A Twist of the Knife

Dream wife

Imagine your ideal mate... I mean really your ideal mate... genetically engineered to your own specifications... a looker of your wildest dreams... who would pander to your wildest whim. Imagine someone you would be incessantly proud of... who would constantly adore you... who will never stray... who satisfies you intellectually... who is an incredible cook... who never ages, never gets mad at you... who, in short, would make your life more complete than you could ever have hoped...

Clive Marples sat in his den, staring at the advertisement on his computer screen, and tried to imagine it, liking what he imagined a lot. Really a lot. That could be him, he thought, having this woman. Having a whole new life. The life he had always dreamed of, with the wife he had always dreamed of.

There was just one small problem. He already had a wife.

To be fair, Shirley had once been a stunning looker. And in those early days he had been incessantly proud of her. But that had been twenty years ago, when she was fifty pounds lighter and kept herself in shape. In recent years she had become lazy, guzzling chocolates and Chardonnay and doing little else. She was like a sloth, lounging around the house and by the pool, day in, day out, when she wasn’t out lounging around somewhere else with her friends.

There wasn’t a labour-saving device she had not bought. A robot vacuum cleaner was one of the latest. She regularly scoured the adverts on television and at the back of her magazines for anything at all that could make her life even lazier than it already was. Clive was sure that if it was possible to buy eggs already boiled, from Waitrose or Tesco, she would do that to save the effort of boiling them herself.

They had little to talk about because she never watched the news any more. She never read a paper at all, except to see who Simon Cowell might be dating, or what the Duchess of Cambridge was wearing, or which A-list celebrity was divorcing who. He couldn’t remember the last conversation they’d had about anything important that was happening in the world, beyond the pages of Hello! and OK! magazines.

Shirley had never wanted children. He’d been ambivalent about them until his friends had started having them. Watching some of his mates become fathers did not exactly fill him with a craving to do the same. Neat family homes suddenly transformed into crèches, filled with screaming and the smell of sick and poo and laundry. When friends who were now parents came over with their sprogs, laden with rucksack baby-carriers, buggies, bags of nappies and toys and God knows what else, it was like a small army moving in for a few hours of manoeuvres.

His best mate, Charlie Carter, told him that with all his friends starting to have kids, he’d be feeling broody soon, too — and Shirley even more so. But it was the opposite with Shirley; she saw the sheer amount of effort having children took — starting with the act of giving birth itself. Any time she saw it happen in a documentary or film on TV, she would shake her head and say, ‘Not for me, thanks!’ Then she would quote Woody Allen’s line about ‘aimless reproduction’ and shrug. ‘And what’s it all for?’ she would ask. ‘Become a slave to the bloody little monsters for the next twenty years? Then they either despise you and sod off, become drug addicts, or are a constant financial drain on you. And what if you got a wonky one? Subnormal or deformed? I couldn’t cope with one of those. I wouldn’t have the patience.’

The sister of one of her best friends had a Down’s Syndrome child. Another had a boy quite seriously on the autism spectrum. Another had a daughter who would forever have a mental age of six months old. That made Shirley even more adamant never to take the risk. ‘And on top of that,’ she would say, ‘having babies destroys your bloody sex life. If you don’t have a Caesarean, your vagina gets stretched and it never fully recovers. And if you do have a Caesarean, your stomach muscles never recover from being cut through and you end up with a pot belly when you get older. It can’t exactly be a turn-on for a bloke to watch a bloody, slimy baby being pulled out of your twat, can it?

‘Most of my friends say they’re not interested in sex after they’ve had all their children. One of them, Maggie, actually reads a book while her husband’s shagging her. Babies? Not for me, thank you very much.’

And not for Clive, either. He was fine with that, despite the occasional bit of grief from his mother about waiting to become a gran. He was content with his life, or at least he had been, until recently. His climb up the corporate ladder of the global IT giant he worked for was going well, and he was earning a big salary and even bigger bonuses. He and Shirley had not long moved into their latest house on the property ladder, a swanky senior management home, The Cedars, with a Georgian portico, three-car garage and five-vehicle carport, in a smart, gated estate off Brighton’s Dyke Road Avenue, called The Foresters. The property included a large, well-stocked garden with an infinity pool, a Zen water feature, three mature cedar trees and a view across the rooftops of Hove to the sea.

