The sudden cold snap at the beginning of March caught everyone on the hop, even though the Met Office had been forecasting snow for a week and were very specific in the detail of their forecast just the night before the snow came.

So I woke that morning to about two inches of very icy snow sitting on top of half an inch of solid ice from earlier rain falling onto frozen ground. It was very windy in sharp gusts and the tiny ice crystals of snow were blowing into drifts up to a foot deep. The Council had been sending gritting lorries up and down the Esplanade and High Street all night. I knew that for a fact, I saw them trundling by and spraying me with sharp rock crystals on my way home just after midnight from the Pizza Dreem shop in the High Street after an evening’s casual temp work doing pizza deliveries for bang on the minimum wage.

I had to make my way back into the High Street again first thing in the morning to see if the Acme Placement Bureau could find me another couple of days’ casual work this week, Harinder, the pizza shop proprietor, had already said he didn’t need me any more as his “sick dude was now okaydoky”, as he put it.

The monthly mortgage and ground rent on my place were both due on Friday and I was more or less an Isaac short. Also, I had to walk down to the Bureau that morning even though the pavements down the coastal town’s streets were like sheets of glass.

My piece-of-shit 20-odd-year-old classic Jaguar XJ12 rust-bucket gas-gurgling excuse for a fucking motorcar packed up last week and I had no way of repairing it or of even getting it home from where I left it, conked out miles away on the by-pass. I had asked my old mate Macleod to pick it up and take it to his shop a couple of days ago but he just laughed at me. One favour too many on my part I guess.

When I was a kid, fifty years ago now, my parents brought me, Barry Chamberlain, and my two older brothers and a sister down to this resort every single summer. There used to be a rather rundown holiday camp on the outskirts of the town and, although tacky as tuppence, it was perfect for young families who didn’t have the resources for much else. Us kids were organised into various activities all day so we were knackered and slept like corpses by nightfall. There was entertainment and cheap booze laid on for the parents in the evening, with chalet patrols on hand to ensure the kids were safe asleep. We kids loved those visits to the seaside, our mums and dads loved it too, and the owners loved it most of all, so they could take their own holidays in the Caribbean.

When I had kids of my own, two boys from my first marriage, we brought them down here regularly. Even brought my second wife and kid down too for a while when Katherine was a small girl, Shirley and I both sharing similar memories of our parents bringing us down when we were kids, although we never actually met each other back then.

So there I was, six years ago at the age of 52, with no family around (Shirley, the second missus had fucked off and left me after an affair with her boss, my daughter thereafter wanted fuck-all to do with me and, of my first family, one boy had gone gas drilling to Canada, the other to Australia for aquatic research, the first missus? Fuck-knows or cares where the hell she went).

Thus I decided to move down to the resort that held such wonderful memories for me to live there permanently. I didn’t just go blind, I took out a 70% loan at stupid-fucking-percent interest for the 30-year lease of a small café with a two-bed and a tiny studio flat above. I pulled on a masculine pinnie and a chef’s hat and thought I was set comfortably and extremely happily making all-day breakfasts and basic short order lunches for the rest of my life.

Then shit happened. The recession meant that crowds of tourists stopped coming to the resort. My café was a bit off the beaten track so I stopped getting the overflow I used to get from the High Street and Esplanade trade. So subsequently I had to close up the café and the larger of the two flats. I was still paying the bank for the exorbitant lease on the whole caboodle but at least I was able to sublease the shop and the main flat to a trader. He was a big guy called Donovan, selling customised printed tee-shirts on the internet, so I was only left with the studio flat which was almost impossibly squashed into the roof space. Still, I’ll have the whole run of the place again at the end of the month when Donovan moves out to bigger premises. At least one company was thriving in the recession.

After about three months of absolutely nothing coming in after I closed the café, but still having to pay the bills, I managed to get nearly two years of fractionally above minimum wage work in the packing department of a timber yard on the estuary next to the resort. But, thanks to the downturn in the building industry, I got laid off six months ago, a full month before I automatically qualified for redundancy payment. Like I said, shit happens, only it seems to be time after time. Since then I had a total of four and a half days of work at minimum wage to my credit in six months. The debits, which kept on happening, didn’t bare thinking about. At least I was able to bring home a spare pizza last night so I was able to have both supper and breakfast, which was a rarity of late.

