Chapter 2

Towards the end of January, two years and five months after the mugging, memories began returning, mainly of childhood. I kept coming back to the idea of Manchester.

On Tuesday 27th January (I noted the date in my 'diary'), I awoke and I knew; I knew who I was. Allan Jonsson, from a place called Sale, near Manchester.

I just knew I had a wife, though I couldn't remember what she looked like or her name. I also believed I had children, though I could not remember how many or their names. I think I had remembered bits of that before but was unable to process it or to remember it later.

I was about to tell Trish. but something stopped me. I needed to think. Trish went off to work and I sat down to think. I had been here for over two years but my wife had not been near me. Perhaps our marriage was unhappy. Perhaps she had divorced me. In any case she would hardly want to start again with me in the state I was in. I didn't want her to see me and then for me to know that she was revolted by me. I needed to find out more before approaching her. But how? More immediately I would have to tell Trish.

That evening after the evening meal that I had prepared, I sat her down on the sofa and prepared myself. She looked intrigued.

"Something happened?" she asked with a nervous smile.

"Before I start, will you promise to do nothing about what I'm going to tell you?" I asked earnestly.

She looked startled, then a smile spread across her face.

"You've remembered!" she said triumphantly.

"Will you promise?"

"It's big, isn't it?" her smile was broader.

"Trish, for the last time, or I won't tell you. Promise?"

She looked contrite.

"Yes, Aled," she said, and waited.

"It's not Aled," I said with a straight face.

She actually squealed, something I'd never heard her do before, I least I didn't think so. "You've remembered! Well?"

"It's Allan Jonsson."

She flung her arms round me and hugged me hard while avoiding my tender bits.

"Two Ls two Ss no H! One of your earliest memories. I'm so glad," she whispered, "but why keep it secret? What's the problem?"

"I've remembered something else. I think I have a wife and children."

Trish stopped smiling and looked puzzled.

"So? Now you can find them. We can find out where you lived before the accident. You can go home."

"It wasn't an accident, Trish."

"No," she corrected herself with a frown. "The attack. But what's stopping you?"

"Has it ever struck you that no one came looking for me? It's over two years, Trish, two long years. If you were married and your husband suddenly disappeared, what would you do?"

"Contact the police and the hosp ... Oh hell!"

"Exactly. So there's got to be a reason why she didn't do that. Perhaps our marriage was in trouble. Perhaps we were in the process of divorcing. There may be other reasons but the fact remains she didn't bother to look for me."

"Perhaps you're right. Perhaps you did have a lousy marriage."

"And there's another reason I don't want to go rushing to her even if I knew who she was."

"Which is?"

"Look at me, Trish. You've never known me to look different. But my wife? I couldn't bear to rush back to her loving arms if that's what they are, only to see her shrink away from the monster I've become. If she did take me back I'd never know whether it was out of pity or love."

"Most women–"

"I know, you see past the outside, but she may not be like that. I want to feel my way a little."

The next morning, I thought I might have been in computing. Did I work for someone? I had a feeling I worked in a smallish company. I told Trish.

"It's taken its time coming, but I think your memory is starting to connect," she said.

She was delighted and kissed me vigorously before going off to work.

When she returned she had a look of triumph on her face.

"I got the use of a computer at work and looked up the electoral rolls for Sale. I know the address you live at, and do you want to know your wife's name?"

That got my interest.

"Go on," I said.

"She's called Ann."

It didn't ring a bell but I accepted it.

"My children?" I asked.

"There is a girl called Greta. Any others must either have left home, or be too young to appear on the register. Only children of sixteen or older appear on the register."

I smiled at her happy and triumphant face and pulled her to me for a kiss.

"Thank you my darling."

I was now convinced that it would be in Manchester that I would find more answers.

"I need to go," I said.

"You're right," she said. "Take the risk. Go and see. If you like I'll take you in the car. It's a long way by train and you're nowhere near a hundred percent. I've got three days owing me and at this time of year no one else is away; I can make it next week."

I was grateful for that: I had been dreading making the journey alone. Trish booked us into a Premier Inn near Sale for three nights. The time available for our search was too short, for she had to be back at work and I had my therapy. The Pelican was an old inn, over a hundred years old, but it was more of a motel round the back.

So it was that on the following Monday we arrived in my old hometown. I recognised all sorts of landmarks as we travelled south along the A56, Washway Road: a bakery, and the site of the doctor's surgery when I was a small child.

We crossed a small bridge and there on the other side of the bridge was the hotel, its front bathed in the late afternoon sun. We checked in and went to our room. I put down the bags and began to unpack. When I turned round, Trish was naked and lying on the bed.

"Come on," was all she said. I stripped and lay by her side.

