Dublin is a black-haired woman. Everything else is peripheral. If you had ever met her you would understand.

I came here early in the August of my life, worn threadbare by empty Northern resolutions and the pounding of ancient drums. July, my first escaping, had passed in a flurry of solitary coffees drunk in emotionally sterile airports and unsatisfactory assignations in hotel chain bedrooms. On a Tuesday it was probably Swindon.

Prior to all that I had tried to care about the choreography of politics. About playing my part as a concerned citizen in a society reeking of failure and dysfunction. But by the end of June I was exhausted and my feet refused to dance those old familiar rhythms. Half a life goes by so quickly. And, of course, you never get it back.

I met her in Merrion Square where she was posing as a receptionist in the offices of a film production company. The shafts of early spring sunlight slanting through the window were particularising the airborne meander of dust across the hallway and she had a bemused look on her face. Posing as a receptionist is no straightforward occupation.

"You're here to see Mr Mac Dhomhnaill," she reiterated, self-consciously correcting my pronunciation. "What name can I give?"

"Jimmy Dornan. Tell him that it's Jimmy Dornan here to talk about renting a room. That ought to raise a flicker."

I sat on the art deco sofa and watched her as she made the call. Took in how her brown eyes softened in colour at the edges of the iris and noticed the first sign of a crease at their corners when she smiled. Wondered why she wore so many rings on her elegant fingers. Mentally traced my hand slowly along the nape of her neck, gently brushing at an out-of-place strand of her blue-black hair. Imagined how it might taste to kiss her mouth. I took my time. My foot was off the accelerator now. My life was in August and every observation was important. By August you focus on the journeys hoping to postpone the destinations.

"He'll be with you in a moment Mr Dornan. Would you like a coffee while you're waiting?"

I could see her struggle with the role. Clearly unused to dealing with inconsequentialities. And I wondered what it was that had made her want to squeeze her casual grace into such a mundane situation.

"It's Jimmy, and I'd love one thanks. Milk. No sugar. How long are his 'moments' usually?"

She laughed at that one and settled back in her chair.

"Well it depends; it seems, on many things. I've only been working here for three days so far and 'moments' seem to vary from around thirty seconds right up to half an hour. I have no idea about the criteria for a 'moment'. And as I'll be gone on Friday I'll probably never find out."

"This isn't your regular job then?"

"Oh no, I'm an actor amongst other things. This is me just filling in for a friend who went to Stockholm for a week's holiday with her fella."

"I see. Does your friend know that her position is in such secure hands?"

I must have made it sound like a suggestive remark because she giggled. Delicately. Then disappeared downstairs. Presumably to locate the coffee. I wondered if I should man the telephone in her absence. But I had no idea how a film production company ought to sound nor of who was who on the many internal extensions so I ignored the flashing lights on the switchboard and reclined back on the sofa taking the weight off my feet.

Mr Mac Dhomhnaill certainly liked his luxury. There were handwoven Persian carpets on the walls interspaced with carefully framed posters advertising the many films that his company had taken a hand in producing - all well known, and big box office successes. The wooden floor was polished up and gleaming and the receptionist's desk and chair were of an opulence not normally bestowed on staff members dwelling so far down the food chain. But then, of course, this receptionist was merely holding her friend's position in secure hands whilst the regular nine to fiver was visiting Stockholm with her fella.

"Here's the coffee. I hope you like it strong."

"Today I like coffee any way it comes, thanks. I really needed this - I've been walking the streets of Dublin looking at office space all morning. By the way, what's your name, if that's not a rude question?"

"Brenda. And why would it be rude?"

"Only because of the abrupt way I framed it. 'What's your name?' sounds like the kind of question that a policeman might ask. Or maybe that's just my misspent youth talking."

"You had a misspent youth? I like that. I've always felt that there's something so deeply attractive about hedonism. Are you still misspending your time or did you mature?"

"Oh there's no better way. And so as I age I age disgracefully."

Notwithstanding my lack of original banter we talked for about twenty minutes. There was an ease in our communication that drew the conversation beyond the banal idling of time and hinted at the possibility of meaningful connection.

"So is there a Mr Brenda?" I finally asked.

