End of winter

Walking home instead of getting the £20, ten-minute rip-off cab, was now my biggest mistake. I didn't know, how was I supposed to bloody know? Along this route, at this time.

But it was. And as I sit now staring out of my top floor window looking at the dog walkers hunched in the drizzle, my mind wonders back to the that night last February when it all changed.

"You're not still sitting there! Have you done the dishes? You haven't have you."

Lonnie was one for pointing out the obvious when I was like this, I mean she walked past the fucking mess on her way in, for god's sake. My head didn't even turn.

Why was it that dogs wagged their tails more in the rain?

That night I'd just left Clem and Baz at the late night offie. They were stocking up on strong liquids before the customary donor from next door. A ritual that occurred most Fridays.

Wasn't for me. It hadn't been a great night, Baz was being a dick and Clem wasn't far behind him. Soaked in booze and on the pull; lairy as fuck. Thought I'd leave them to it, get on home, pint of water, bed.

"Hello, anyone in there? Earth calling Mikey, come in Mikey." It was more her cheesy breath than her sarcastic tone that made me realise Lonnie was back. The long pale face, at a right angle to mine, millimetres away, I was numb to.

The more she tried, the more I tunnelled, and if you can imagine this happening for a year, I was virtually in Australia now. You'll have to do better than that, I thought. She hated it. It got to her. I knew. My most powerful weapon? Yeah, must be up there in the top three, along with farting and picking my nose.

Thought I'd take a short-cut after a mile of blinding headlights and tyre spray. Baz once said it brought you out at the car park, a stone's throw from the house, so I thought I had nothing to lose and everything to gain, with the warm lager glow receding, rain whipping into my face and the cold biting down.

It was then that I saw her, bending out the window of the Fiesta and calling out. Strangely, her face was lit by a reflection off the car park sign immediately opposite the street lamp further back. With her eyes pinched tightly shut (so much so that the crow's feet were visible at this distance) she hadn't seen me approaching. In the shadows, at her rear, a hunching fella was all over her arse, jerking away like he'd just received the voltage from the American chair.

It wasn't what I saw that disturbed me at that moment but what I heard. Not the words, just moans, not just moans but pleasure, deep, deep pleasure, echoing off the walls of my skull, becoming more audible with every side hit.

"So? Anything to say? Like how are you Lonnie, did you have a nice day at work, Lonnie, do you want me to cook the dinner now, Lonnie?"

They couldn't see me. I was deep in the thorn bush - heavily pricked and bloodied. Out of sight. Not wanting to be seen forced me to stay and endure the pain further. A full twenty minutes passed. He was a stayer all right - must have been the booze and the little cock in the bucket.

She'd always said that I was depressed, cut-off, a mystery, that she didn't really know me, didn't give much away. Who are you, a man or a mouse? Once, before sex, she threatened to get out the ‘rampant rabbit’ just to intimidate me. What a cow!

And as her head writhed and her hands slapped the dented passenger door, my manhood shrivelled further into irrelevance, almost inverting, as if on the run, greatly embarrassed by the whole ordeal.

Now outside the window the sun emerged, and I lifted it to feel a little warmth rushing through. Above, the water droplets danced down the pane, racing each other for the bottom, grabbing and dragging others as they went, whether they liked it or not. The scene resonated and had an odd familiarity about it. I felt for those raindrops.

Lonnie pathetically crashed about in anger with pots and pans out back, trying desperately to reach me in her own inimitable style; so subtle, so clever, yet barely had she crossed the channel.

Just before I left I grabbed my bags from under the bed, left a smell in the lounge and flicked a few bogeys on her new settee. She’d like that, they might even help her digest her food, well it was normally riddled with additives anyway.

Getting soaked through, what a mistake that was. Fucking glad those cabs are so overpriced, might’ve cost be a lifetime.