The first mannequin was called Theresa. She was something of a looker, if you liked the Barbie doll thing, with long blonde hair that stretched to her tiny waist and enormous breasts that jutted out from her front like the prows of twin ships.


“She's a typical size 12,” said Mike.

I eyed him sceptically. I was a size 12 and my vital statistics were nothing like Theresa's. He'd picked her up cheap from the recycling centre at the dump. Nobody else had wanted her, according to the bloke behind the counter; she'd been sitting there for the last five years. Maybe people had thought she was for display purposes only, they hadn't realised that she was up for sale. For Mike, it was love at first sight. Those were his own words, “I saw her standing there, so lonely, and it was love at first sight. Head over heels. Just like when I met you, love.” He'd nudged me and I'd backed away, not much liking the comparison to a plastic thing, a doll, a dummy.

I tried to dispose of her. I put her out with the garbage on a Wednesday morning, after I was sure Mike had headed off to work, but blow me down if that wasn't the morning he forgot his sandwiches and came home at morning tea time to find her standing out there by the gate. Mike didn't have much of a temper on him, but he blew his fuse that morning. He stood in the lounge, Theresa gripped firmly under his right arm, his left arm gesticulating wildly as he vented his spleen.


“I didn't pay ten bucks for Theresa just so you could get rid of her whenever it took your fancy to do so,” he ranted. “What harm is she doing to you, anyway? She doesn't encroach. All she does is stand in the corner looking pretty. If only you were so easy to please.”

With that, he plonked the doll back in the living room corner, adjusted her hair so that it hung down over her breasts, straightened her skirt and pulled the wrinkles from her top, gave her a peck on the cheek and returned to work. I couldn't stand Theresa. The way her glassy eyes stared out at me from her plastic face, the way her gaze seemed, Mona Lisa style, to follow me around the room, the way she took up so much of Mike's time and attention. He even started having his dinner in there with her, rather than sitting with me at the kitchen table as he'd always done in the past. He was wrong when he said that she wasn't encroaching. Theresa was an intruder. She was taking over. Mike had always been a bit of a hoarder, a collector, but this, I felt, was taking it too far. I'd allowed him pets (three goldfish, a couple of canaries, a black Labrador), his carnivorous plant collection (the Venus Fly traps, the pitcher plants, the butterworts), his accumulation of old radios that spat and crackled, upon which you could never find the channel you were searching for. I didn't see why I should allow him this.

Risking a return of Mike's fury, I attempted to take her back to where she'd come from; to the dump. I threw her in the boot of the car, tying the boot closed with a bit of old frayed rope and roared off to the tip before I could be apprehended. They wouldn't take her back.


“What, that old thing,” they said. “We don't want her round here, she hung around for years, never brought anybody any luck, people said she was cursed, like an Egyptian mummy. During her reign, Jim Brady who used to work on the front desk here, contracted lung cancer even though he'd never touched a fag in his life, Kyle Langford, a young buck who used to help us out lugging the heavier furniture around came down with double pneumonia after getting caught in the lightest of rain showers and Bill Sampson who'd worked here all his life and exercised regularly and ate healthily had a heart attack and had to go in for a bypass.”

The phrase 'during her reign' bothered me; it gave Theresa a queenly aspect. She'd better not try any funny business when she's living with us, I thought. I didn't want her getting ideas above her station; I wanted her to know her place.

Back home we went. I sat her down on the living room sofa and did my best to turn my back on her, to ignore her. She was forever catching my eye. When vacuuming or dusting I would catch a glimpse of her out of the corner of my vision and feel compelled to turn and look. I could swear to God that she was shifting when my back was turned, readjusting herself this way and that, striking poses. When I had put her down she'd had her legs bent and her knees together, with both hands resting on her thighs, but when I waltzed past, hoover in hand, she had both her legs stretched out in front of her and her arms folded. I blinked hard, twice; surely my mind was playing tricks. Perhaps I had shifted her myself and then forgotten about it. Maybe this was the pose I had initially put her down in. There had to be a logical explanation.

Jasmine the second mannequin was called. She was brunette, her dark hair curled in a neat shoulder-length bob.


“Here y'are tiger,” Mike addressed Theresa. “Here's a companion for ya. Don't say I don't treat ya right.”