All the other houses were similar, but not completely identical. Each had its own idiosyncratic features and name, rather than a street number, to make it sound classier — The Oaks, The Firs, The Pines, The Willows, The Elms, The Maples, The Aspens — with, of course, the appropriate three trees in the garden. All their carports boasted latest, top-of-the-range Beemers, Audis, Jags, Mercs, Lexuses and Porsches, all gleaming, as if fresh out of their boxes.

All the occupants of The Foresters lived, it seemed to Clive Marples, high on the hog. In winter there were plentiful drinks and dinner parties. In summer, a constant round of barbecues and pool parties. All the residents took regular, expensive holidays. And, Clive assumed, they were all getting plenty of sex — until the kids came along, of course.

His problem was an increasing belief that everyone on the estate was actually having a better, happier and more fulfilled life than himself. As well as all the other members of his golf club, where he played a regular game on Sunday mornings.

Driving home from the station some days, he found himself starting to envy his neighbours more and more. Not their houses or their cars — his large, hybrid Lexus was up there with any of them, and so was Shirley’s convertible Mercedes SL — no, it was what seemed to him to be their contentment. Couples actually happy to be with each other. In truth, he did not look forward to coming home very much.

It tended to be much the same most nights. Shirley, in some shapeless tracksuit or onesie, lying back on the sofa, stroking the cat, which had become as fat as her, watching some rubbish on the box and stuffing her face with some confection from a chocolate box lying on the sofa beside her, and swigging it down with Chardonnay.

She’d raise a hand, as if to warn him to be silent and not interrupt her programme, and say, ‘Dinner’s in the microwave — give it three minutes.’ Then she’d pop another chocolate in her mouth, take another swig of wine and return her intent gaze to the screen.

Once a week they made love. A perfunctory, clinical function of mutual relief that rarely involved kissing, more a quick groping around each other’s erogenous zones, the right movements discovered and fine-tuned over two decades, then it would be done and she would return to watching the television and he to the papers or a book.

On Saturdays in winter he went to watch his football team, The Albion, when they were playing at home, or else he watched television. On the days at the stadium when it wasn’t his turn to drive, he’d enjoy a few beers with his mates, and then a few more, inevitably arriving home later than he had promised, to be greeted by an angry Shirley, all dolled up, tapping her watch, telling him they were embarrassingly late for some dinner they were going out to.

Up in the bedroom, getting changed to go out to dinner, frequently with Shirley’s closest friend and her husband, neither of whom he particularly cared for, he would think to himself, dismally, is this it? Is this my life? Is this how it’s always going to be?

Is this all it’s ever going to be?

And increasingly, late on Saturday night when they returned home, while Shirley went to the bathroom to begin her ritual of removing her make-up, and then putting on her bedtime war paint, he would nip into his den and go online. To the DreamWife website.

And read, and dream.

At a mere £550,000, it was a bargain. Or would be, if he happened to have a spare £550,000 sitting around — and no wife.

Then late one Saturday night, Clive had a light-bulb moment. He realized that the two things could, actually, be elegantly combined — and how it could be done. While Shirley slept, looking like a ghost, with her face caked in anti-wrinkle mask, he lay awake, thinking, planning, scheming, hatching.

First thing on Monday morning, in the office, he phoned his IFA and told him he felt it was sensible for him to have a life-insurance policy. He did his best to make it sound innocent and altruistic. If anything happened to him, he wanted Shirley to be able to continue in the lifestyle she currently enjoyed. So the policy should be big enough to pay off the mortgage, and provide her with a continued decent income.

‘Well, Clive, if you are going to do this, might I suggest you also take a policy out on Shirley. Just in case, you never know...’

‘Well that’s a thought,’ Clive replied.

‘You share the house. If anything should happen to her, you’ve no idea how you might react. You might be too grief-stricken to carry on with your work. It happens. You’d be wise to take precautions.’

Clive knew what his IFA’s motivation was. Simple. The fat commission. And that suited him down to the ground. It was a small price to pay for the benefits to follow. He decided to follow the sound advice and take precautions.

A month later, after he and Shirley had completed all the forms and been visited by a doctor from the insurance company for medical examinations, the policy was in place. Both their lives were now insured for two million pounds. Now all he had to do was bide his time. Idiots got caught by not waiting long enough after taking out a policy on a loved one, before killing them. He had read about that in newspapers and in crime novels, and had seen it in crime shows on television. He had to give it plenty of time. Allow clear water between taking out the policy — and then claiming on it.

