Authors note: One of my less successful stories (The Bridge) was criticised by a reader because they disagreed with the fundamental premise of the story, even though the factual basis for this was explained within the text. In this story, I have again employed a well-documented fact as a part of the plot, but for any disbelievers, or those who may just want to know a little more, I have included endnotes. Anybody who doesn't want to read them doesn't need to, so please don't bother to criticise this aspect of the story. Constructive criticism, both positive and negative, is always welcome. Rude anonymous comments will be immediately removed. They seem to be increasingly common, and even acceptable. They are not.
As always, any grammatical errors or typos are down to me alone. Please remember authors on this site, myself included, aren't writing for financial gain and mistakes are virtually inevitable.
The Contract
July 2014
My wife is very pretty when she smiles; something that she does not do often enough. She has short black hair, sad brown doe eyes, and soft rosy lips which are often pursed in concentration. She is thirty-five years old and has the body of a goddess; five feet ten inches tall with a beautiful round arse. narrow hips, and big round breasts, all of which she shows off to the world clothed in the latest most expensive designer clothes.
My friends and colleagues have often remarked how lucky I am to have married a woman like her. Only three people know that my marriage to Suzie has nothing to do with luck and that it involves no love and no sex. Those three people are Suzie, myself, and my lover, Georgina.
Many marriages eventually end up as loveless and sexless, but ours is almost unique because I have never loved Suzie and she has never loved me, and because we have never had any sexual contact whatsoever. Our marriage has involved no love or sex from day one. I have never even seen her naked body, do not know the shape of her breasts, and can only imagine what lies between her legs. I have never fucked her, and barring a miracle I never will. Suzie is totally asexual and has no sexual desire. I am almost certain that she remains a virgin and has never even masturbated.
Sometimes I have wondered what nature had in mind when she produced a woman with such a beautiful body and then condemned her to a life of chastity.
Even this early in my tale, I imagine you are wondering why we ever married and why we remain together. I will explain.
***
After I graduated from Medical School I went to work in a busy district general hospital in the Midlands in England but after two years on the wards, I started to realise that I didn't like sick people and that maybe doctoring was not for me. Accordingly, I applied for a job as a medical advisor at a well-known international pharmaceutical company and was pleasantly surprised when, after an interview, I landed the job. It was there that I first saw Suzie.
I was in the staff canteen one lunchtime when I saw her sitting with a group of young women who worked in marketing. A young male colleague, who was sitting next to me, saw me looking appreciatively at her and smiled before he spoke.
"Dream on. That's Miss Susan Walker. She works in marketing. Rumour has it that she's related to a guy who is a major shareholder in the company and who is as rich as fuck. She's pleasant enough but keeps herself to herself and never socialises outside work. I've watched any number of folk hit on her, me included, but she's just not interested. I thought she was a dyke, but she's not interested in girls either."
"I'm taken," I said. "But you have to admit she's got one hell of a body on her."
I had told the truth on both counts. At the time I was going out with a young lady called Anne whom I had met in the last hospital I had last worked at, and where she was a nurse. That relationship was fated to not last much longer. She still worked in Birmingham whilst I, by then, was living in London, and one hundred and twenty miles is a long way to go for a fuck.
***
Suzie's and my path did not cross much during work, and I did not speak to her for the first time until a year or so later when we were at a company meeting discussing the launch of a new product. I remember thinking that she had done well for herself having been recently promoted to a junior management position. She was extremely professional in her attitude but was aloof and rather cold. I am ashamed to say that, chauvinistically, I thought that she probably needed a good fucking to improve her mood.
I knew one thing. Whoever ultimately fucked her, it wouldn't be me. There were good reasons for this. I had learned that she was the only granddaughter of Gordon Walker who sat on the board of directors of the company for whom I worked. Her mother and father were dead, and she had no brothers or sisters. He was reputed to be a ruthless bastard and very old-fashioned and right-wing in his views, and I imagined he would have a dim view of any man who had casual sex with his granddaughter. In any case, she didn't appear to like me very much, if at all, and I was not tempted to make a pass at her, even though I had no girlfriend at the time.
***
The years passed and both Suzie and I rose through the ranks. Six years later I was a senior medical manager and Suzie was assistant marketing manager for the UK. By then, our jobs had brought us into direct contact with one another regularly. One of my duties was to make sure that all advertising material, marketing, and communications complied with the industry code of practice.
When we first started to work together, Suzie insisted on calling me Dr Morgan but eventually, I persuaded her to call me Lance when we were alone together. We may have been colleagues on first-name terms, but we were not friends. Suzie was remarkably good at her job. She was very intelligent and organised and obsessional in her work habits but, outside work, I knew nothing about her. She remained serious, unsmiling, and distant.
This did not bother me. Suzie may have been beautiful to look at, but despite her curves, beautifully coiffured hair, painted fingernails, and expensive clothes she had no sex appeal whatsoever.
After finishing with Annie I had a couple of relationships that came to nothing. In all that time Suzie never mentioned having a boy or girlfriend.
In January 2012 it was my thirty-third birthday and then, about a week later, a far more important event in my life occurred.
Mr Gordon Walker died.
I later found out that it was expected. He had been suffering from prostate cancer and was eighty-nine years old when he passed. Unsurprisingly, Suzie had not mentioned that the man, who had brought her up as his own daughter, was terminally ill. Suzie later told me his wife had died almost ten years earlier, and her grandfather was the last of her close relatives.
Appropriately, the funeral was held on a cold wet day in late January. I was present along with the members of the company board of directors and senior managers. In keeping with his wealth and status, the church was crowded with the "great and the good", and I recognised some familiar faces including several government cabinet ministers. Kenneth Clarke, Jeremy Hunt, and Boris Johnson sat close to the front of the church in the row behind where Suzie sat, accompanied only by the chief executive officer of the firm.
It was then that I realised that as Gordon Walker's only living heir, Suzie was likely to have inherited her grandfather's wealth and a seat on the board of directors. Overnight, she had suddenly become a very rich and influential woman.
Later, at the cemetery, I watched her standing silent and alone by the grave as the coffin was lowered into place. She was dressed all in black, her beautiful body covered by a modest full-length dress and coat, and her head by a black lace mantilla. She was expressionless as she threw a handful of soil onto the coffin, then turned away. As she walked back to the waiting car I suddenly felt very sorry for her.
I didn't attend the reception in the Ritz Hotel but hurried back to work. Driving away from the cemetery it occurred to me that I would never see her again. Why would she return to work as a marketing manager for a company she owned a large chunk of? And then I realized that I had never said goodbye.
***
I needn't have worried. Early in February, Suzie returned to work. She was even quieter and more thoughtful than before, but I put this down to recent events, and she soon threw herself energetically back into the job.
