Chapter 1

I want to tell, NO! I need to tell the story of the most incredible events of my life, or maybe anyone’s life.

I need to get the story written down before it fades completely. Already some parts of my life feel almost like a dream, or maybe it’s like watching a film of someone’s life on a screen. It’s a most unusual feeling. As soon as I began to suspect my memories of my past were fading I started testing myself daily, writing down small facts, minor details of my life in the evening, by morning some of them seemed distant, almost gone while other memories are still sharp, but will they still be there by tomorrow?

Let me introduce myself, I was known then as Graham Pearce. The manager of a small branch of a well known bank until I retired four years ago. I was a widower, my wife of forty years died three days after her fifty ninth birthday, that was nine years ago now.

I met Maddie when I was a junior clerk in the bank her father managed. We had fallen in love almost immediately, we spent every moment we could together trying to find secluded places we could sit and kiss. Nothing more than kiss you understand, Maddie was a very correct young lady and I was quite an innocent lad.

We were going steady for about a year before I got up the courage to ask her father for her hand in marriage, that’s how it was put in those days. Our engagement lasted for about a year during which time I was promoted to chief clerk in a nearby branch.

The wedding was quite a splendid affair, every body in business in Wadebridge, where I now worked and where we were to live, knew us and attended the service plus there were dozens of people from our home town present.

The wedding night was a disaster, I knew nothing about how to please a woman and Maddie had been taught by her mother to “Lie back and do your duty by your husband”. Not a good start to married life, the act itself felt somewhat brutal and to my shame she cried herself to sleep on my chest afterwards. That’s one memory I would be glad to let fade but it remains as sharp as if it were yesterday.

Our sex life never improved after that. Maddie had been put off by that first night, I am sure she didn’t even know she was supposed to be able to enjoy the experience and I didn’t know enough to help her to learn to enjoy the act. Back then there was no one you could go to for help and advice, or at least not in the circles we moved in.

Our love life dwindled rapidly, at first she would submit to my desires once a week. But soon I found myself unwilling to subject my beloved wife to such an unpleasant act. Before our first year of married life was out we coupled less than once a fortnight. Then once a month, by our fifth anniversary we had given up entirely. Obviously the lack of a sex life meant that there were no children and that was something we both missed.

Over the years this lack of intimacy took its toll on our relationship. We were no longer lovers but we were more than friends. So Maddie was my wife but mostly my best friend. I missed her so much when she died, I was alone then, no family, few friends. I was never one for socialising or playing golf with business associates. If I had been I would probably have had a more successful career, I was very good at my job but was stuck running a small out of the way branch of the bank because I hadn’t made the right connections.