Like a kleptomaniac, Hattie sought trinkets and raided skips. On Sundays, she searched land fill sites. Her home, at the bottom of Piper’s Road, groaned under the weight of her obsessive collecting. From the outside her windows, like a blind man’s eyes, were covered with thick, mouldering curtains drawn shut both day and night.

Forty years ago, Hattie’s late mother made those curtains when Hattie announced her engagement to Derek Wilson. Derek fled on the eve of their wedding and Hattie remained with her mother, taking care of her until she died.

Since her mother’s death, Hattie left her home around eight thirty every morning. Pulling her shopping trolley behind her, she headed for the nearby town where she rummaged inside litter bins. In the park, she snatched bread from feral pigeons. Behind Stella’s Tea Rooms, she ate stale cakes that had been thrown into black plastic nags.

Some evenings, she dined off half-eaten burgers found outside fast food outlets. During autumn, she raided Farmer Jones's orchard, and strolled down lanes, picking blackberries. Then she trundled her harvest home in a wheel barrow to be deep frozen in a freezer, once left out as refuse by a neighbour at number 10.

Adept at repairing abandoned electrical goods, Hattie stacked them in her downstairs rooms. Upstairs she piled her collection of magazines, books and jigsaws along walls. On the kitchen table, amongst the debris of unwashed dishes, she kept a computer she’d found in the back of a van at the rear of PC Repairs.

At the time, having little knowledge of this new technology, Hattie shoplifted How To manuals from W.H. Smith’s stores. She attended free evening classes that taught Computer For Beginners, unaware that her offensive body odour had cut the original class of twenty down to one.

Six months ago, a council official called on Hattie, but received no answer. A few days later, he went back after receiving more protests from neighbours regarding a stench permeating from Hattie’s home. He returned and, appalled at the sight of a million flies bouncing brown splatters against Hattie’s windows, made an urgent call to the police.

Half-an-hour later, the official and a policeman broke into her home. Overwhelmed by a smothering reek, they struggled past electrical goods. On entering the kitchen, they discovered Hattie’s decomposing body slumped over a table. On the floor, the body of a man clung to an upturned Zimmer frame with skeletal hands.

Then the policeman pointed to a bread knife protruding between two of man’s exposed ribs. ‘Murder,’ they both whispered in unison. The policeman phoned for homicide.

Glancing away from the terrible scene, the council official flinched at the sight of a Hattie’s head crawling with maggots. To distract himself, he let his gaze fall upon the old computer that seemed to be still switched on.

Alongside the computer, lay a well-thumbed manual. Next to the computer sat an old squat printer, its little red light blinking.

Jutting out from the printer he saw a printout and, putting on his reading glasses, saw the words, www.oldloversunited.com.