Shirl had never been in love before. It’s not like there hadn’t been any other men – there had been Graham James with the perpetual limp, Stuart Cobbs who ran the local Indian takeout ‘Cobbs Corma’, syphilitic Gary and various others – but Shirl never felt she could truly love a person who had had syphilis and didn’t tell her straight away. Those men had been little more than moments in her life. 

This love, however, was something altogether harder to process, messy, painful and gooey. Similar to syphilis, Shirl imagined, but different, quite different.

She came here to think, to her little bench in Hawthorne park. Well that’s what she told herself. In fact she came here mostly just to be, for a single woman of 87 hardly has anything else to be doing or anywhere else to be. Her arthritic hand fumbled around the bag of bread crumbs sat in her lap and she haphazardly flung a handful at the swarm of pigeons beginning to group about her feet. Blimey, she thought, is this what her life had become.

Derek had always been a feature in her life. A friend of her late cousin, Derek had often appeared at birthdays and school events, grandchildren’s graduations and village parties. Familiarity made her blind to him, to his dry sense of humour, to his strong rounded jawline, to the chocolate chip mole that sunk into his dimple when he smiled. But like when the familiar mole becomes cancerous and leaps into consciousness again, Derek had morphed before her eyes and into her heart, spreading, consuming her till she was inextricably in love. Of course, the cancer here is a metaphor, the only person who actually had cancer was Shirl’s cousin, Terry.

She had spotted Derek at Terry’s funeral, stood lonesome in the corner clutching a pale glass of sherry. Unveiled from the cover of Terry’s companionship Shirl could at last see the man he had always been. Broad shoulders sank forward with grief, that strong rounded jawline clenched trying to maintain composure should another of Terry’s relative find there way over to his corner, the remaining scruff of his white hair was tousled like an 11 year old’s whose just got back from playing in the woods. He was at once a man and a boy in mourning and Shirl was caught with a perplexing desire to comfort him.

That had been the moment.

For once, Shirl gave in a let her imagination run wild, for after several passionate, confusing, earth shattering nights of gently fucking one another, she began to truly believe everything was going to be alright. With Derek by her side she could see out the rest of her life embroiled in arthritic passion and true companionship.

Derek, sexy silver Derek, it seemed had other plans for the two of them – well just for him really, but it helped Shirl to imagine that he had a least thought of her.

They had spent a cosy, complacent winter together, but as the spring approach she sensed his mind was always elsewhere. After taking a nasty fall in April – getting her knickers on had become a two person job these days, but determined to retain some shred of dignity and sex appeal she had tried the task herself to hospitalising affect – and learning that she would be kept in for observation over the next few days, Derek admitted he needed something more and left without so much as a kiss on the forehead or a backwards glance. Something more? More than companionship, more than unconditional love and the odd rudimental arthritic hand job? What more could an 85 year old man want?

A younger woman? A less arthritic hand job? A blow job even?

Shirl took a deep breath in, pausing as she felt her soft breasts press against her cotton dress, and let out a long, pained sigh. It had been a year since Shirl had left the hospital. They had given her a walking stick to help her get about. In truth she wasn’t too bothered by her swollen calf or the shooting pains she felt in her left ankle. It was her heart that pained her most. Whilst the rest of her was beginning to shut down slowly, her heart beat all the stronger as thought trying to dislodge the agony of having lost the only man she would ever love.

It was Shirl’s birthday today. 87 years old. Alone, but for the pigeons and the pain.