Venus de Milo

Anna

It's been an age since her husband touched her.

She's tried the romantic nights in - awkward silences over al dente pasta which can barely be seen in the candlelight, unattractive blushing as she reveals the new underwear that she got from an alien boutique in town. These evenings were of no success whatsoever, unless one counted the profits made by vendors of silk negligee, scented candles, massage oil and expensive wine that tastes like piss.

She feels like a punchline; the bored, unfulfilled wife. Sharing a bed with the man she promised herself to, and stifling the urge to cry herself to sleep because the loneliness is in her bones and some days, it's all she can do to get out of bed and put on clothes.

She's always wondered what the story is behind Tess, the girl from Number Eight - pretty, but not all there. Well maybe that's a bit harsh - but for a teenage girl she is unsually quiet, thoughtful. She's never had a boyfriend, even though Ollie from down the road is smitten by her. And she's always so serious... Anna catches her eye once on a Sunday afternoon, and somehow manages to elicit a tiny smile from her small mouth. It's the start of something.

She doesn't know what it is exactly that makes Tess so fascinating in her eyes recently. Maybe it's the cabin fever of a suburban woman, or maybe it's the way that the teenager walks - so guilelessly, as if she has no idea that half the men who live on the street have been thinking about her in private since she turned sixteen. Maybe it's envy - envy that this girl, however oblivious she is, has a quality that makes her irresistable to men - when all the while, Anna can barely get her husband to look at her.

The... 'affair', for want of a better word, doesn't last very long. Anna's husband is away more and more, and she fills the time by taking Tess into her bedroom and luxuriating in her young body and soft petal lips. She knows that it can't last, this perfect dalliance, because some dreams are too beautiful to be real.

Tess

Falling in love with the housewife from Number Three wasn't exactly something she was expecting. Even less expected was the sit-down talk about the husband, and her family, and how they couldn't spend any more time together. She knows that Anna doesn't love her husband, or maybe she does, but it's almost certain that he doesn't love her back, not as much as she needs. Tess has felt that intense, unbelievably real need for love, she touched it for just a second on that first Sunday, and she wonders if anyone can possibly fulfil such a desire. Maybe nobody can, and that's why Anna pulls away, not even acknowledging her in the street anymore. No weekend glances, no secret smiles. Anna goes back to being the woman across the street, and Tess goes back to being Tess. Sort of.

Finally her parents stop worrying, because she's doing normal teenage girl things - crying into her pillow, scribbling nonsense into a diary, listening to loud music, and feeling like her arms have been torn off.

For the fifth or sixth time, Ollie asks her out, and she doesn't have the heart to keep saying no. Saturday night comes and she's waiting for him to pick her up, wearing a brand new dress and borrowed earrings, lipstick making her feel like a tart. When he pulls up in his battered Ford, she doesn't wait for him to get out of the car. Instead she smiles, walks over and gets in the passenger side, the whole time staring straight ahead. She daren't let her gaze travel across the street to Number Three, where she imagines hazel eyes watching from behind the ghastly net curtains.

Time passes.

She finds herself enjoying Ollie's company, maybe she even loves him a little, and before she knows it they've been together for sixth months and saying a tender goodbye to each other as they set off for different universities. He's Oxford-bound (such a catch, her parents keep saying), and she's headed for art school in the North.

Her first week at uni, she's in the art studio with a dozen other pretentious freshers, and a plaster-of-paris sculpture catches her eye. An exact replica of the Venus de Milo. The perfect woman; attractive and feminine, with no arms of her own to defend herself, or pleasure herself, or reach out to be held. It's the first time in ages that Tess lets herself think about the wife from Number Three; beautiful, but incomplete.