Chapter 33

Sunday was a complete change from the previous day. The wind had veered to the north and a front had brought heavy rain, which beat on the windows of the flat. I had some toast for breakfast and then set off for the house. It wasn't exactly cold in the rain, but it wasn't warm either. Not pleasant.

I entered the house. It was very quiet, so I knew the children had gone. Ann appeared. She was wearing a blouse with a scooped neck giving a delicious hint of her breasts, and a shortish pleated skirt. No stockings or tights, but a pair of open sandals. She kissed my cheek and I kissed hers and she led me into the living room where there was a pot of coffee, mugs and milk.

I noticed there were photo albums on the coffee table and a couple of VCR tapes. Ann was pouring the coffee and saw me eyeing it all.

"Laura said she'd seen you and she asked me why I hadn't helped you with your memories of our life together, and I had to say we've both been too busy. But she was right. So I thought we could go through the photo's and see what you remember."

She sat by me, her skirt rising high along her thighs (oh, God, her thighs!) and picked up an album.

"I've sorted the photo's into albums in chronological order, I did it when you first disappeared. I don't know why I carried on because the photo's were agony to look at. Perhaps I hoped that by looking back you would return to me and all would be well again. But here you are, the earliest time in the life of Allan Jonsson."

So there began a journey through my life. The first album had pictures of my mother and father, both of whom I recognised, though I had to be told that the baby and the boy was me. There were school photo's, holiday snaps and Christmas photo's. She told me who the people were when I couldn't remember them, but I was surprised by the number whose names came back to me unaided.

Then there were teenage parties, school trips, photo's of me larking about with friends whom neither Ann nor I could recognise. There were a few with girls hanging on my arm or sitting on my knee at parties. We didn't know them either. We laughed about them, Ann telling me they had good taste.

There were photo's from university, groups in the union, I recognised Geoff as a young man hiking. Photo's of Summer Balls with, it seemed, different girls. I found I knew some of their names and remembered what we did together, though I did not always tell Ann what it was we did! Then some of graduation with my proud parents.

"You know," said Ann, as we broke for lunch, a salad she'd made earlier, "Ordinary people, people like me, we don't remember everything or everyone, or even most of the things that happen in our lives. It's just that we know roughly what happened. All we remember are the special times, when we were especially happy or embarrassed or sad or when something special happened. The rest is gone."

"Yes," I agreed. "It's just that in my case I don't even know all those special times. Even with the photo's it's almost as if they happened to someone else."

"That's why we're doing this," she asserted, "We go through your life in pictures and you can keep coming back to them again and again."

I felt grateful she'd thought of this idea, and said so. She smiled and hugged my arm. The woman was growing on me.

Then we went back to the sofa. This time it was different. Wedding photo's or to be more precise courting, engagement and wedding photo's. Ann gave a commentary on the photo's and how the wedding went. She spoke with real fondness.

I found it interesting that while I had no memory of the event, each piece of information rang a bell and became clear. Then there followed photo's of our children as they grew, their little triumphs, school photo's and our holidays together. There were photo's of us all together laughing. Others of us romping on the floor of the house.

Ann commented on them, saying where they were taken and what was going on, but that was secondary to the emotional comfort and solidity it was giving me. I was getting more and more elated and it showed. By the time the photo's were finished I was buzzing with happiness.

"Now there's more," she said, "I compiled a video from our camcorder tape collection."

She put a DVD in the machine, and we sat and watched as the disc put life into the photo's we had already seen. There was plenty of footage of Ann and me, arm in arm or with our arms round each other. Some Christmas footage when the children were opening presents, and of Ann and I kissing on the sofa. It was fun to watch, but I began to get a little edgy. Did Ann choose all the hugging to exclusion of other stuff?

"Did you download all the hugs and kissing you found?" I asked smiling.

"Well, nearly all. We were in love you know."

"The tape?" I asked.

"Well," she said, rather hesitantly I thought, "It's a tape of our more private moments. It shows us being intimate, being in love. You don't have to watch it."

I had the feeling I was once more being set up, but against that, I wondered if it would show Ann and me as a relationship. I desperately wanted to know.

"Play it," I said.

"We agreed to record this in case one of us died, so we would remember how much we loved each other."

She played it.

The next hour was filled with pictured of us cooking together, sitting together, laughing together. The pictures became more and more sexually explicit. We had filmed ourselves necking on the sofa we were now sitting on, obviously having the camcorder on a tripod.

We were shown undressing each other and caressing more and more intimately, until I was clearly fingering her inside her knickers and she had my cock out and was pulling on it. The transitions were smooth and gradual. I became more and more wrapped up in the action. It was like watching a porn film, except that it was more making love than raw lustful sex alone.

When the bedroom scenes started, I was oblivious to everything else. On the TV screen we undressed each other, and then we began to make love. We kissed, caressed, fingered, masturbated. We licked and sucked and blew. I took her pussy and she took my cock in our mouths in a sixty-nine, and we both orgasmed whereupon she swallowed my offering and I licked all round my wet lips and face.

Then, unlike a porn film we cuddled up together, our limbs entwined, and said loving things to each other, clearly for the future for the benefit of the tape. Eventually the scene cut to us in a more aroused state and this time there was full on sex. Missionary first and then she begged to go on top, then wanted me behind her, while she fingered herself to an orgasm which was fully satisfying and I came inside her with similar satisfaction.