Even my cat eats better than me, and he’s not even my fucking cat. He came with the flat and when I moved out into the vacate studio in the attic above, which I had previously used just for storage, he moved up there with me. I think he was intimidated by the big guy covered in tattoos and metal studs who moved into the shop and flat. I don’t blame the cat, Donovan frightened the beejesus out of me too. It may have been the balance of the original 144 tins of tuna that was left in storage in the studio flat after the café went tits up that determined the cat’s residential status. The fussy fucker wouldn’t touch normal cat food, the first time I tried him on a tin of Whiskas, actually the very first day I moved in and became aware of my fauna inheritance, the fat bastard piddled in the corner of the sitting room, hence his rechristened name, Piddles.

Anyway, Karen down at the placement bureau had fuck-all for me as was per usual and then she dropped the bombshell that the pizza guy was unlikely to pay the bureau until the end of this week, so I wouldn’t subsequently get paid until the end of next week, which meant rent wise I was basically fucked.

I stamped grumpily down their narrow stairs. The bureau was situated in offices above an estate agents. As I came out of the doorway with my mind stupidly concentrated elsewhere, I stepped onto the icy fucking pavement and went arse over tit and down like a sack of spuds dropped off a delivery truck.

Oohff! I landed painfully on my thin bony arse and one of my not-so-funny-bone elbows, while my feet continued to describe a perfect arc and consequently the back of my head also struck the pavement with a resounding thud. I carried a haversack on one shoulder. It only contained my empty wallet, a much-used plastic litre bottle refilled with tap water for refreshment and half a dozen library books which I needed to return that very day to avoid any overdue fines which I couldn’t afford to pay if I left them one more bloody day.

That damn heavy bag swung around my shoulder as I fell and landed right on the tip of my nose. Bastard thing! I was lying there, me, an old guy pushing 60 and every able-bodied younger bugger walking by ignoring me, or worse taking the piss. I could hear them, although not actually see them, all I could see were stars. Even if there had been real stars in the sky I wouldn’t’ve been able to see ‘em, though, because my woolly hat with ear flaps had somehow got pushed over my eyes, which were watering like fuck anyway.

“Are you alright?” asked a kindly, gentle sweet woman’s voice.

I felt a warm hand grip one of mine comfortingly.

“Yeah, thanks,” I mumbled as I tried to get back up, feet and knees ineffectively scrambling for traction on the ice until I could at least get on my knees and drag myself up by my fingertips digging into the crumbling brickwork between the bureau doorway and the display window of the estate agents. My sweatpants were very wet from the snow and ice, making my legs cold. I think I was shivering from the shock, too.

When I finally got up, I pushed the hat off my milky grey eyes and was confronted by a pair of crystal clear brilliant blue eyes reminiscent of a Norwegian fjord bathed in mid-summer sunlight.

“You don’t look too good, Baz,” the lovely lady continued, an amused smile playing on the upturned edges of her full crimson lips.

“Oh fuck!” I said.

“Oh!” she briefly pouted, before returning to her amused smile, “Not quite the welcome I have become accustomed to receiving from handsome younger men who have fallen prostrate at my delicate feet.”

“I meant, ‘Oh fuck!’ meaning you were the last f-frigging person I expected to see here, Shirl,” I muttered, trying to bite my tongue to avoid saying anything unredeemably offensive.

“Why so surprised to see me, honey? We both used to love coming here for days out and for our summer holidays,” she said, “Remember? Back in the day?”

“Well that was a long fucking time ago.” I had given up on the not-being-offensive idea as old memories started to flood back.

“And I have regretted what happened to us everyday since we stopped coming here,” she reduced her voice to a whisper, “You know you were the only man I ever truly loved.”

“Yeah, until you fucked me over by shagging your boss. He was the one who could afford to get you the kinda lawyers who took me to the cleaners, while my own legal representative, who hadn’t even started shaving yet, was happy to suck your brief’s arse while selling me down the river into white fucking slavery. They got out of me every fucking bit of shit I had, they were so thorough I can still smell the fucking enema.”