"No, there was a man I lived with for awhile. But we split up over a year ago and my love life seems to be on hold just now. And you? Is there a Mrs Jimmy?"

I was about to answer when the telephone light flashed. It seemed that Mr Mac Dhomhnaill's moment had run its course and I was to go in and state my case.

"Phone me sometime if you like, I'll write my number on a piece of paper for you. Mind you, I'm off to England next week for six weeks to do some filming. Call me after that."

"I will."

Mac Dhomhnaill was an imposing man; if slightly vague looking; broad-shouldered, impeccably dressed and seated behind a large glass desk in a spacious, airy room in which a state-of-the-art flat-screen TV dominated one corner. He waved me to a chair overlooked by the usual "me and the famous" photographs proudly lined up on the perfectly painted walls. He had the air of a man with all the time in the world, but I didn't let that fool me for a moment. I explained who I was, and offered my references.

The meeting went well, though later I discovered that he had been pre-prepared for my visit by a mutual friend in Belfast, and the fully furnished basement suite was mine to rent from the first of the next month. We had a glass of champagne to seal the deal.

Brenda had disappeared when I came out. Lunchtime I supposed. There wasn't a piece of paper to be seen on the empty desk.

The August of my life was going well. After more than four years in Dublin I felt that it was almost home. My career as a private fund manager was taking off and Mr Mac Dhomhnaill, or Fergus as I called him now, had introduced me to several of his wealthy investors who in turn had opened doors. Dublin works like that, I found. Who you know has more significance than what. I had begun to attend a writer's group in Parnell Square and had become a Director in a Charitable Trust. My social life was on the up and up and I had purchased a mews-house-for-one in fashionable D4. My children had re-connected with me after the trauma of their parents' unhappy parting and now appeared, rightly or wrongly, to parcel out the blame in even dollops between us both. Passing time, I find, always blurs the edges of perceived morality. I rarely went to the North - there was nothing left for me to be or do back there.

Brenda had never reappeared in the building on Merrion Square, though she continued to smile at me from time to time in my memory and in my dreaming. For the first year in the city I used to actively look for her when walking on Grafton Street or Nassau Street or around St Stephens Green. And of course I went to every play I could manage to locate. She was an actor she'd said. "Amongst other things."

Fergus spoke of her in only the vaguest terms. He wasn't sure what she was up to now and her friend who had gone to Stockholm with her fella had become the victim of one of the occasional Mac Dhomhnaill purges that would reshape his business from time to time. So she wasn't much good to me either. But I knew that one day I would see Brenda again. Call it intuition. Or possibly naivety. Meanwhile there had been a few women who had caught my attention fleetingly. Though none had caused me to stop and take a second look. That was the thing about Brenda. In half an hour she had burrowed under my skin and left a need in me to find out more about her. But I had to be content to bide my time. To wait until our paths might accidentally cross again - as I was sure that they would one day do.

Yes, all in all the August of my life was going well.

The Christmas lights on Grafton Street loomed deep pink through the freezing mist. I searched in my head to describe their precise colour. "Cerise" didn't sound quite right for describing Christmas lights, and "red" just made the street seem sleazy. It was bitterly cold and my breath billowed out from my mouth only to be swallowed up and lost in the swirling winter atmosphere around me. I peered out from under the rim of my recently acquired black homburg, soaking up the bustle of last minute shoppers and enjoying the cheerful efforts of the street entertainers. The collar on my Crombie was turned up against the cold.

I was on my way to yet another corporate Christmas-excuse-for-a-booze-up, though by this stage my tolerance for evenings fuelled by alcohol and bullshit was beginning to plummet so I was taking the long way round to the venue. Enjoying the city. Postponing the moment. Call it what you will.

I stopped for a moment to watch the antics of a fire juggler who had drawn an admiring crowd. It struck me later how many of life's conclusions are predicated on coincidences of timing; how fine the line between being where you need to be at those pivotal moments that shape and dictate your life and simply being someplace else. The importance of seeming inconsequentialities like the different speeds of supermarket checkout operators or an impulsive decision to take a coffee refill before leaving a café. Like the length of stride when walking along a street or the day on which a trip to look for office premises is planned. Like the attraction of a fire juggler on Grafton Street at Christmas to a reluctant party-goer.

