When my relationship with Amanda fell apart, it did so abruptly and quite shockingly. Or so it seemed to me at the time.

Years later I found a better perspective on my relationship with her, and I was forced to concede that the signs had been there for some time. Her gradual physical disengagement, the growing frequency of late nights out with ‘the girls’, the disinterest and growing coldness.

And then finally that night had come. I had returned home unexpectedly to find the front door locked from the inside. Surprised, I rang the bell, then hammered on the door until I saw movement inside. Hurried, anxious movements. And then the door opened a little. But the chain was across so I couldn’t get in. And Amanda was standing there in her bathrobe, her hair dishevelled, her face flushed and worried-looking. Astonished I asked her to let me in, but she refused.

‘I can’t... ‘ she stammered.

‘What do you mean?’ I demanded, astonished.

She had glanced quickly over her shoulder. ‘I mean ... I don’t think it’s a good idea. I think you should go away.’

‘What, what do you mean... ‘ I gasped again.

She hesitated. ‘Come back later ... I’ll explain then. Sorry.’ Her face had softened momentarily. ‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated.

I had stood on the doorstep, my mouth gaping, my mind grasping for meaning. And then there had been the man’s voice from inside the flat. From the bedroom. A low, intimate sort of inquiring voice. And the proverbial penny dropped.

Amanda had looked guiltily behind her, her face flushing even more.

‘I’m sorry.’ She said, pushing the door to.

And that was it.

The next morning I’d got the phone call. She had found someone else. It had been going on for some time. She was sorry. She should have told me before. Hadn’t meant to hurt me. It wasn’t solely my fault. It was her. She wanted something different. Something that didn’t include me. Wanted to move on. Hadn’t meant to deceive me. Hadn’t meant to hurt me (for the second time). Hoped there wouldn’t be any trouble. A clean break. That was best. I could collect my things and she would sort out the legal stuff. Buy me out of the flat ... And so it went on.

I was so shocked, so undermined by her betrayal, that I kind of collapsed into myself. I booked myself into a cheap hotel and lay there in total, bitter misery. I kept going over what had happened in my mind. We had had a good relationship, once.

We had come together in a fantastic physical bond that had directed us into urgent, hungry and frantic sex. It had been unbelievable, a sexual fantasy come true. Her overwhelming passion and desire had met its match in my insatiable lust and we had fucked ourselves to exhaustion on countless occasions, collapsing into a laughing sticky mess in wet and tangled sheets.

Now all I could think about was another man lying between her thighs, pushing himself into her ... into the place which had been mine, which for years had been the focus of my personal, exclusive ecstasy. And the thought left me writhing and moaning bitter tears in my squalid hotel bed.

Friends had sought me out for a while. Some were genuinely sympathetic. But many had been her friends too, and it felt as though they had seen this coming. They nodded sympathetically, but without committal. And gradually they drifted away.

Fortunately I managed to hold my job together, which wasn’t that difficult as it was relatively undemanding. The routine of the nine-to-five, Monday-to-Friday, kept me going and provided sufficient income for my reduced needs.

Although it was not my primary concern, one of the first things I had to do was find somewhere to live. I didn’t have enough money to buy anywhere and, although the inevitable divorce settlement might help with this, this limited my choices.

I visited a number of letting agencies in the city-centre, but was shocked by the lack of accommodation available – especially in my price range. Eventually, in desperation, I turned to one of the seedier agencies that operated just outside the centre of town.

It was a small place accessed by a narrow stairway beside a launderette. A tatty looking, misspelt, home-made sign on the glass door advertised ‘vacancies’ so I climbed the stairs to see what was on offer. The agency office was small and cluttered with several desks piled high with files and paperwork. The only window was dirty and filtered out much of the light, and the air smelt musty and stale.

The office was occupied by a single, harassed looking woman of late middle-age. She looked at me with surprise as I entered the office, as though she wasn’t used to seeing customers. I explained what I wanted and she sucked the end of a biro thoughtfully for a moment.

‘There’s not much going, to be honest,’ she said, looking me up and down.

‘I wanted somewhere close to the centre, if possible,’ I explained. ‘I work in town you see, and ... I’m in the process of getting divorced.’

She nodded silently and her expression softened sympathetically. ‘I see.’

She looked at a pile of letters on her desk and then rifled through them quickly.