He put Jasmine down on the sofa, and then swiftly vacated the room. When he re-entered he was clutching one of my newest dresses - I'd bought it just a week or two previous and it had cost a pretty penny.

“Mike,” I squeaked, “You can't dress her up in that. That was expensive. What if she spills something on it or tears a hole in it?”

“For Christ's sake,” he replied. “She's a dummy. She doesn't eat or drink, she doesn't move of her own accord. Your dress will be fine, stop being so selfish.” He pulled the dress on over Jasmine's head, and shoved her arms through the sleeves. I thought, for an instant, that I saw a small smile of victory flicker at the corners of her mouth, but that, surely, could only be my stupid, overactive, imagination.

I didn't plan it.

On the evening of Jasmine's arrival I went out with 'the girls', the little gang I'd known since high school; Bridget and Andrea and Karlene. We dined at the local Thai, and then retired to our usual haunt, the Mucky Duck. I gave the girls a quick summary of the situation.


“It's creepy,” I said. “It's like I'm being invaded. I mean, where is it going to end? Is he going to bring home a whole clan, an army of them? Are they going to take over? Am I being usurped from my own home?”

“I think you're worrying too much,” said Bridget. “It's just two dolls. I'll admit it is a little odd, a grown man, a married man, showing an interest in mannequins like that, but they're hardly a threat. It's not like he's having an aff…, an aff.., an affair.”

She gave a small sob. Her own husband had been caught in the broom closet with his secretary the previous spring. One of his colleagues had told Bridget about it and she'd been devastated. She kicked him out of the house and got a divorce, but everybody knew that she wasn't really over the break-up. She would burst into tears at random moments; not quiet, weeping tears, but great big howling, choking sobs.

“Sorry,” she would say, “I know that I'm being embarrassing, it's just, it's just…”

“It's alright,” one of us would reply, patting her back. “We understand.”

No, it wasn't as if Mike was having an affair.

“Maybe he's having a mid-life crisis,” said Andrea. “A nervous breakdown, a second childhood. Maybe you could get him off the dollies and onto the train-sets or something a little more masculine. Maybe he needs a hobby, or to take up a new sport.

“He has hobbies,” I said, thinking of the Venus fly traps and the clapped out radios. “And he hates sport, Mike's a bit of a slob. Still, a train-set is a good idea. Less shameful if somebody comes to visit. After all, there are plenty of grown men who are into model trains. Aren't there?”

“Sure there are,” replied Andrea. “That kind of thing is perfectly normal, everybody needs their little outlet, their tinkering time, their time out from the world. See what I think the problem is, is that we live in a world where it's push, push, push. From the moment we're born there are demands on us; to succeed at school or university or work, to buy a house, to find a partner, to settle down, to breed. The world impinges on us, it doesn't let us alone, won't leave us to our own devices. Everybody needs their quiet time, their time sitting doing nothing at all, or completing crosswords, or listening to music. Now, for some people, these pressures just build up, and they break, you know, they crack, they can't hack it. They're often the ones who haven't learnt how to take it easy, who don't know how to relax. So, maybe these dolls are a healthy thing, a small blow-out in order to prevent a larger explosion.”

“You know what I think,” said Karlene. “I think he's secretly satisfying his wish for children. Didn't you tell him that you didn't want any kids? Maybe the dolls are his substitute for a family.”

“The whole thing's got completely out of hand,” I said. “One thing's for sure, I don't want any more of those damned dollies cluttering up my living room.”

Famous last words. Over the coming weeks Mike bought home a doll every other day; he didn't get them from the dump, he'd taken to going round the local shops and paying them a fairly hefty sum for the mannequins that sat in their front windows. By the end of the month we had over twenty of the damned things, all striking various poses, all dressed up in my dresses, all mocking me, silently mocking me.