Clear water.

Another light-bulb moment!

The more he thought about clear water, the more he liked the idea. Water. The sea. Big, deep oceans. And it was their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary in a little over a year’s time. What better way to celebrate than by going on a cruise? Shirley would like that. She could eat all day long. And all night long. What better place for a sloth?

A really nice, long cruise. In a nice big ship. Across a big, deep ocean.

Perfect!

Shirley was thrilled to bits when he told her it was all booked. In fact he could hardly remember a time when she had looked more pleased. Within minutes of springing the surprise on her, she was on the phone to her friends, telling them all about the fantastic cruise he was taking her on. One of the best cruise lines, all around the Caribbean. Utter pampered luxury. An hour later she was on the internet, starting to buy her cruise wardrobe. Even though it was still almost a year away.

Without telling Shirley, he remortgaged the house, giving him the extra money he needed to pay the DreamWife deposit. When he had completed the formalities, he received by courier a large, heavy wrist-watch. It contained a micro-scanner and camera, which, he had been informed, would download all the memories from Shirley’s brain and implant them in his new wife. It was accompanied by detailed instructions on when to activate the camera — in the presence of any woman he met or saw, either in the flesh, on television or in a movie, whom he fancied; elements of her would then be incorporated in the manufacture of his dream woman. You just had to remember to switch it off after the download was complete or else it would continue to download going forward.

It was a very long year, in which Shirley talked about the cruise almost daily until he was heartily sick of it. They would be visiting twelve islands, including Barbados, St Barts, St Lucia and Antigua, and she regularly showed off to him, with her increasingly fat and dimpled body, the twelve different daywear outfits she had chosen and the twelve different evening dresses. With, of course, the twelve different pairs of shoes and the utterly essential matching handbags. And with each new outfit, he stared with increasing gloom at the monthly credit card bills. Within the first six months she had spent more than the entire cost of the cruise on her bloody outfits.

Way back in the early, heady days of their relationship, when he had been head over heels in lust — and in love — with Shirley, she would often show off a new dress to him when he came home from work. And back then, each time she did so, he would hold her in his arms, kissing her neck and gently reaching around behind her to unzip or unbutton the dress, until it slid down to the floor. Then he’d nuzzle her ear and tell her that the dress a man most liked to see on a woman was the one he most wanted her to take off.

That was then. Now, when he saw each new one, he desperately wanted her to keep it on. All night if possible. Even in the bath.

But Clive was sustained by his plans. The ones he carefully nurtured for life after the cruise. The plans for his new life. While Shirley continued relentlessly shopping for her cruise wardrobe, Clive wrote down another list altogether. His secret list. The requirements that he would be giving to the DreamWife Corporation.

And finally the big day arrived!

On their first night at sea, as the SS Gloriana sailed from Southampton, Clive and Shirley — who was wearing a particularly slinky first-night-at-sea gown — found themselves sharing a table with a grim couple. Plump, bald and boastful, Harry Tucker, was a self-made mail-order-cutlery tycoon, and his even ghastlier wife, Doreen, a peroxided sixty-year-old blonde who wore a frou-frou miniskirt and high-heeled leopard-skin bootees.

‘Nice watch!’ Harry Tucker said to him admiringly.

‘Thank you,’ Clive said, and dutifully admired back the large chunk of male bling attached to the fat man’s wrist, realizing it was almost identical to his own.

‘We’ve obviously got the same taste in watches,’ Tucker said. ‘I collect them, actually.’

‘I like watches, too,’ Clive said evasively.

‘I’ve got two Breitlings. A Tag. A vintage Rolex Oyster, three Cartiers and a Patek Philippe.’

‘Very nice,’ Clive replied, not wanting to get drawn into a conversation about the provenance of his own watch.

Helped by the fact that Clive had secretly been lacing Shirley’s drinks, in the hope that she would pass out later before making any demands on him in bed, she began flirting shamelessly with Harry — while Doreen started flirting with him. Clive became a little worried about where this might be going. The ship’s photographer, who had already taken one snap of Clive and Shirley entering the dining room, now took another of the happy foursome at the table. Well, to be strictly accurate, happy threesome.