“Honey, I was acting on legal advice,” she said calmly and soothingly, “Henry was just making sure I got everything I was entitled to-”

“-Well I hope the pair of you are very fucking happy!” I bit off, looking around for my wayward haversack.

As I picked it up, a stream of fucking tap water poured out of the bottom of the fucking thing and froze solid the moment it hit the fucking pavement.

“Fuck!”

I wrenched open the toggles and pulled out the four-fifths empty water bottle, the cap having gone completely AWOL. Then I pulled out the first library book. It was like a bath sponge, water running out the bottom corner in a continuous stream.

“Double fuck!”

No way those library books were going back today or any day soon with no heating at the flat since the gas was cut off. I felt feint all of a sudden. My wet fingers were freezing cold from the wind chill factor, my thin sweatpant bottoms were wet and cold. I hadn’t been eating much lately, just the slice of pizza this morning and a couple of slices late last night. The day before that, me and Piddles shared a can of tuna, which pissed him off no end. He definitely had sharing issues, especially where I was concerned. I guess I’d had the same sharing issues with Shirley, six years previously.

I felt a drip of moisture on the end of my nose. Just this last couple of winters I had noticed that my nose just ran all the time when it was cold, another sign of old age, I guess. I always remember my old grandfather continually dabbing a soiled damp checkered hanky to his nose when he walked me to church on a winter Sunday morning. With the state of my laundry I didn’t have the luxury of a neatly-folded handkerchief, so I wiped the back of my hand along my nose and noticed it was blood flowing, not runny snot. I must’ve started a nose-bleed when I banged my face with my bag. Sweet fuck!

I think Shirley must’ve thought I was going to fall over again. I wasn’t conscious of swaying but in hindsight I guess I must’ve been. She tucked her arm around me and pulled me onto the middle of the pavement where the estate agency had thoughtfully tossed down some welcome grit and my worn-out trainer soles miraculously found some grip.

“Come on, hon,” Shirley urged, “Let’s get you back to your car and get you home and cleaned up. I’ll even put a cold compress on that swan’s egg that’s popped up on the back of your head for you, and for your poor nose. Where’s your car, honey?”

“On the bypass,” I said without thinking, “Piece of shit folded on me last week and I had to leave the bastard behind,” I looked her fully in the eye, snarling, “Shit things like something that’s an important part of my life just giving up on me happens all the time, you know.”

“Honey,” she looked at me with those big baby blues and even I had to look away again in disgust, ashamed at the level of my bitter vindictiveness.

I was still in pain and it had nothing to do with my head, nose or the stabbing pain in my sore arse. I was feeling agonising pains in my heart and soul.

An ex-wife can do that to you, even after six years.

“My car’s in the estate agents’ car park,” Shirley said, pulling me to the covered alleyway between the estate agents and the boarded-up shop that used to be George’s Greengrocers, well it was until the new convenience store two blocks up took away all his trade. As Shirley guided me through the alleyway, mercifully clear of snow, she fumbled in her handbag and extracted her car keys. As we emerged into the low spring sunlight, blindingly bouncing off everything covered in snow, she clicked the button and the lights on a brand-new Mercedes convertible flashed its “welcome home, honey” signal.

“Fucking shit bollocks!” was the thought groaning through my foggy head at the sight of that fabulous car.

This was not at all supposed to be how this scene was unfolding in front of my eyes, helpless to intervene. I had dreamt of this scenario hundreds of times since Shirley dumped me six years ago. In my fantasy it was her fancy new husband who was the one who was supposed to be on his uppers as all his investments went south with the economy; while she was supposed to be the poor fucking hard-done-by and abandoned waif and stray that I picked up from her cardboard box alleyway home in my smart Mercedes or Jag or Aston DB-what-fucking-ever, apologetic that I could only drop her off at the seaman’s mission or the Salvation Army centre because my new squeeze, currently on photo-shoot assignment in the Caribbean for next year’s Pirelli Calendar, might hear of my good deed and get the wrong idea.

That was the dream, I had rehearsed it over and over, night after fucking night. This, though, wasn’t a dream, it was a fucking nightmare!

