By JENNY JOHNSTON

Last updated at 15:47 02 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.

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"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.

"I can't say this is easy," he says, "and I still get churned up every time I think about her with another man, but when we got married I promised to stick by her in sickness and in health. I know we can get through this. People laugh at this sort of thing, and I know why.

"I've made my fair share of jokes about getting hold of Viagra so I can satisfy Heather's urges. But it isn't remotely funny. It's turned my wife into someone she just isn't. And I want her back."

Heather was in a coma for ten days after the haemorrhage, during which time she suffered two major bleeds in the brain. Eventually, she opened her eyes and gave Andy a weak smile.

If he felt euphoric, his mood improved even more a few days later when Heather asked him to help her to the bathroom - then pulled him into the toilet cubicle with him.

There, they had the sort of sex that couples who have been married for 13 years tend not to have. Andy was bemused, but not complaining.

"I thought it was some sort of big reaction to this near death experience," he recalls.

"It wasn't Heather at all but, hey, look at what she had been through. I went along with it - what husband wouldn't? She was my wife and I'd nearly lost her. Of course we were going to seize the day."

So they continued seizing the days. And weeks. And months. For the first three months of her recovery, Heather did not really leave the house.

Andy stopped work to care for her every need and was only too happy - if quite bewildered - when most of those needs seemed to be sexual.

Three months into her recovery, however, Heather said she felt well enough to pop to the local shop. Andy was worried. Her short-term memory was, as he puts it, "shot to pieces" and he was concerned she would forget where the shop was or what she had gone there to buy.

But as he watched her cross the road - waving up at him as he stood at the window - he failed to realise where the real danger lay.

"She was fully aware that I was watching her," he recalls now, shaking his head at how improbable the situation now sounds.

"Then I noticed that she was heading towards this builder who was working on a house opposite. He called something to her - she went over and they started talking.

"They went into the hallway of this house. The door shut. I thought: 'What the hell is going on here?'

"Then I could see figures moving inside the frosted glass. My heart just fell to the floor. They were kissing, it was obvious. I could not believe what I was seeing. My wife was supposed to be going to the shop - but she was kissing this builder in front of me.

"I ran across the road. I'm afraid I wasn't thinking very logically at this stage. I hit the guy, and dragged her back home.

"She was protesting all the way, saying: 'What is wrong with you? I haven't done anything.' She just wouldn't listen to reason. When I told her that she couldn't go around kissing other men, she just shrugged."

In the weeks and months to come, Heather's behaviour would worsen.

"It went into freefall," Andy admits. "The builder was just the start. The house started to fill up, mostly with my friends coming to see how she was. She revelled in the attention. She was flirty, forward. It was painful, but even I didn't realise how far she would go.

"One day a friend called me up, horrified, saying: "Andy, I've been getting these texts from Heather. They are quite explicit.'

"Another said quite clearly: 'Andy, if Heather goes on like this, she is going to get herself raped.'

"It was true. She was so forward, even with me there. If we were in a pub, I'd have to keep an eye on her. I lost count of the number of times she'd come on to some man at the bar and I'd have to go up and say: 'Sorry, she's not well.'

"I went to the doctors, asking for help. The counsellor said she had heard of such things, but wasn't experienced enough to know what to do. She said I should just make sure Heather always carried condoms. What sort of answer was that?"

Six months after her brain surgery, Heather went back to work. Andy made sure that her bosses knew about her unusual "condition" but somehow the message did not reach her colleagues. Within weeks she had embarked on a passionate affair with a startled co-worker.

"I confronted her after I read one of her emails to him. I was upset, crying, asking why. She tried to deny it all, then just said she couldn't understand what all the fuss was about.'

Heather struggles to explain what was going on in her head at the time. She admits that she was ruled by her libido, pure and simple. Nothing else mattered.

"I once sat on this bench in a graveyard and put my hand on this old man's knee. Once I started attending a support group for people with brain injuries at a community centre and started this relationship with a man.

"But the one I'm most ashamed of was with this lad who was at the centre. He was doing community service. He was only about 18 or 19, and I was caught nipping into the toilets with him.

"I didn't care. The staff called Andy because they said they couldn't keep me in the group."

In fact, Andy admits it became quite commonplace for him to receive a call at work telling him to "come out quickly" as Heather was in a compromising position.

"I had to tell all our friends what was going on, and neighbours knew. One day the local barber called me at work and said that Heather was with some bloke in the driveway.

"It was another friend who spotted her in the graveyard, coming on to this poor man. I had to pitch up and say: "Come on, darling. Let's go home."

"There have been many times I've walked into the kitchen to find some man there, or Heather in a position she shouldn't be."

What's particularly sad is that the couple's beloved son, whom they ask us not to name, has been exposed to all this.

"He has had to know about things that no boy his age should need to know," admits Andy. "I had to sit him down and tell him that Mummy isn't well and that was why she was bringing strange men home. Sometimes he calls me at work and tells me that I have to come home."

Sadder still is that even men who know Heather is ill have been prepared to indulge her advances.

"I think we've found out who our friends are," is how Andy puts it. "Some of my friends have taken advantage of Heather."

Heather admits her experience has shaken her faith in human nature. "There's only the odd bloke who has turned me down," she says, sounding a little surprised.

"It kind of makes you realise that any man will go for it if it's on a plate. What all this has taught me is that men are quite shallow."

Andy, though, seems anything but. It takes a special sort of man to put up with the inevitable giggling and finger-pointing that goes with such an affliction.

In the early days he laughed along with the best of them, joking about Viagra and his wife's seventimesa-night demands. But he admits his life has been turned upside down by Heather's injury. After all, what man could cope knowing his wife might bring home a sexually transmitted infection or an unwanted pregnancy?

"It's not just the sex. It's changed everything between us," he says. "Before, I was the sort of bloke who went out to work and left everything else - cooking, cleaning, looking after our son, our finances, our whole lives - to Heather.

"She was so good at it all. My friends used to joke that even when they were at our house, she'd be running round with a duster. Her standards were so high.

"Now? It's different. I have to do everything. Heather will start doing some chore, then walk into the hallway and forget what she was doing. It's hard, and that's before I have to deal with finding my wife in some other man's arms."

So why is he still around? He seems puzzled to even be asked. "Because she is my wife and my best friend and because I love her more than life itself. When they told me she was going to die, I stood by her bed willing it not to be so. I said I could cope with anything, if only she would live. And I can, even this."

The couple are clinging to the fact that the human brain, complex though it is, is capable of near miracles. The couple are seeing a specialist who is convinced that Heather's brain can be retrained to recognise how it is appropriate to behave.

At the moment, Heather has agreed not to leave the house alone, to ensure her own safety and Andy's peace of mind.

Medication is also helping. She currently takes two kinds - an antidepressant and a birth control pill. Both are proven to reduce libido - and there has indeed been something of a breakthrough in the bedroom department.

"She even turned me down the other day," says Andy, laughing. "I wanted to sleep with her, but she was the one who said she didn't feel like it. I could have whooped with delight."

Additional reporting - Sally Wilson