Their first night at sea was calm. For a change, it was Shirley, in an alcoholic stupor, who kept Clive awake by snoring, instead of the other way around. But he was fine with that. It gave him the excuse, not that he needed one, to dislike her even more intensely. They awoke to a gentle Atlantic swell, and when they were showered and dressed, they went down to breakfast. Shirley ate modestly for a change, just a few mouthfuls of a chocolate-coated cereal, her complexion a tad pale, while Clive happily munched his way through a full English. They whiled away the morning, checking out the geography of the ship, with Clive showing a particular interest in the stern, before having a Bridge lesson, accompanied by their new best friends, Harry and Doreen.

Clive couldn’t help noticing that Harry seemed to have taken a bit of a shine to Shirley, and she to Harry, and that was fine by him. Flirt away, baby, he thought.

By lunchtime the swell had increased. Shirley, increasingly pale now, managed a few mouthfuls of chicken salad, while Clive ate a lobster, followed by fillet steak and chips and then chocolate cake. In the afternoon they sat through a dull lecture on the Caribbean islands. Clive ate a hearty tea, while Shirley managed to down a cuppa and a solitary mouthful of dry toast.

By early evening, as they headed out towards the mid-Atlantic, the weather had deteriorated to a Force 7 gale. Shirley, lying back on their bed, her face the colour of alabaster, said, ‘Clive, darling, maybe you should go to dinner on your own.’

‘Nonsense, my love! Get dressed and a stiff brandy will sort you out!’

Holding her pudgy hand, he helped her up to the bar, where they met Harry and Doreen, both of them already quite smashed on Martinis. ‘Shirley’s feeling a bit off-colour!’ Clive announced.

‘A stiff brandy’s what you need! Brandy and ginger ale!’ Harry told her, and insisted on buying her a very large one. Followed by another. And then another. All of which was perfect, Clive thought. Harry was, unwittingly, doing his work for him. A short while later, in the dining room, Harry and Shirley were engrossed in conversation, and that was fine by Clive, too, as they downed first a bottle of fine white burgundy, then a bottle of red. What was less fine was the ghastly Doreen’s legs entwining themselves around his ankles, and her constant winking at him.

He played along with it, happy to see Shirley so distracted, drinking more and more as the Atlantic swell worsened. All around them, one at a time, people were getting up from their tables and staggering towards the exit. One old man fell over and had to be helped up and out by two Filipino waiters. As their puddings arrived, a huge, silver-haired woman, wearing what could best be described as a chiffon wigwam, fell over close by them and vomited on the carpet. As the stench reached their table, Shirley turned towards him and slurred, ‘Clive, darling, I shink I need shome fresh air.’

Excusing himself, he helped Shirley to her feet and escorted her, holding her tightly, towards the exit and up the stairs. Then he took her out onto the blustery deck in the pitch darkness.

‘Better, my darling?’ he asked.

‘Sh’I’m not shure.’

Slowly, steadily, he escorted her towards the rear of the ship, until they reached the stern rail. Below them was the turbulent wake, with flashes of phosphorescence dancing on it. He could feel the pitching and yawing of the great ship, its stabilizers increasingly ineffective against the rough sea. After a couple of hundred yards, the wake became invisible in the inky, moonless darkness.

‘Stare at the horizon, my love,’ he said, looking around at anything but. He was checking out the deck behind and above them. Checking carefully. Oh so carefully. Making sure there were no witnesses.

‘I–I shhhcnan’t see it,’ she said.

‘Maybe this will help,’ he replied, lowering his arms down to her waist. Then, with one swift movement, he hefted her heavy body up in the air and pitched her over the rail. She vanished without a sound. He listened for the splash, but never heard it. He stared down at the wake, but could see no sign of her. He stood for several minutes, shivering with cold, then turned around, looking about him, then up and around him again.

Then, stealthily, avoiding his face being seen by any crew or passengers, he made his way back down to their deck and along to their cabin.

In the morning, after a mostly sleepless night in which the sea had become even rougher, he climbed out of bed, showered and shaved, picked up the daily copy of the Gloriana News that had been slid under their door, hung the DO NOT DISTURB notice on the door handle, then made his way along to the dining room, where he found Harry sitting on his own at their table, tucking into bacon, sausage and black pudding, despite the now quite violent motion of the ship.

‘Morning, Clive!’ he greeted him chirpily. ‘No Shirley?’

‘She’s feeling a bit green this morning,’ he replied.

‘Doreen, too!’ Harry said. ‘No sea legs, these women!’

‘Too right! She spent most of the night vomiting.’

