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That difficult ___ scene.
The following excerpt is from a novel I’m currently
struggling 
to write: ascene where the protagonist is reunited with someone who appears to behis long-lost wife. This is science fiction so nothing can be that simple.These type of scenes are always the most difficult to write, anyway, and theeasiest to get wrong. Also, it’s an early draft, so I may well makesubsequent changes.
Torbin knew they would return to him. Always waking him from his sleep, atime when he felt the most vulnerable. Never wanting to reveal their trueappearance, yet this time the two Keepers resolved to become tall spindlyfigures. He studied the nearest; he could see no face, just a dark mass withlight from behind, seeming to shine through his bedroom window.Somehow he knew the B’tari would not be aware of their presence, in spiteof having installed a monitoring device for every conceivable disturbance inthe space-time continuum. Somehow the Keepers had evaded detection inevery visit, and he guessed this time would be no exception.They were silent, just wanting to impose their looming presence, makehim feel helpless. And indeed, as he sat up in bed, feeling paralysed in away that was not entirely physical, he was completely at the mercy of thesealien demigods. But he could now see another figure emerge, just anethereal shape but distinctly human. Torbin knew, even before the figurewas fully formed. It was his wife, Emelda.She stepped forward now, her face in focus, suddenly lit by someambient white light. ‘Torbin, I know this must seem strange to you after allthese years,’ she said in her sweet gentle voice that could only be sincere.‘But you have to believe me: I am with these beings you call the Keepers.They saved me at the moment of my death, took me back twenty years before it happened, before I even met you.’‘No,’ Torbin protested, sure that even the Keepers had their limits. ‘Thatcannot be. You died. There was evidence.’The near Keeper stepped forward. ‘The evidence was from fake cloned parts we placed in the burning vehicle,’ it said in an androgynous voice thatseem to lack any accent. ‘We sent her back using an isolation bubble withina temporal eradication field. We gave her another chance because we knewshe could make you see sense.’Torbin shook his head. ‘This deception won’t work. I’m not some idiot,you know.’
 
‘Of course not. That is why we will allow her to be with you for as longas it takes.’She was there before him, wearing that scarlet figure-hugging dress,revealing just a tantalizing amount of cleavage and emphasizing her voluptuous figure that she always seemed to be trying to slim down. Notthat he didn’t prefer her as she was. Her wavy red shoulder-length hair framing a face that he always thought beautiful, perhaps not in the classicalsense, but he was never one for convention.‘It can’t really be you,’ he said, sounding quite calm, but his heart wasracing.‘I’ll prove it,’ she said simply, as she became the only other in the room.He got out of bed and made towards her as if drawn by instinct. In onlyhis underpants it must have been clear to her that he was aroused. Emeldathrew herself at him. He pressed her in tightly, his hands on her bottom, andshe responded in kind. Her body felt good – all encompassing. She smelledof that familiar perfume he couldn’t quite name, and he was so excited byher presence, he knew he would climax very quickly.‘That’s okay,’ she said mildly, responding to his embarrassment. ‘We can be together for a few more hours.’In his bed, after they’d made love for the second time, he had to ask her:‘How could you be hidden from me for all those years?’She brushed aside her wild hair, and seemed to consider his question as if it were an uncomfortably bright light on her face.‘I wanted to be with you, my love. So often I’d yearned to leave the protection of the Keepers. But they had my best interests at heart.’It struck him just how inadequate her answer seemed, how all her talk of those ‘benevolent beings’ just didn’t mesh with his own experience of them.He said to her: ‘They saved you and protected you from what they intendfor the rest of humanity. Is that it?’‘Yes,’ she said meekly.‘And I suppose if I am on board, that is: give up my plans to stop them,then we can be together.’‘Yes, we can be together.’‘I was nice to relive the memory. But I don’t believe you are
my
Emelda,however real you may seem.’‘Don’t you want to believe?’‘I really did want to believe my Emelda had survived somehow, was not burned to smithereens in that ... crash. But really it stretches credibility thatshe could have been saved at that crucial moment before her car incinerated.’
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