He perched on a bar stool and ordered a glass of tonic water. Early on a Saturday evening was always a good time to visit the Hare and Hounds. It was one of the nights Tamara worked and she was such a pleasant girl. Not to mention attractive.

The bar was starting to fill up with diners as he knew it would. Tamara didn’t just do the bar, she waited tables, which meant she’d be striding back and forth all night, her long legs probably encased in her usual skinny jeans.

If she was looking as good as she usually did, he’d dine here. Not only was the food good, and there was an early-bird menu, Tamara’s presence in the room meant the scenery would also be excellent.

His breath caught when Tamara emerged from the kitchen with a piled plate in each hand. She wasn’t wearing her skinny jeans today, instead she wore a skirt.

The skirt wasn’t as short as he’d have liked, as it finished just above her knees, but it still gave him a good view of her legs and it was tight enough to let him see the curve of her bottom.

As always, she gave him a polite smile when she looked his way, but like the professional she was, her focus was on the customers awaiting the plates she carried.

He would eat here; savour the home-made steak pie, or better yet, a salad of some description. If he had the salad, he could also find room for a starter and dessert. That would give him a nice excuse to spend at least an hour and a half appreciating Tamara’s beautiful figure.

The ring on her finger meant she could never be his, as did the thirty-plus years between them. Tamara had the vibrancy and beauty of youth, whereas he possessed the sluggishness and decrepitude of age. In terms of looks and appeal, he wasn’t even playing the same sport as Tamara, let alone in the same league. All he had to offer her was appreciation, but even that wasn’t something he could say out loud. It wasn’t that he was nervous about telling her how beautiful and sexy he thought she was, he just didn’t expect that she’d take his compliments the way they were intended.

He’d recently told two young women how attractive he found them. The first time had seen him berated and labelled a pervert. That had been humiliating enough, but the second time had been even worse. After returning to his car with a crimson handprint on his face, he’d vowed that never again would he verbalise his appreciation of the female form.

He took a seat at a table that allowed him to watch Tamara wherever she was and lifted a menu. This was a good night. Three slowly eaten courses admiring Tamara and then on to the Coach House. Wendy the barmaid was neither pretty nor young, but she had a generous cleavage and was always chatty with him. His evening would end with a few slow drives around the Crescent and along Lowther Street. Carlisle had a vibrant nightlife and both the Crescent and Lowther Street played host to bars and restaurants where he’d identified many of his angels.

The Crescent surrounded the former south, or Botcher Gate, of the old city known as The Citadel; while the gate had made way for a three-lane road, the circular guard towers with crenelated tops and pink sandstone walls still stood as a reminder of the city’s warring past.

The area, now known as Botchergate, was the northern end of London Road and home to Carlisle’s most hedonistic bars. On weekend nights, it was closed off to traffic due to the drunk people filling the street as they passed from one bar to another. Come the morning, the pavement was littered with the detritus of fast-food wrappers, dropped food and puddles of vomit.

He’d tried visiting the pubs and bars on Botchergate a few times, but in these places a man his age standing by himself attracted the wrong kind of attention. Too often they had looked right through him at the younger, hunkier guys they were trying to attract. Or worse, he’d been pointed at and sniggered over by the pretty girls he was there to admire.

Now he trawled the streets in his car, just looking for the girls who could star in his fantasies. It was a lower risk, isolated from the humiliation of being rejected.

In Tamara he’d found one angel for his dreams.

Next he had to find a companion for her. One angel at a time was never enough for him. He needed as many as he could possibly get.