There was more. She had dressed in a little black dress and I was in a dress shirt and dinner suit. We undressed each other. She had the flimsiest purple bra and knickers set I had ever seen, with black lace top thigh high stockings, and she undressed me to show my erect penis to the camera which revealed that I had clearly enjoyed the view.

I showed the camera how slowly and lasciviously I could pull her panties down over her thighs and then her calves, whereupon she opened her legs wide and invited me in. Then we fucked again, though this time I pushed her legs over my shoulders and hammered her until she cried out her orgasm and I bellowed mine. The children were clearly not at home. Once again we cuddled and the tape finished.

I was exhausted. I wasn't sure what I had learned. The couple on the screen were clearly very much into each other, knew each other completely and loved each other. Was I turned on? You bet I was. My cock was hard, and though I had not played with it as I watched, I had had to adjust it.

"Hey, baby! Fancy doing it for real?"

It was Ann at the door. I had not noticed her going, but now she stood in the doorway wearing very little – a black lacy minimalist push-up bra, black lacy see-through boy-shorts showing all she had on offer, and black fishnet stockings with lacy tops. Her hair was down. She was a walking wet dream, and she was inviting me to have sex. What could I do?

I'll tell you what I could do. I could get intensely angry; I could get livid with rage, I could get disgusted with her manipulation of my feelings to get me into bed. For what? So she could get relief for her sexual itch. Did I do all that? Oh yes.

I got up, pushed past her quite roughly and made my stumbling 'run' for the front door. Once it was open I turned. She was standing in the hall looking totally at a loss.

"So that was it, was it?" I snarled, "A whole day to get me so worked up I would fall into your bed and you could use me to scratch your insatiable sexual itch? Nice try, but it won't work with me. I don't do sex with women I respect just for relief, theirs or mine. There has to be love. Go and get Derek inside you if you're that desperate! You look like a common whore!"

And I slammed the door. I started the car and turned it round, but she did not come out. I drove home to my flat, probably very dangerously.

I paced the floor, raging inside and talking to the room, or myself, I did not know or care which. I felt utterly betrayed and cheated. A whole day devoted to my seduction! The gradual orchestration of my emotions, to the point where I would give in and go to her bed; what casual manipulation! What selfishness!

The phone rang.

"Yes?" I snapped.

It was Ann and she launched into a tirade.

"How dare you say those things to me? How dare you accuse me of seducing you? When are you going to wake up to the fact you love me, Allan? That all this emotion and rage is to do with that? All right, the underwear was a misjudgement on my part. I'm sorry! I did everything today to try and help. Help you, not me. You were so wrapped up in the film of our lovemaking that I thought a little light relief was called for. Light relief, you stupid bastard! You could have laughed and told me to get dressed.

"But no. Oh no! You fly into a fucking rage. It proves one thing you stupid bugger, you want me. You're all chewed up. You need to find out why. You can't blame Trish or Jenny, or Clare or Viv any more. This is inside you.

"Get real and start realising who loves you, worships you, longs for you every hour of every day. What I did at the door was what any wife would do for her husband when he got horny watching porn, and don't say we're not married, you know damn well we are, even if the government doesn't think so.

"I'm sorry! It was a mistake, it was a joke. OK? Fuck, Allan, what do I have to do?"

And she rang off.

I sat down heavily. All my anger had dissipated. Once again that anger had risen in me. Once again I had gone off at the deep end and if I did it much more it would drown what relationship we had. Now I recalled the photo's and the videos. All that love. Was that why I got so angry? That it had all been taken away, ruined? What did she say?

'This is inside you. I did what any wife would do. What do I have to do?'

She was right. I recognised suddenly how much she was trying to win me back. How much she loved me. Every time she did it I knocked her back. How stupid! I did love her but this god-forsaken anger would keep rising every time we got close.

I rang her back and when she answered I burst into tears and between the heaving and the sobbing, apologised over and over and babbled on and on about my troubles and this wild and untamed anger which I could not seem to be able to control. What else I said I can't remember, but it can't have been coherent. After some time, I ground to a halt.

She said, "OK, but you need professional help," and rang off. It was all I deserved but it hurt all the same.

Monday morning. Another working week. But I woke very early with the events of the day before etched in my mind and no thought of work at all.

I did not lie abed, but rose and spent half an hour on the rowing machine, which I had been rather neglecting. Then a shower and only then did I allow myself the first mug of tea that day. I allowed myself half a grapefruit and some muesli as well. It was still only six, and the sun was shining, and already warm.

I thought about Ann, and there came a flash of understanding, the sort that makes you wonder why you couldn't see it so clearly before. With that revelation came the why of it as well.

Ann had been steadfastly working to get me back to her, ever since that meeting in the pub just before the marriage that didn't happen. She had weathered all the temper tantrums, the pettiness, the moods that I displayed so forcefully. I had made her suffer, and she had suffered with every rejection I had shown her. But she had carried on. I had been unfair, unfeeling and at times vindictive.

And the why of it? I had been completely wrapped in my own agenda and my own resentment at my position. I had been in reality looking for someone upon whom to take some sort of revenge, and the person most closely connected with my likely assailants that I could get at, had been Ann.

It had dominated everything I had done and thought. It had been part of a self-centred drive to emotionally reverse the calamity that had befallen me. That reversal could never happen. So much was I bound up in myself and my self-pity that I couldn't see the suffering of the one person who had consistently loved me since first we became intimate all those years ago, long before my 'accident'.