It started off as quite honestly frightful, but, then, of course, ended like a romantic scene from a Woman's magazine. Knowing what eventually would happen can be quite off-putting, but, in real life, it is truly comforting to have that safety net waiting for your fall. The safety net of a happy ending.

She first emerged from the bogs and shanties of Eastern Europe, and then, I think, I changed my mind, because when I encountered her fell form, it was in Eastern England, not far from the creeks of North East Essex, though she was later to confess that she really hailed from the fens of Cambridgeshire, a little further north of where we then happened to be situated.

Colchester in Essex is crowned with the glory of being the oldest recorded town in Great Britain.

It has a Norman castle and Roman wall, as well as all the usual commercial accoutrements of a middle-sized town. I feel at home there.

So, I took my wild crone – for that was how even I saw her – to be inspected by my family in Colchester and, of course, they were quite perturbed when I brought such a sight into their living-room. I could then suddenly view her – shall we call her by her real name of  Pedra? – through the objective eyes of others.

And that was as a scrawny waif who seemed naked even when she was done up in winter clothes (which she always was, even in the summer), with tangled locks that seemed to breed more life than in any other part of her. Her eyes were dim, downhearted, indeed quite lifeless. Her pigeon chest imperceptibly rose and fell with the faintest breathing possible without the necessity of already being dead. Her legs were spindly, when one was given the opportunity to view them from under the heavy layers of sacking she called a skirt.

I dubbed her wild, because she was untamed, and often her mouth smiled and I could sense a fierce and feral beauty lurking within her just waiting to pounce. It was just such an assumption of beauty that had attracted me, although I had barely even glimpsed it so far.

Pedra sat demurely on the couch. My folk looked quizzically at her. One of them remained inscrutable, because his face had dropped so far, it had almost fallen off!

Eventually, I left with Pedra for a walk in the park, skirting the castle, then strolling down towards the boating lake. Having now seen Pedra through the eyes of others for the first time, I felt her bony hand within my relatively plump one, felt it with decided distaste. It was as if even my nose had been opened, as well as my eyes, for a stench of something quite indefinable ripened around us, and even the skateboarders in the park gave us a wide berth.

We sat beside the lake listening to the underhum of traffic with which Colchester always seemed to resonate, punctuated by klaxons and distant children's screams. I looked towards the water and thought the only thing to do with unseemly waifs and strays like Pedra was to bury them in water, whence this one had surely come.

I soon shook off this thought and turned my face towards her, to see if my earlier awakening to her true condition was still apparent. It was then I caught the fullest glimpse of an inner smile. I felt tears of joys pricking at the corners of my eyes. My nose tingled with a perhaps fouller stenches than before, but now disguised by the most precious perfume from the department stores of Paris. I looked into her eyes, my eyes sinking into hers, as into a well of Arthurian Romance and courtly love. I did indeed fall in love for the first, and probably last, time, as I lowered gently my lips to her lips. Tongue towards her tongue. A gentle fall towards her saving arms, a lovely abandonment to the folded lace of her soul, amid the scented accompaniment of wild honey and wild hyacinth and other wild sweet nothings.

My family couldn’t see what I saw in her. But luckily they believed in happy endings, too.

(unpublished)