‘Just like Doreen!’

Clive had little appetite, but managed to down a couple of pieces of toast and a poached egg.

After breakfast the two men joined in the Bridge class once more and were paired up with a couple of doughty elderly women. After the session they went to their respective cabins to check on their spouses, then met in the bar for a couple of large gin and tonics, and lunched together.

‘She’s a tasty lady, your Shirley,’ Harry Tucker said.

‘Doreen’s very beautiful,’ Clive lied.

‘She is. I’m a lucky man,’ he replied.

‘You are indeed!’

The following morning, Clive decided, was the time to raise the alarm. The ship’s motion was still very uncomfortable as he staggered along to the purser’s office on B deck and informed the officer, ‘I’m worried about my wife. She’s been feeling sick as hell for the past day and a half. I woke up this morning and she wasn’t in the cabin. I’ve searched the ship high and low and can’t find her. Could you please help me?’

An hour later, after the crew had searched every inch of the Gloriana, the captain made a decision to turn the ship around, and also to send out a Mayday signal for all ships in the area to look out for someone in the water. Although, the captain told Clive, the chances of surviving for any length of time in this cold water were not good.

‘Even someone fat?’ Clive asked.

‘That might give them a few extra hours,’ the captain told him. ‘I’ve done my best to calculate the current, and we’ll retrace our steps as close as possible to where she might be. There’s also an RAF Nimrod search plane on its way.

For the rest of that day, Clive, accompanied by Harry Tucker and a large number of the ship’s company, stood around the bow rail, several of them with binoculars, staring down at the ocean or towards the horizon dead ahead. For several hours the Nimrod flew low above them. But all any of them saw were occasional bits of driftwood, a half-submerged container that must have fallen overboard from a vessel and a school of dolphins. At dusk, as the light began to fail, the captain abandoned the search.

Clive Marples was inconsolable.

As his mother said to him much later, at least if they found her body, there could be some closure. Tearfully, he agreed with her.

Eight months on, after a good show of mourning, much sympathy from everyone he knew and copious quantities of alcohol downed with his friends and frequently on his own, attempting to obliterate what he had done, one rainy Thursday morning in early June, Clive Marples’s phone rang. It was from a cheery lady at DreamWife.com telling him that Imogen was ready for collection. When would be convenient?

The following morning, Clive threw a sickie from work and spent much longer than usual in the shower. He inserted a brand-new blade in his razor and shaved extra carefully. He rolled on deodorant and sprayed himself liberally with his favourite cologne. Then, with his iPhone playing his favourite music through the car’s hi-fi, he headed off from his house in Brighton, the satnav in his Lexus, programmed for the DreamWife Corporation’s headquarters, near Birmingham.

He sang along to his favourite tracks all the way, feeling in a great mood, if a tad apprehensive about just how Imogen would turn out. He felt he was on the verge of a whole new adventure, the start of his new life. He could not wait!

In truth, he was a little disappointed when he reached the address. He wasn’t sure quite what he had been expecting to find, but certainly swankier and more glamorous premises than the address he pulled up outside. It was a large, but very ordinary-looking unit in an industrial estate, sandwiched between an exhaust-repair outfit and a timber warehouse. But there was no mistaking he was at the right address: There, beside the door in small letters, were the words ‘DreamWife Corporation’.

He went in and found himself in a small front office, with a plump lady in her mid-sixties sitting behind a tiny desk, eating a Pot Noodle. The walls were decorated with large colour photographs of smiling, beautiful young women, and there was a drinks dispenser. He gave the receptionist his name.

She looked at her computer screen, frowning. ‘Mr Marples, did you say?’

‘Yes.’ He was irritated by her manner.

‘Did you bring ID with you? Your passport and driving licence?’

He handed both to her and she looked at her screen again, frowning further. He felt his heart sinking, and started to wonder if he had been conned. Then, suddenly, she smiled. ‘Ah, yes! Here we are! Imogen?’

‘Imogen.’

She handed him a receipt to sign, then she picked up her phone and pressed a button. ‘Mr Clive Marples to collect Imogen,’ she said to someone. Then she pointed to a chair. ‘Do take a seat,’ she said. ‘Help yourself to a tea or coffee. She’ll be down in a few minutes.’

He made himself a coffee, sat on the hard plastic seat and waited. And waited. Then he needed to pee. The receptionist pointed at a door and gave him directions. A few minutes later he returned to the reception area and stopped in his tracks.

