And so it begins

An idea for a start of a short story

It had not always been this way. The whorehouse had always been there, certainly for as long as he could remember, and its faceless young whores with their soft, pre-Raphaelite breasts had been offering solace to the men of the village for countless years, but these days it was different. The cloying stench of sex that had for years flowed out of the windows and scandalised the aged, black-clad matriarchs who juddered like crows down the cobbled street was now blotted out by a musty odour of melancholy. The odour originated from the owner of the whorehouse, Donna Concetta, and was a result of her sudden realisation that her days were long and empty, and that a lifetime of proud rejection of male companionship had left her barren and cold. She knew that she would have to do something about it, because the melancholy was beginning to infect her girls, and no man wants a miserable whore, but although she was a master of the art of seduction she knew nothing of love. That is why she had invited him, the man who had never been without love his whole life, to her door.