“Which way, hon?” she asked at the car park exit.

In a daze I said, “Left ... Right ... Left again at the bottom, third shop along ... Yeah this is it... ‘To-a-T-Shirts.com’, this is my stop. Just drop me off, you can leave me here. Many thanks. Goodbye, Shirley, have a nice life.”

I was remembering how cold the flat was, the gas had been turned off by the gas company armed with a court order last week, I didn’t know how long the electric would last, I was also three months behind on that, so it was only a matter of time. It was working OK when I warmed up the pizza in the microwave for breakfast but that was a couple of hours ago. It could be turned off already by now.

Then there was also the smell. I ran out of kitty litter, ooh, I guess a month or so ago and had to break up a few lumps and rake over a corner of that disgusting dirt box with a fork for Piddles this morning. He gave me a dirty look before fussing around to do his usual business. That cat hates me, but so what, the feeling’s fucking mutual.

I did have half a dozen pairs of rinsed out underpants hanging up in the tiny bathroom, I hadn’t had any loose change for the launderette in the Parade for the last couple of weeks, nor did I have any soap powder or even a bar of soap. Last night when I looked they were stiff, frozen solid, but this morning at least one pair felt almost dry. It was very stained but at least it smelt more of Head’n’Shoulders than my arse, which was a definite improvement.

I know I’ve got a hairy arse, but at least it’s flake-free.

Then there was the matter of the galley kitchen sink, it was full of every single plate, fork and spoon I possessed. I even had to wash up a plate this morning for my pizza; had to use shampoo for that, no more fairy liquid. In fact, I hardly ever buy fairy fucking liquid, I can’t afford that shit.

“I want to look at that head of yours, sweetheart,” said Shirley. “Don’t worry, I expect your place is a tip,” Shirley chuckled good-naturally, “You guys!”

I took a few sneaky looks at her while we walked up the stairs.

I was 58 and she was two years older than me, but there was no way in hell she looked 60. In anyone’s currency she was 45, tops. She always looked after herself, down the gym a couple of times a week, running at weekends. Damn, I even used to run with her back in the day.

I remembered we used to shower together afterwards and make sweet love in the afterglow of the exercise. A long time ago it was now.

Shirley always dressed nice too, like the beautifully-tailored blue jacket and skirt and white blouse under her warm woollen top coat and scarf that adorned her adorable body now. She had her hair coiffured regularly, always made herself up to look effortlessly pretty glamorous.

Well, she didn’t have do it from a standing start like other women had to, she was already way prettier than average to begin with.

She worked as a personal assistant to a high-profile businessman so she always needed to look the part. How she ended up married to a deadbeat like me is a mystery, both to me and everyone of my acquaintance.

Even my own two near-teenage boys gave me high fives with a chorus of “Way to go, Dad” the first time I brought them over from their Mum’s to meet and greet my then intended, a quarter of a century ago it was now.

I just don’t understand woman at all. I know Henry had money and power and all that crap, but at the end of the day he was a short, bald, fat old guy with nothing appealing about him that I could see, other than enormous personal wealth and power, a nice car and able to take his girlfriends to flash places.

I wondered where the fuck Henry was right now? Probably having a nice warm lie-in in the penthouse suite at the Grand Hotel, while his missus was doing her Good Samaritan act helping me get my poor broken body up my rickety old iron outside staircase leading up to my own personal attic hideaway from hell.

Inside, I swear that little flat is fully five degrees lower than it is on the outside, except in summer when it is ten degrees higher indoors. We entered that single room and the combined stench of cat shit, cat urine and general damp, neglect and mildew hit me like a solid noxious wall, offending the senses like I imagine a Turkish urinal would, and I was fucking-well used to it, so what Shirley must think...

“Oh, you’ve got a pussy cat!” she said and, before I could stop her, she gathered the flea-infested bundle of sinew, teeth and deadly claw in her arms.

I cringed, waiting for the the fur and skin to fly, the screams, the blood, the mayhem, and eventual swingeing lawsuits, inevitable consequences once Henry got the private medical and reconstructive surgery bills.