An apparition awaited him that totally took his breath away. A tall, leggy blonde in a short, clingy dress that showed off every contour of her voluptuous body and stopped several inches short of her knees. She had, quite simply, the sexiest legs he had ever seen in his life. And the most beautiful smile. And two elegant suitcases on the floor beside her.

‘Clive!’ she said. ‘I’ve been dreaming about you for so long!’ She threw her arms around him and gave him a long, deep, kiss that made him instantly, incredibly horny.

He carried her bags out to the car and put them in the boot. A couple of minutes later they were heading out of the industrial estate.

‘Turn left here, and then in one and a half miles make a right,’ she told him.

‘You sound like my satnav,’ he said.

‘Oh yes? Well, I’ll bet your satnav lady doesn’t do this,’ she replied, fumbling expertly with his belt and then his zip. By the time they were four miles down the M40 he’d had his first orgasm.

The rest of their journey home passed as if it was a dream. They chatted easily. She knew everything about him, as if they had been together for years, as if they were soul mates.

For the first two heady days after they arrived back at his house, they made love for most of the weekend, only interrupted by Imogen cooking him meals and rushing to the shops to get him the Saturday, then Sunday newspapers. At ten o’clock on Sunday night, falling into a blissful, sexually sated sleep, Clive Marples considered himself the luckiest man on the planet. He truly had his dream wife.

Imogen rapidly became the envy of all Clive’s buddies on The Foresters estate, and at the Dyke Golf Club. A few Sundays after Imogen had come into his life, having had one too many beers at the 19th hole, Clive announced to his regular golf buddies, ‘Know what they say? The perfect wife should be a chef in the kitchen, a lady in the living room and a whore in the bedroom? Well, my Imogen is all of that and more!’

Of course, they all wanted to know where he and Imogen had met. And Clive had the perfect answer ready. ‘Online,’ he said. ‘On a dating agency website.’

All his pals agreed he was one lucky bastard.

The following Friday night, Imogen proved to be the perfect hostess when Clive entertained his new boss and his wife to dinner. The five-course meal she prepared was, their two guests declared, some of the most delicious food they had ever put in their mouths. And after they had gone home, Imogen, just as she did every night, treated Clive to the most delicious love-making he had ever experienced. Never had he felt so alive, so fulfilled, so youthful!

His friends at the Dyke Golf Club told him he looked ten, maybe even fifteen years younger. It had to be down to the new lady in his life. What was his secret? How the hell had a middle-aged git like him pulled such a lovely woman? Several of them — all married men — surreptitiously approached him, asking for the number of the dating agency. Cheekily playing the moral ticket, he told them he could not possibly give such temptation to married friends.

And his life with Imogen carried on being sweeter than he could ever have imagined. Every evening, it seemed to him, Imogen reinvented sexual pleasure. She took him to new heights, doing new things to his body that he could never, ever have dreamed of. He just loved everything they did together, in bed and out of it. He even found himself enjoying things he had once considered chores, like accompanying her food shopping, and even clothes shopping. And all the time they talked and talked. She was a voracious reader of newspapers and books, absorbing everything, and she had intelligent views on every topic they discussed.

Then one Saturday morning, shopping in the Marks & Spencer superstore at Brighton’s Holmbush Centre, his arm around Imogen as they headed towards the food hall to select items for their dinner, Clive stopped in his tracks. There, walking down the aisle towards him, was Shirley.

Clive instantly turned, sweeping Imogen around, and rapidly led her away, convinced he had seen a ghost. He dragged her out of the store and into the car, wondering, had he imagined it?

‘What’s the matter, my darling?’ Imogen asked sweetly.

‘I’d rather go to Tesco,’ he said.

‘Tesco’s good,’ she replied.

That was one of the many things he loved about her. She never questioned his decisions. But, boy, was he shaken. That couldn’t have been Shirley. Impossible! It was his imagination playing tricks. His guilty conscience?

Had to be.

All the same, when he tried to make love to Imogen that night, he couldn’t perform, despite everything she tried. With every caress, every touch of her lips, he saw Shirley walking down the food hall aisle towards him.

Then on Monday morning, driving up Brighton’s Queen’s Road to the station to catch his regular commuter train to London, Clive suddenly saw Shirley walking along the street, heading to the station herself.

Impossible!

