Wife Interrupted - Amy's story

Amy Molloy was in love and engaged, it seemed her 'happy ever after' was secure ... until the man of her dreams died three weeks after the wedding. Read her story over the next few weeks exclusively on iVillage.co.uk

Amy's story begins where most women hope theirs will end - with a big, white wedding. After all, isn't that how every good fairy tale finishes?

But at 23 Amy found herself a widower and, as she saw it, faced with two options; a) dress in black, become a recluse or b) decide falling in love again is out of the question and choose an easy, uncomplicated alternative - sex.

She chose the second option, numb with grief she just wanted to feel alive.

August 2009

Extract taken from Wife Interrupted by Amy Molloy

By the time my husband had been dead thirteen months, I had slept with twenty-seven men. Because sex I can do: at sex I'm a pro. Whether right or wrong, I was having sex just three months after he died; slipping back into a pubescent autopilot; gasping in the appropriate places and going down obediently when required.

And it may not have been good sex, but it was safe sex. Not in the gynaecological sense, but in the sense that I was detached: void of emotion, void of a history and completely anonymous.

To whichever man shared my bed that evening I was nothing more than a female anatomy. And that was just fine with me. Because at twenty-three years old, with one dead husband under my belt and a widow's shroud around my shoulders, anonymous was a tonic: anonymous was just perfect.