No, that fucking cat only went and rolled over on its fucking back like a baby cradled in her arms, closing its eyes for Shirley to tickle its tummy and ... it fucking purred. That fucking cat never fucking purred, well never for me. I fed the fucking thing prime fucking tuna and all it fucking did for me was scratch me, bite me and piddle or shit in the fucking corner of my flat when it needed to point out to me my particular shortcomings as a fucking pet owner, when I was never even a fucking pet owner in the first fucking place.

It must’ve been an automatic reaction, I dunno what made me do it, I just reached out with a tentative digit to tickle his furry lickle tummy with my finger.

But then Piddles opened one eye, just the one, like the ever-watchful predator that he was, tempting the patience of a tasty vulture. Piddles glared at me, daring me to tickle him for the first time ever in our tempestuous acquaintance, we both knowing full well that he would lacerate my hand into lean red mincemeat the very second I was within claw-reach. I nodded to him, I could see it in his narrowed eye that he recognised the submissive gesture on my part as I moved my hand up, nowhere near seamlessly as I would like to pretend, to remove my furry fucking hat instead.

Having tickled Piddles until he was purring louder than her lovely Merc had on the drive over, Shirley dropped him gently on one end of my saggy sofa and urged to me that I sit myself down at the other end. Shirley took off her coat and scarf, momentarily looking around for somewhere safe or clean to put them, before draping them carefully over the back of the sofa, which was covered in fucking cat hairs. With a hand on each of my knees she lowered her slim athletic body onto her own knees right in front of me.

Before I could stop her she picked up a tissue from where it rested on the arm of the sofa and lifted it to those delicious red lips, and she licked the end languorously, maintaining eye contact with me all the while.

Then she stopped, recognising some remotely recalled taste from her memory banks, sniffed tentatively at that used tissue, before smiling knowingly at me.

I groaned. I know what I did in that tissue. She knew what I had done in that tissue. More importantly she knew I fucking knew she knew. Shit.

She dropped the tissue on the floor, next to a couple or maybe seven other crumpled evidences of my lonely depravity. The opened DVD box entitled “Mature Lesbos in Furry Handcuffs” that I had plugged into the player two nights ago screamed “Fucking Pervert!” to any guest, whether they were invited or otherwise into my extremely humble and embarrassing abode.

“For fuck’s sake, Shirl,” I groaned once more, “It’s agony, just seeing you, having you here like this as well is, well, torture.”

She spotted the box of tissues tucked on the floor by the end of the sofa and tugged out a fresh tissue or two. Still smiling, she dabbed them on the tantalisingly moist tip of her hot wet tongue and wiped my nose for me like a snotty kid who had fallen off the swings yet again, the clumsy sod.

“Like mature lesbians, then, do we honey?” she enquired softly, moving her head nearer as she examined my face for any blood stains that had escaped her initial ministrations with the dampened tissue. “Or do the furry handcuffs do it for you?”

“No, I, er, oh sh-sugar!” I said, “If you must know, I delivered some pizza to a bunch of broke students the other night and they gave me that thing in lieu of a proper tip.”

“Any good?” she glanced around the floor, unconsciously totting-up, eight used tissues in one sitting, I could imagine her wondering, did that rate a porn flick as two stars or three?

“No, it was absolute sh-crap,” I stuttered, “Bugger all else to watch on the box, I don’t have cable or satellite any more.”

“Well at least you can still get it ... up,” she whispered, moving her lovely head and delicious lips even closer, so close I was becoming aware of her subtle scent, like a meadow full of summer wild blooms, a crisp freshness which eclipsed even the stench of my humble hermit’s hovel. What the fuck? How did this happen? She was my bitch of an ex-wife, I didn’t hate her but I didn’t like her much either. OK, that wasn’t quite true. But there is no denying that she had taken me to the cleaners and wiped me from her life like a j-cloth saturated in flash cleaner burnishing out a grimy tidemark on her stand-alone enamel bath.

What the fuck’s going on now?

Before we knew what was going down, we were sucking each others tongues like a pair of demented intertwined Dysons, tearing off our clothes like teenagers with the parents gone up the shops for just ten minutes, tops.