I watched for longer than I had intended, enjoying both the show and the momentary feeling of belonging that came from being a part of a relaxed and entertained Grafton Street crowd. I love the way that a group of people, created spontaneously with no past and no future and only the most tenuous of reasons to exist in the present, can generate its own in-jokes and temporary camaraderie. And we, the fire juggler's gallery, some of us more than a little inebriated, were generating a warmth from our own wit and laughter that reflected the glow of his juggling sticks and created a cosy, inviting place for us to stand. Comparisons with the ego-infested rent-a-crowd corporate gathering that was awaiting my presence were inevitable. So of course I made them.

"Oops... Excuse me... I'm so sorry! ...Oh..."

Coincidence. Being where I needed to be at the pivotal moment because I stood too long and watched the show. Bumping headlong into Brenda in the middle of Grafton Street at Christmastime. Not being someplace else. Being at this place. At just the right time. I think they call it serendipity.

"Imagine bumping into you like this."

I spoke from below her as I bent to pick up her scattered bags. Brown Thomas, Pia Bang, HMV and Marks & Spencer food. Her privacy all invaded and displayed. La Perla logos strewn across the cobbled street. I passed my retrievals to her and as she reached to take the bags from me I noticed the new arrangement of rings on her finger. Saw the Bob the Builder book peeking from the corner of one of the bags. Thought again about the co-incidence of timing.

"Thank you so much," she said and looking up I caught her eye and saw her tentative smile of bemused appreciation but, looking deeper, I could see no sign of recognition on her face. Moments later she had gone. Headed off up Grafton Street. Leaving me standing abandoned on the pavement.

I was hurt. Disappointed. Illogically and disproportionately so. Perhaps, I began to rationalise, perhaps it wasn't her. I have always been too fast to recognise, or think I recognise, faces. To quick to leave myself embarrassed and exposed. I don't know why I'm like this. Perhaps it's just my way of making the world a smaller or a safer place. All of us have our ways of doing that. That's the thing about the Twenty-First-Century world. It's grown too big to be comfortable. Too hostile to feel like home.

And then some force deep inside me took charge of my feet and I was running up Grafton Street trying to catch her. Shouting her name in undignified decibels, needing to catch her attention. Refusing to allow the moment to evaporate into the mist. Sure in my heart that serendipity only knocks once.

"Brenda!"

Dodging between dedicated shoppers. Trampling on performers' collection hats spilling pre-Christmas generosity onto the cobbles. Bumping into wide-eyed, trusting children and only half muttering my regrets. Knowing that this was a moment that I had to make my own. Uncaring about consequences.

"Brenda!"

Panting now, as only a man in August would. Stumbling as legs begin to feel the pace. Feeling sharp pains where pains never used to be felt. Needing to make myself known and to take a chance on the outcome. Wondering if there is enough in my now to trade for a chance of being part of her future. (You get these crazy thoughts when the oxygen in your brain has been diverted down to the pumping leg department).

"Brenda!"

And there she was stopped at the top of Grafton Street. Laughing.

"Do I know you? You seem to know my name. You're not a stalker are you? I've never had a stalker."

"Four. Years. Ago. I. Met. You. In. Merrion Square."

Gasping more than speaking, really; embarrassed at my own incoherence.

"You did? Are you sure? Hmmm, I don't know. Though maybe, yes, maybe you did! I remember now I think. Sort of. Was it in Fergus Mac Dhomhnaill's office in Merrion Square? I thought you looked a bit familiar. Though all that panting and puffing has made your face all red. I remember you as being better-looking than that! Though I'm terrible with names, you'll have to remind me"

I was slowly getting my breath back so I didn't interrupt her flow. And anyway, she remembered me as being good-looking. That had to be significant.

"Listen, you clearly need to sit down. A man of your age shouldn't be tearing up Grafton Street at that kind of pace. Sorry, that was so rude!"

"Jimmy Dornan. Don't worry about the rudeness. Let's focus on the sitting down," I said with a grin.

And so it was that we went for a drink.

Later, I think it might have been much later but I really can't remember, I turned up at my rent-a-crowd Yuletide extravaganza. We had steak grilled in testosterone with flirtatious Jeroboams of champagne destabilising the defences of mini-skirted female corporates whilst the real men drank Guinness and talked about defying the smoking ban in a corner of the bar. Sometimes you wonder when it was that Christmas got to be so tacky.