It felt like living in a morgue. Dozens of dead eyes followed my every move. I was being spied on. It wouldn't have surprised me if the damned things were bugged, electronic devices embedded in plastic chests in order to record what was going on in the house when Mike was absent. Surveillance. I had suspected his suspicion for several months now; the accusatory looks, the probing questions. Since he'd bought the dummy home I'd been a lot more careful. We didn't do it in my marriage bed any more, or in the front room, during the day, instead we booked hotels and motels, cheap sleazy joints with sagging mattresses with the springs poking through and clogged swimming pools upon which floated a charming variety of dead leaves and rubbish, old crisp and fag packets, empty soft drink bottles and general scunge, rooms that were coated with more than a sprinkle of mildew, rooms whose ceilings dropped soft, steady drips upon our consummating heads. He couldn't afford anything more and I could only justify so many of my expenses as 'household appliances' (the Kitchen Whiz broke down, we needed a new one, of course it cost three hundred dollars, that's cheap, new hoover, the old one died, always having to actually buy the damned things, of course, making a mark-up to help cover the expenses of my dalliances.) Mike gave me an allowance, but it wasn't much - he kept a pretty tight hold on the purse strings. I often wished I had a career of my own, some way to make a buck, to pay my way in this wicked world, but I had left home at fifteen, not the sharpest tool in the box and my choices had been secretarial school or some sort of menial work such as filleting salmon at the local fish factory or cleaning. I gave the cleaning a go, lasted about a week, developed dreadful eczema from all the products, the Jif and the Ajax and the Mr Muscle, my arms were red and raw and itching. No, it was better to put my efforts, my attentions into finding and netting a rich husband. I met Mike down at the Mucky on a Friday night; I was doing karaoke - Tina Turner Simply The Best, dressed up in my new tight, stone-washed jeans and high-heeled white boots with the gold tassels and a skimpy red top that showed off my assets. When I came offstage, he approached and offered to buy me a drink. Sure, I said, glass of Chardonay, make it two. It took just three sentences. He said he liked the high kicks I had done while I was singing, said I had flair. He said he thought I had a good singing voice and could probably find work part-time as a backing singer if I wanted. He said he was studying to be a lawyer and I was hooked.

It was so swift, so easy, just in and out, in and out….

We had a good marriage for the first three years, but as time went on I became increasingly dissatisfied. Dissatisfied with my gilded cage of a life, dissatisfied with the general lack of excitement, dissatisfied with the sex which was plodding and predictable, in, out, in out, finish (always his finish, never mine). Finish, roll over and snore. Dare I admit it, I began to turn to a tipple during the day and sometimes a Valium or two - Mother's little helper. I suppose that children may have helped to fill the void, but I didn't want any screaming brats circling my ankles with their snotty noses and their yelps and their incessant demands. My days were spent doing the housework and shopping and lunching with friends. A decade of housewifery. Who can blame me for seeking something more, for straying?


He found me through Facebook. I'd been going online more and more in an attempt to beat the ennui that threatened to engulf me. I'd made myself a Facebook page, put on a few holiday snaps of myself in various exotic destinations (that was one good thing about Mike - the vacations) and I'd had a few posts from other people who'd been to my high school or known me in my youth, but his was the one that really stood out.

“You were gorgeous then, and I'll bet you're gorgeous now. Swimming pools have never been the same for me since. Get in touch if you fancy it. Trevor.”

I should never have answered. I should've closed the open window, shut down my PC, walked away. The swimming pool incident had been shoved into the wardrobe in the far corner of the room of the mind, and there it should have stayed; it never should've been rehashed, trotted out to prance and preen in the full light of day.

“Hey Trev,” I replied. “Long time, no hear. Life is good, still living in Upton, have you moved away? Let me know if you fancy meeting up for a beer one day this week.”
He answered within twenty minutes, which should have made me suspicious about his motivations. Mind you, shouldn't I have been suspicious about my own motivations - what was I playing at, inviting an old boyfriend out when I was a happily married woman? Well, married anyway.

We didn't go to the Mucky, too risky, that was where Mike and the girls drank. Instead we went to the King's Head where he shouted me from the two for the price of one menu. I had scampi and chips and a glass of white wine. As I reached for my wine, he extended one hand and furled his fingers around mine.


“It's been so long,” he said.

I thought I might drown in two pools of murky blue.

