By JENNY JOHNSTON - More by this author »
2nd November 2007
Heather Howland looks at the floor as Andy, her husband of 15 years, tries to work out how many men she has had inappropriate relations with in the past two years.
"We were going through it all the other night and I said I reckoned there have been about 50," he says, quite matter-of-factly.
"Heather said 'Never!' but I started to list them all and, yes, it is that many. I think she's only had full sexual intercourse with five or six, but let's just say that things have gone on that shouldn't have gone on, with many more."
Incredibly, they start to discuss some of these illicit "dalliances", in the way that any couple might discuss holidays taken, or restaurants visited.
"There was the builder, that bloke in the graveyard, the guy in your work," Andy begins, and his voice trails off. His 35-year-old wife, who is pretty and articulate, takes over: "Don't forget the man at the centre. And the young boy doing community service. Oh God, that was a bad one. I tried to drag him into the toilets."
In any other circumstances, the only response to such jaw-dropping openness about marital indiscretions would be "yuck". Surely such dysfunctional marriages only exist on the Jeremy Kyle Show?
But the Howlands aren't Jeremy Kyle's sort of people. Before "all this" started, they were the happily married parents of a seven-year-old boy.
Andy worked in a children's home, helping youngsters with behavioural problems; Heather was an advertising executive.
They had been teenage sweethearts, together since the age of 17, and had strident views about the sanctity of marriage.
Heather was from a particularly church-going family, and hadn't as much as looked at another man since her wedding day.
"I'd never even kissed anyone else, or even considered it," she is at pains to point out. "When people in the office where I worked had affairs, I was always the one tutting."
So why on earth are we now talking about the fact that she has cheated on her husband with up to 50 other men? The answer is that Heather is ill.
In May 2005, she suffered a massive brain haemorrhage while gardening. Andy was told she was not expected to live. He even signed the consent forms that would allow her organs to be donated.
When she pulled through, the doctors warned Andy that brain injuries were complex things. He was not to be alarmed if Heather's personality changed. What no one could have predicted is the manner in which Heather's personality would change.
"The medical explanation is that she suffers from hypersexuality. It's a convoluted way of saying she's a nymphomaniac," explains Andy.
Heather looks suitably mortified as she sums up her plight, which is that her life has been reduced to sex, sex and more sex. It would be funny, if her face wasn't so serious.
"One day I was this ordinary mum, in an ordinary marriage. Sex was there - but it wasn't a big deal. Well, it isn't once you have children, is it?
"Then I woke up in hospital and was just consumed by the need to have sex all the time. And it didn't matter who with. I turned into someone I didn't recognise. I still don't. I'm not the sort of person who propositions men in the street and invites them home for sex."
And yet that's exactly what she has done. She has put her marriage under unfathomable pressure, and played Russian roulette with her own health and her husband's.
"It got to the point where we were both tested for sexually transmitted diseases, which is unforgivable of me," she admits quietly.
"I put the man I love in danger, to the point where my counsellors said the only solution would be for me to take condoms with me every time I left the house."
What has happened to this couple is simply incredible. But perhaps the most surprising - and touching - part is that they are as united as ever. Andy sits by Heather's side as she admits to behaviour that would have any other woman condemned as a cheap slut.
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