At nineteen we promised that if we were both single at sixty we would find each other. I turned sixty on Tuesday, and the old landline rang.

In the August of 1986 one more letter came.

He was getting married. And at the bottom he asked me not to write to him again.

I cried for about three weeks and then I did what he asked, because that is what you do.

I never married. When people ask I say I never met the right one.

That is not strictly true. I met him at seventeen and I never got round to anybody else.

Last Tuesday I turned sixty.

That night the landline went. The old one, in my mother’s house, that nobody rings any more, and I nearly left it.

“Is that Roslyn?”

“Yes.”

“My name’s Casper. I’m Gil Hartigan’s son.” A pause. “My dad would like to speak to you. He hasn’t got very long.”

There was a rustling.

And then a voice I had not heard since 1986.

“Rozzie.”

I had to sit down on the stairs.