It may have been February outside, and cold, but the room was pleasantly warm and we did not need covers. Trish lay on her side facing me and I did the same for her. She traced a pattern over my shoulder and down my arm, stopping at each scar while she kissed my lips. Then down my side and over my hip until she could reach no further. She touched my cock and balls, feather light. She smiled and waited.

I did the same on her body, stopping at the same places she had, and kissing her in my turn. When I got to the end of my reach I traced inside her thigh and stroked her bush just as lightly. All the while we gazed into each other's eyes and drank the love we found there.

She brought her fingers to my face and traced a pattern over my sunken cheeks and misshapen nose, drawing at length over my lips and down my chin. It was an acceptance of my damaged state and a love of me as I was.

I repeated the pattern on her face, but when I reached her lips she could not resist opening her mouth and sucking my fingers in, licking them with her tongue, while I caressed the inside of her lips. She groaned – the first noise to be made – and her hand encircled my cock, which had risen with the eroticism of the situation, and then stroked me up and down but so lightly that the sensation was as intense as any I had experienced. My groan answered hers as she sucked on my fingers three of which were now in her mouth.

I felt her thigh move. She rolled onto her back and, leaving my sensitised cock, she pulled me over her.

Her hand returned to my cock and aligned me to her.

"Right in, lover," she whispered as she lifted her hips.

Sometimes penetration is so hurried and lustful that one hardly notices the feeling of that first moment of entry. Not this time. I entered her female need with infinite slowness, feeling each inch of progress intently. I did it for me but she wanted it for herself as well. She held my hips and kept my progress under her control. She constantly changed the angle of her hips to feel me in every undulation of her centre; every crevice and cranny was worshipped.

Then I felt the end of her channel. Our eyes were still locked on each other.

"Now," she said.

I began to move slowly outwards until nearly free of her, before pushing in again. She sighed and rotated her hips to catch my hardness with her button as I pushed gently into her. We moved for some minutes, and then she began to roll me off her, taking me with her, so that she was on top. She sat straight up and continued the rhythm we had established, rolling her hips in circles to touch every part of her with my cock, as all the while she traced the scars on my chest with one hand while rubbing herself off with the other.

"I can't ... I got to ... Oh!" and suddenly she came, falling forward onto me. After a moment she rolled under me and rolled her hips up.

"Now you," she whispered. "Do it."

I began to repeat what we had done before but she pushed my bottom into her and growled, "Harder and faster, lover."

I speeded up and got into my favourite rhythm. It did not take long before I felt that gathering and muttered, "Coming!"

It was almost painful in its intensity, every muscle in my body was tight with the tension I felt as I crested my peak and my juice was ejaculated forcefully into her. I could not breathe while the semen squirted from me.

In my turn I collapsed onto her. I rested on my forearms and we stared at each other in wonder. We said nothing; we smiled into each other's eyes, and inside her I stayed for a good five minutes before my wilting erection slipped from her. I moved to her side, she cuddled into me and we slept.

It was dark when we awoke. We ate in the hotel and went for a short walk round the district in the dark. Some of it seemed familiar but that was as far as my memory went.

However when we stood on the bridge next to the hotel, and looked down upon a small brook, I had a flash of memory. It was called Baguley Brook, and I remembered games we used to play by it and in it, fishing for minnows, finding frog spawn, wading in Wellington boots or bare feet in the water. The clarity of the memory surprised me.

We had a few drinks back at the hotel before going back to bed. We had ordinary, missionary position sex, as if we both tacitly agreed that a repeat of the intensity of the afternoon's activity was out of the question.

Tuesday morning dawned wet with fine, light rain from a uniformly dark leaden sky, which threatened to penetrate our clothing as we hurried to the main hotel building from our room for breakfast.

"I thought we'd start by looking at the house I lived in and then wander about Sale town centre seeing what I remember," I offered.

Trish nodded. "Car?" she asked.

I nodded. "Too wet to wait for buses, and I sure there'll be plenty of walking to do."

She understood that my legs would not cope with standing or too much walking, and my arms would be painful from my stick or the crutches. I needed to pace things.

Trish drove along a leafy road called Cherry Tree Lane and stopped near a large house. There was a 'For Sale' board outside and it had the look of an empty property, looking rather sad in the misty rain. It was unlike any of the other houses round it. They were built in the 1930s, and had a characteristic '30s' look, but this house was larger and much older, turn of the 19/20th century.

It was a large tall detached house, three storeys above ground, with a huge garden. Whereas all the other houses faced the street in long rows, this one was at about thirty degrees to the road and set much further back from it. We drove up the bush lined drive to the front of the house and got out to look at the place. A older woman came out of the house next door and leant on the fence. Trish went to her.