As he turned his head he failed to notice that all the cars in front of him had stopped for a red light. Too late, he jammed on the brakes and slammed into the rear of a large, bronze Jaguar. As he climbed out, a furious-looking short, fat man clambered out of the Jaguar. To his amazement he recognized Harry Tucker, their plump, odious table companion from the cruise last year.

‘My God!’ he said. ‘Harry! Harry Tucker! Remember me? Clive Marples from the cruise last year — the Gloriana? I’m so sorry!’

Not entirely surprisingly, considering the circumstances, Harry did not seem at all pleased to see him, and appeared very flustered and distracted. They exchanged few words. Harry seemed in a hurry to swap insurance details, ignoring all Clive’s questions about how he was and what had brought him down to Brighton. Then he drove off after muttering vague promises about calling him and meeting up for a drink sometime.

On the train, Clive sat, deep in thought, mystified by the strange encounter. Had he imagined Shirley? Had he imagined Harry? Had he seen a ghost? Could Shirley possibly still be alive? Could Harry Tucker be having an affair with her?

But how the hell could she still be alive? It was impossible. The thought was absurd! But Clive could not stop thinking about the two extraordinary coincidences. He fretted about it all day. That evening, arriving back at the station, he hurried across the car park to his Lexus and went straight to the front of it. There indeed was a dent, and a broken headlight.

A week later, seated at a table at a restaurant in Brighton with Imogen, he saw, across the room, Harry and Shirley being shown in by the maître d’ and seated at a table only a short distance away.

This time there was no mistaking. It was Harry and Shirley. Holding hands. Chinking Champagne glasses. Clearly deeply into each other.

Despite his efforts to keep his head low, he realized that Harry, who was facing his way, had recognized him. But Shirley had not.

A few minutes later, Harry got up and headed towards the toilets, giving him a nod on the way. Clive joined him at the urinal. Before he could utter a word to Harry, who seemed embarrassed as hell, Harry said, ‘Clive I know this must sound pretty weird to you. But before Doreen and I went on that cruise I discovered this amazing site on the internet called DreamWife.com. You pay quite a big sum and they issue you with a watch that can scan memories and faces and create your dream woman, out of anyone you meet and fancy.’

‘Really?’ Clive said, feigning surprise.

‘It’s amazing! Well, here’s the thing — sorry I was short with you the other day over that prang.’

‘You had every reason to be.’

‘Didn’t want to get drawn into a conversation about why I was down in Brighton. Shirley had a hankering to visit. You see, I took an incredible fancy to your Shirley on that cruise.’ Then he held up his watch. The one identical to the one Clive had worn on the cruise. ‘A scanner, just like yours, right?’

Clive said nothing.

‘I’ve had it a while. I used it on the cruise to download stuff from your Shirley’s brain and to take pictures of her. The only thing was I forgot to switch it off when the download was complete! When I returned home, I sent it all to DreamWife and requested a replica of her. Then I dumped Doreen. I only took delivery of Shirley a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t think you’d mind, too much, seeing how badly you and she were getting on. And then with her being dead and all that?’ He grinned, lasciviously. ‘Dunno why you weren’t getting on, she’s a cracker. My God, she’s a goer!’

‘I’m glad you’re finding that, Harry,’ he said.

‘She’s wild, mate! Know what I mean? Never known a lady like it in the sack! You don’t mind?’

‘Be my guest.’

Clive was feeling a terrible stab of panic. How much did Shirley remember? What the hell was she going to be telling this fat dickhead?

Then Harry Tucker put an avuncular arm around him. ‘She told me everything, Clive,’ Harry said. ‘How she was seasick, and you took her out on the rear deck and then threw her overboard. Don’t worry, matey, I know it all.’

‘You do?’

‘I don’t mind a bit! How else would we have got together? Seems like you did us both a big favour! Our little secret, eh?’

‘Our little secret.’

Harry gave him a pat on the back. Then he nodded back towards the dining room. ‘That bird you’re with, she’s a cracker.’

‘Thank you, Harry. She is.’

‘Oh, I know! I know she is. You can just tell, can’t you? Maybe we should go on another cruise sometime? In a year or two when you’re getting bored of her. Give me a call. Just give me a call. I’d always be up for it. Know what I mean?’ He winked.

Clive returned to his table. As he sat down, Imogen said, ‘That man you were in the loo with — how do you know him?’

‘I met him in another life.’

She smiled wistfully. ‘So did I.’