tempted my husband to break my heart. I remember her being attractive from the night I saw her at my front door, but it’s clear from the way she has written this letter that she is also smart too. It is very well put together and structured, even though I hate every word of it, and I wonder which quality it was exactly that proved irresistible to my husband in the end.
Her brains or her beauty?
It was probably a combination of the two, just like Sam said it was a combination of those two attributes that had caused him to want to see me again after our first date.
To him, I had beauty and brains, and he liked that.
He obviously liked it about this other woman too.
Damn him and his weakness for the opposite sex. I wish this woman had been boring and plain so he would never have been interested in her. But I also wish that I had been boring and plain that day on the tube too because then Sam might never have given up his seat for me and started talking to me, and he would never have ended up being the man who I fell in love with and walked down the aisle for.
But it’s too late for that now.
What’s done is done. This letter is proof of that.
I decide to treat it like the politicians’ leaflets and screw it up before tossing it into the bin to join them. I don’t need to read that letter again.
Nor do I ever need to see the man who is mentioned in it either.
34
SAM
I’m emboldened by the fact that my private investigator has been able to track down the woman who has ruined my life. I’m also feeling sick about the fact that I could soon be giving the word to my PI to undertake illegal activities. It’s been quite the day, and the envelope sitting on my desk is just one more crazy part of it.
I lean forward and pick it up, taking out the photos inside and looking again at the images of Alexandra. Everything about the pictures irritates me. The way she is holding her cup of coffee. The way she is sitting bathed in glorious sunlight. And the fact that I had to pay somebody a thousand pounds just to take these damn pictures.
The next time I see Alexandra, I hope I get more pleasure from it. A photo of her being hauled into the back of a police car would be nice, but there’s a long way to go until Erica and I can prove any wrongdoing on this woman’s part. I’ll see what the PI can dig up by more legal means before I go ahead and give her the word
to sneak into Alexandra’s home and start planting things. But it’s the thought that Alexandra must have snuck into my home and planted things of her own which means I am willing to fight fire with fire if I have to.
I’m just about to put the photos back into the envelope when I hear a knock on my office door and Maria walks in.
‘Hey. Not interrupting anything, am I?’
‘No, it’s fine,’ I say, shoving the photos back into the envelope and putting it back on my desk before attempting to cover it up with various papers.
Maria smiles and takes a seat in the chair opposite me before letting out a deep sigh.
‘God, what a day.’
She’s not wrong there, but I imagine she means it for entirely different reasons than I do.
‘Has Ed been round again?’ I ask, assuming she is ready for a good moan about our boss.
‘Yeah. Once, twice. Six times,’ Maria replies, and I laugh.
‘Thanks for what you did again earlier for me when I had to go out. You don’t have to keep covering for me.’
‘I know I don’t, but I want to. You’d do the same for me.’
Maria gives me a wink, and I guess she is right. I would cover for her too, because that’s what teammates should do.
‘Cheers,’ I say before glancing at the time in the corner of my computer screen. It’s six o’clock, so I should probably call it a day, but I’m not in any rush to go back to that empty hotel room and sit and think about my life.
‘Is everything okay?’ Maria suddenly asks me, snapping me out of my depressing daydream.
‘Yeah, fine,’ I lie. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘I’ve worked with you long enough now to know when something is wrong. So what is it?’
I think about lying and saying it’s work pressure, or something with my health or just anything that means I don’t have to tell the truth and say Rebecca has left me, but I’m a terrible liar. I always have been, and I kind of hope that I always will be because surely that has to count for something, right? But I really don’t want to let anyone else in on what is going on in my personal life because this is between my wife and I, so in the end, I decide to tell a lie, no matter how rubbish it might be.