I stood for awhile weighing up just how long to give the party before making my way home, though there was little for me there except a fridge full of last week's food and a television showing repeats of last year's low budget Christmas specials. But somehow I wasn't in the mood for giggling strangers and champagne stains on my jacket. I was feeling lost. Like the proverbial duck out of water. A man in August looking at the flowering of May and June and realising that in the world in which he lived his life he was now perhaps a less commanding figure than he had once been. That it was someone else's time to shine.

That's a hard thing for a man to come to understand. We're so used to being the hero of our own existence. So used to consigning everyone else's role to that of simply being extras on the outskirts of a play that is all about ourselves.

I remembered that I hadn't given her my number.

It was less than a year later that I decided not to renew the lease on the Merrion Square office.

As August had bled into September and more grey hairs had grown their way into my beard I had seemed to find other priorities for my life. Well, one priority really; but one that was going to cost me all that I had if I wanted to pursue it.

There's something about us pre-programmed corporate men. Something that weaves its way between the fabric of our over-extravagant suits and screams in our ear how much we need to be needed. So we load up our lives with responsibilities, trophy wives and direct debits and we teach our children how to become cost centres into which we can drip-feed our fiscal winnings, though rarely our attention. And even after we have amassed much more than enough wealth to last us for several normal lifetimes we keep on going. Because no-one ever pre-programmed us on how to stop.

But it hadn't felt the same after meeting Brenda. Maybe you might say I'd been deprogrammed. And so I'd gone one day to talk to Fergus and given notice on the lease.

"Where are you moving to, Jimmy? I'm sure we could do the right sort of deal for you here you know."

"I doubt it. The place I'm going to is free."

"One of these tax-break deals then? They're never in a prime location you know. Not like this one. Have you thought of the effect on your clientele?"

"I'm going to Grafton Street. And I'm sure the effect will be significant."

He was nonplussed. Conceded that I had left him no room for manoeuvre. Wished me all the best for my future. Poured me more champagne.

I'd divided my not insubstantial assets into four parts. One quarter had gone to clear the D4 mortgage, and one to each of my two children whilst the balance was going to fund my new adventure. I'd resigned from the board of my charity. Something told me that my days of adding value there were over.

The third time I met Brenda was in late September - in both senses of the word "September". I'd been waiting for her for nearly three more years.

I'd almost given the job a miss that morning. I hadn't felt well for several days and when your throat's gone it's hard to hit the notes cleanly. But, and perhaps I'm being fanciful here though I don't think so, I'd had a feeling that maybe my luck was going to turn.

I'd just played that Bert Jansch tune that everyone thinks is Paul Simon's. "Anji" it's called; the tricky one with the dropping bass line in the middle where you cheat and use your thumb; and the coins were dropping into place nicely. I was planning to take a break after the next song; maybe buy a pint in Kehoe's and shoot the breeze with a couple of early afternoon regulars before coming back and doing my stint until late-night shopping. Then for some unknown reason I decided to play one more. Ewan MacColl. "The First time ever I saw her face."

In the beginning I'd just come here and sat. Sat here and waited for something to happen. It was where I'd seen her last, after all. Perhaps, I'd thought, I'll see her here again.

Six months of sitting and I was in dire need of mental diversion. So for another six months I'd spent my evenings rediscovering my forty years rusty guitar skills and working up a routine culled from the best of the classic singer-songwriter era of the late sixties and the early seventies. Guthrie, Dylan, Buckley; I'm sure you know the tunes. Now I considered myself a busker, albeit one with an after-hours social life that stretched beyond his income, and if there was anything incongruous in my situation my defence is that a man in late September is entitled to do whatever he wants to with his life. He's earned that right, at least.

"Play that one again will you."

"Ah so it's you again, is it? This is getting to be a habit."

"You make me laugh Jimmy Dornan. Twice in almost seven years is some habit. Just play it will you. Please."

And so I closed my eyes and caressed the chords again. Sang about the first time ever I saw her face; remembered the moment all over again. In the middle of Grafton Street you could have heard a pin drop.