I swear I must’ve popped a couple of buttons off her blouse. I hitched her dress up and she pulled down my damp dishevelled sweatpants, my erection sprang up like a steel girder. I yanked the gusset of her delicate lace knickers to one side and she climbed up on the sofa and plunged down on me until our pelvic bones mashed together like two HGVs crossing the dividing line and hitting head on, both of us explosively expelling the air from our lungs.

Piddles jumped off his end of the sofa in shock at such goings on and hid under the bed. Shirley and I fucked each other like frantic maybugs. We were all over the place, completely out of sync with one another, each urgently trying to catch up with the other and failing, failing wonderfully. I pushed up like a submerged mariner desperately fighting for air, she ground down on me like she needed to scratch an itch that she couldn’t quite reach no matter how hard she tried. Our bodies steamed in that freezing flat like we were in a Swedish sauna, the sweat poured off us in streams like the flood running from my fucking library books. We came, not together like we used to when we were regular practised lovers, but untidily, spasming to our separate conclusions.

I guess she beat me by a short head.

“What the fuck just happened, Shirl?” I puffed, the blood rushing back to my brain and logical thought belatedly trying to re-establish authority over my bodily reactions.

“Love, honey, love,” grinned Shirley, still panting, as she continued to slowly grind our pelvises together, making little squealing noises as she did so. I had started to soften after coming but, still embedded in her slick velvet heaven, my response appeared to be stiffening under her minuscule movements.

“What about ... Henry?” I hated even mentioning his bastard name, but I remembered how much pain I had felt when some other greedy randy male organ had trespassed into pussy territory that I felt I had exclusive drilling rights on.

“He died,” she said matter-of-factly, without passion, her eyes closed as she continued rocking to and fro on my lap sending scintillating tingles up my spine, while I involuntarily started little thrusting actions upwards again. She continued after some thought, “November... 14 it was. Oh that’s great honey, just like that only harder!”

“But...” I said, stopping my accelerating movements in shock at the news of my old adversary’s premature demise.

Shirley stopped too, opened her eyes and said quite casually, “He had a heart attack, Barry. He is no longer an issue between us. I lived with him, I never loved him. I love you. Now, where the fuck were we, darling?”

She started her familiar little gyrations again, then changed them slightly, into tight little heavenly figures of eight.

“So, are you single again ... Or are you... ?” I stuttered, I never seemed to be able to string words together when I was with this woman.

“Single. You?”

“Very single,” I muttered, “Not done this in ... years.”

“Nor me,” she said, eyes closed again.

“Wha?”

“He was fucking his Secretary, ok? I suppose you find that funny? Just desserts, or something?”

“No,” I lied, trying hard to stop smiling, thanking whoever was concerned that her eyes were still closed as I said it.

She opened her eyes and almost caught me smiling, I was trying to keep a poker face even though I was back enthusiastically poking her again. All right, I only held it impassively for a second or two and then I couldn’t help grinning again and she grinned too.

It’s impossible to keep a straight face when you’re nuts-deep in the woman you love.

Fuck it, I just thought the fucking L word. Good job I never said it out loud.

“I thought he had just slowed down his libido over the last few years and finally given up on sex altogether about two years ago. He was seventy-three then after all, so I was resigned to take out my urges in the home-gym and ... you know, I used up a lot of batteries. Then he had a heart attack while he was fucking his twenty-eight-year-old fucking secretary and died almost instantly with them both stuck together on the office desk.”

“It’s a hell of a way to go,” I suggested, seeing a vivid image in my head that looked perversely cartoon-like.

She giggled.

“Only sweet Miss Shorthand couldn’t get my fat husband off her and she had to call for help from the paramedics.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.” she continued, “The facts all came out in the inquest. She had to reach down to pull up his trousers in order to get at the phone in his pocket before she could ring for the emergency services. To get them to the ambulance they had to wheel them through the office with a blanket over them but clear to everyone that they were still joined together. Something about vacuum suction apparently, I didn’t quite understand the medical terminology but it happens more frequently that would appear, apparently. I don’t have much sympathy for either of them quite frankly. In fact, I hope she still has nightmares about it. He was a massive 24 stone at the end, it was a wonder the poor girl could breath with the dead weight of that deadbeat on and in her.”