Nightmare.

Laura was woken by turbulence from the other side of the bed. It felt as if her husband were wrestling a python in his sleep. She reached out to touch his shoulder. "Harry?" she said.

He struggled a moment more, then stopped and raised his head, opening his eyes as she turned on the light. "Laura?" he said. He looked around the room. "We're here. We are here?"

"Yes, we're here." she said, slightly worried.

"And married? I mean, really married, sign on the line, do not pass go, do not collect $200?"

"I think that's go to jail." she said.

"Laura, stop arguing board games and answer the question! Honestly, how can you obsess over trivialities at a time like this?"

She smiled with her lips, but she could feel her brow crinkling. "A time like what?"

He looked around the room again. "We're here and this is home and he's not here and we're together."

"Who's not here?"

"It was a dream." he said with some certainty.

"Yes, you had a dream." she said.

"No, I didn't." he said, confusing her again.

"You woke me. You were ... "

"Not a dream, a nightmare. Laura, it was terrible."

"What happened?" she said.

He looked at her imploringly. "Just say it, nice and clearly, just to be sure. You're married to me?"

"Of course I'm married to you."

"In my dream, you weren't. This chap turned up, common as muck, white belts, blue shoes with black trousers, polyester tie with a nasty tin little tie pin ... "

"Could we skip the fashion review?"

"He was ghastly, Laura. He was sleazy and selfish and dull beyond words and he claimed you were already married to him. His name was Eddie. I mean, Eddie, Laura!"

"Don't say it like I picked the name. Your dream, your subconscious."

"I'm sick, Laura, deranged. This Eddie character made my skin crawl. He claimed you'd married him in some drunken haze and then forgotten."

"You think I'd do that?"

"Of course I don't think you'd do that!"

"Well, clearly your subconscious thought I'd do that."

"My subconscious doesn't do thinking. It mostly works on pictures of you naked."

"I can't believe that after all this time, you still have doubts about me." she said. She was surprised by how much it hurt her that he could even dream of something like that, something so alien to her nature.

"I don't have doubts about you, just about us, about this. In a world full of men, you picked me and sometimes I have no idea why and maybe there is a part of me still waiting for an Eddie to turn up and say it's all some stupid mistake and you belong to him."

She looked into his worried, guilty eyes and she smiled. "I belong to you. There is no Eddie, there never was, there never will be. And when I get married, and I do get married - once on a fishing boat, once in a church - I know it. I love you. I love all of you, from Ben Pearson to Harry Cavanagh and every rogue, thief and liar in between and I chose you because no other man was ever going to be good enough for me. You tell your subconscious from me, I'm proud to be your wife and you're the only husband I will ever want."

He smiled and drew her into his arms. "I'm a lucky man."

She kissed him. "I'm pretty lucky too."

"Yes, you could have ended up with Eddie."

"Mr Steele, never, in a million years, would I marry a man called Eddie."

He smiled sheepishly. "Actually, you did."

"I did?"

"I was using the name Eddie Willis when I stole a minor Caravaggio from an art thief in Vermont."

"Which movie did Bogart use that name in?" she asked.

"The Harder They Fall, Colombia, 1956."

She kissed him. "Well, the name Eddie just became a little more appealing."

"You can fall in love with any name you like, I have dozens, but never one who isn't me." he said.

"Count on it." she said, "The dozens of you are all the man I need."

The End.