‘There’s one that’s just come in. It’s not quite in the centre and... ‘ she hesitated, ‘ ... well, you may not feel it’s good enough for you.’ She gave me a meaningful glance.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I am pretty desperate. Perhaps I should have a look at it.’

She nodded and scribbled an address down on a piece of paper.

‘The landlady is a Mrs Price. She’s a little bit ... eccentric. But her prices are quite low.’ She looked at me thoughtfully for a moment. ‘Well, go and have a look. See what you think.’

Even though I’d looked up the address on Google maps, the house seemed much further out from the City Centre than I had hoped for. On top of this, the house stood at the top of a hill, a long half-hour walk which wouldn’t be much fun in hot weather. Despite this I decided to check it out anyway.

The house was a large double-fronted Victorian building, four storeys high with a basement. As I walked up the tiled path to the front door, I glanced down and saw a small elderly woman peering at me from one of the basement windows.

Beside the front door was a button with a door cam. When I pressed it, a thin female voice instructed him to enter and descend to the basement. The door opened with a click and I found myself in a narrow, musty-smelling hallway. To my left steps led up, and behind them, more steps descended to the basement. Before I had reached the bottom step, the female voice beckoned me to a doorway which led into a surprisingly bright room lit by a large bay window.

The room was dominated by a large double bed pushed against one wall. In this lay, Mrs Price, the landlady. She was a thin, scrawny looking woman with long wavy hair. She looked to be in her late-seventies, with deep lines down from the corners of her mouth. She lay under the sheets, surrounded by magazines, papers and what looked like empty boxes and chocolate wrappers. She didn’t look terribly clean, and the room smelt unpleasant, as though it desperately needed airing and a good clean.

She eyed me coldly for a few moments.

‘You’ll be Mr Beattie then? They said you was coming.’ She looked me up and down unenthusiastically. ‘I was expecting someone a little older. Most of my regulars are maturer men.’

I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I made a non-committal sound.

‘Well,’ she sighed. ‘Room five is vacant. First floor. If you want it.’

She told me the rent. It was cheap. Surprisingly so.

‘Payable a month in advance,’ she added suspiciously. Then she added, ‘This is a quiet house, so no music or radio after 8pm. And no visitors.’

‘None at all?’ I asked, slightly taken-a-back.

‘That’s the rules of the house. This is a respectable establishment.’ She was plucking irritably at the bed clothes. ‘Rubbish goes in the black bin at the side of the house. I expect the rooms to be kept clean and tidy.’

I nodded and she looked me up and down, again without enthusiasm.

‘Any trouble and it’s immediate termination of the agreement. You understand?’

I nodded, feeling increasingly oppressed.

She tossed a key onto the end of the bed. ‘It’s on the first floor. If you want it, come and tell me.’

I nodded and backed out of the room, grateful to be out of the stale atmosphere. I climbed the stairs slowly, wondering if Mrs Price ever left her bed.

On the first floor were six doors, all alike but for a black number screwed to the woodwork. The house was oppressively silent, and I got the weird feeling that there were people listening silently to me behind the doors.

Room five was small. It had two long sash windows which looked out from the back of the house towards the city. There was a small unkempt back garden, a railway line and then a large expanse of cropped grass – the playing fields of a school which I could see in the distance. Square concrete-and-glass structures. The view was drab.

The furniture consisted of a very narrow single bed pushed against the wall, a little table with drop-down flaps under the window and a single upright chair. There was an old armchair which was badly worn on the arms. A built-in wardrobe and a formica topped cupboard with a small electric cooker. It was dismal.

I sat on the bed and felt depression fall over my shoulders like a cold cape. I was going to have to accept the room, but I knew already that the first thing I would do was try and find somewhere else.

Part 2

I moved in the next day, but I saw no-one other than the landlady peering at me from her basement whenever I entered the house. At first, I thought it was just an anomaly, but after five days I began to realise that whoever my fellow tenants were, they weren’t there often.

Occasionally in the evenings I would hear a door open and close somewhere, but I never encountered another resident, even in the mornings when I thought there might be a queue for the bathroom. But there never was. There were signs of other residents, of course. An empty toothpaste tube in the bathroom bin, a discarded razor, empty toilet rolls and that sort of thing. But nothing more.