“I still get excited every time I smell chlorine,” he added.
My heart increased its beat. Gosh, he was handsome, I'd forgotten all about the strong jawline and the masculine forehead. I know that sounds odd 'masculine forehead' but, boy, you should see his. Not to mention the eyes, which were like slivers of sky. He clammed up after the chlorine comment, said nothing for the rest of the meal, just chowed his way steadily through his burger and wedges, glancing in my direction from time to time, as if to check that I was still there. I did my best to pry information out of him - where he'd been, what he'd been doing with himself for the past decade or two, but he would just shrug and avoid my questions, he'd always been a shy guy, maybe it was all a calculated ploy, maybe he thought an air of mystery helped to make him more attractive. Or perhaps he was ashamed, maybe he'd been doing something illegal, like dealing cannabis or heroin, or working as a pimp, or in money laundering. Wherever he'd been, whatever he'd been up to, I was none the wiser after asking him a few questions. Well, I didn't want to interrogate the guy; everybody's entitled to their privacy.

When I was done with my scampi and he with his burger he spoke again.


“Listen, I know a great little place near here, they do two for one cocktails at this hour of the night. You wanna give it a try? Don't know about you, but I can sink an awful lot of Tequila and still stand up straight.”

Tequila made my head spin and my guts heave.

“Sure,” I said. “Just gotta make a quick call.”

I'd told Mike that I was going to my sister's place.

“Mike,” I said. “I'm going to stay over at Susie's. One of the kids is sick and she hasn't had a good night's sleep in three days, so I'm going in the kids' room so if they wake in the night, I can tend to them and Susie can sleep right through.”

Susie was a solo parent.

“Fine,” he said.

All bases covered. If I was home that night, I could just tell him that the kids seemed fine and Susie said it was best for me to go home.

He was asking for it, really…

Home was not where I wound up. Several sambucas, three tequilas and a worm later, I was in the first of many sleazy joints. Did I feel guilt? Oh, there was something tweaking vaguely at the corner of my conscience, but I was having too much fun to pay it any real attention. Mike had never been up to much in the sack, nor had he ever bothered to learn any real skills, so what had he expected? At any rate, he'd never find out and what he didn't know wouldn't hurt him. Millions of women, all over the world, at this very moment, were doing exactly what I was doing now. Some of them got away with it, some of them didn't. It was human nature, it was biology, it was inevitable. Such excuses I made for myself, such justifications. Trevor and I had been at it for about six months when Mike brought home Theresa. I wondered if he wasn't getting back at me, wondered if he knew, if he was really saying, ha ha, two can play at that game. Upping the stakes.

Three months after he'd first bought home Theresa, I caught Mike in bed with Jasmine and one of the others. There was a hierarchy, you know, amongst the dolls, as there is in a harem. In this case it was first in, highest status; Jasmine and Theresa would tend to lord it over the other girls, boss them about and so on. They thought I didn't know about it, but I had extra-sensory ears when it came to that sort of thing. I knew they moved and gossiped and whispered when my back was turned, as in those stories about toys in a nursery who have their own lives, their own existences, quite independent of their owners. It was a Saturday. I'd gone out to do the grocery shopping, but came back early having forgotten my purse. There he was, in the sack, buffing Theresa's breasts with a shammy. I stood in the doorway, mouth agape.

“Just giving her a buff,” he shouted, overly defensive. “She was getting grubby. Her and Kylie here.”

He gestured to the other doll who shared our marital bed with him, a gingernut with fake freckles spattered on her cheeks and a pouting mouth. If it had been just the single incident maybe I could have forgiven him. I'm not trying to make excuses for myself, but I caught him a total of ten more times in bed with the girls, ten and always an excuse - just cleaning, just buffing, just doing her hair. We were just watching Hymns of Praise together.

All day long I thought of those dummies, they infiltrated my consciousness, they took over. At night, when I closed my eyes, I saw their plastic faces floating before my mind's eye, I heard their admonishing, incriminatory voices calling in a chorus, we know what you're up to, we know what you're up to. They would tell on me, they would blow the whistle. Their own crimes were endless. They had stolen my husband, ruined my marriage, driven me half out of my mind. Driven me further towards the bottle.

They say that I murdered my husband, you know, knifed him in the full light of day. It wasn't me, it was one of the girls, nobody's quite sure who; I suspect somebody lower down in the hierarchy who was envious because she wasn't getting enough love and affection from my husband. It's me who's paying, of course, locked up in this place, avoiding the dykes - the only things I look forward to are the day's hour of exercise and the TV watching we are allowed in the afternoon. Is it satisfying for you? But I'll be out, soon enough; a life sentence is never really life these days and then I'll find my beloved Trevor and tell everybody the truth.

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