When I looked up at the end of the song there was no sign of her.

"Great you could join me, Jimmy. It's been too long."

Fergus Mac Dhomhnaill was buying me lunch in Unicorn. He'd asked me to look respectable and to get ready to give him some advice.

"I'm not the man to ask about this Fergus. I'm a busker now. A man with no understanding of the market, and even less desire to find out."

"Your gut instinct was always the best in the business."

So gut instinct it had to be, and for three courses we'd skirted around the edges of commodity futures and put and call options and all of those buzzword essentials I'd used to understand, though my mind was only half on it and it was only as we were on the second cup of coffee that Fergus Mac Dhomhnaill came to the point.

"That girl you used to ask about. Brenda I think she was called."

"What about her?"

"Shocking business... Shocking, shocking business... I just wanted you to hear it from me."

A couple at the next table were clearly reaching the end of their own particular love story. She sat motionless; not even picking at her food. Her husband, all Thomas Pink shirted with success-coloured tie was punching at the keyboard of his Blackberry, jaws masticating furiously on his, no doubt, expense-account steak. Across the room attendees at a well-oiled birthday party were lining up an afternoon of champagne-fuelled laughter. Two middle aged men, bankers possibly, were whispering secretively at a table in the corner. I noticed how they'd eaten every scrap on their plates. Right down to the last slice of complementary bread.

These are the things that you cling on to remember.

"She took her own life, Jimmy. I'm afraid that's all I know."

You walk by; purposeful, eyes flicking away from contact, seeking to impress me with your busyness. Somewhere in my past I was as confident as you. I was as rangy in my stride. Bright-eyed and laughing with my friends just like you are now and dressed up in the latest style. And as the autumn sun came down we used to congregate the same as you do in the street-side bars and spill out onto the pavement laughing and trying to segue work time into pleasure with the aid of a few gins and tonics.

I love how the dying sunlight dapples the sky above the impressive commercial skyline. The streaming light is painting this portfolio of retail real estate more beautiful than any pension fund ever has the right to look – though the wind's blowing up a little and some of you must be cold in those thin summer t-shirts you're still wearing. But I guess there's warmth in knowing that you belong; that this is your moment; that no amount of sensible overcoat padding or bottles of cheap Spanish wine could ever engender...

"...she said we were to meet her outside BTs at half six..."

"...sure we'll go for a quick one before catchin' the DART..."

"...you should have heard the shite he was talking..."

Fragments of passing conversations provide some welcome human contact, and I try to catch more of your words. Measure the radius of their sound waves and place them in the context of your lives. Lives, the passion of whose intimate details I cannot ever begin to guess.

I used to be a people's kind of guy. Good at making connections. But nowadays I'm just a watcher here on Grafton Street. I try to blend in with the stonework, and I do feel that I have successfully become almost anonymous; which was much easier than you might have thought as my new persona is much less impressive than the one I had before.

The flower stalls give me comfort. When beauty comes for free it ought to be enjoyed, or so I say. So I've stared at the colour kaleidoscope until I could recite its makeup blindfold, and I've strained and strained to catch its scent among the familiar stench of last night's beer and piss wafting up from the wall of the Bank behind where I sit.

"Hello."

I blink. His eyes are at my level and he's smiling.

"Hello, I'm Colum."

"Hello Colum, I'm Ji..."

But his mother has already taken his hand and firmly steered him in the direction of Laura Ashley.

"I didn't used to look this way," is what I want to say. But my mouth cannot find the right shape to accommodate the words; and anyway in the grand apologetic sometimes known as being, the person who we used to be is never a material witness.

And anyway, they've gone.

"I really didn't used to look this way." I whisper it fiercely to myself, but even I find the relevance of the assertion hard to quantify.

And so in my November I am here alone in Dublin. I shall probably be here for December too. There's nowhere else I want to go to spend the winter. And I sit sans dignity; sans eloquence; sans, you might say... everything. Everything, that is, except my one deserving memory. The memory of a woman, the meeting of whom ended up costing me everything I had ever owned or that I'd ever been; a memory that I would have considered cheap at twice the price.

Dublin is a black-haired woman. Everything else is peripheral. If you had ever met her you would understand.