Her hands tremble slightly as she holds the silver five and zero above the centre of the card. That is the centre, isn’t it? She squints, moves it to the left, the right. When did something like this become a challenge? she wonders as she presses the figures down. When did her body begin to betray her?

With the card finished, she looks up and sees him reading the newspaper in the garden. As if sensing her gaze, he holds up his hand in greeting, an action she mirrors.

Time has come and gone and they have changed before one another’s eyes. ‘The silver tops,’ the grandchildren call them, and they’re right of course, but in her mind she is the same girl she was when they met. And he is the same boy.

It had been muggy at the fair that August evening and, as she stepped onto the Ferris wheel with Juliette, she saw him holding the cardigan she’d draped over her shoulders.

‘It must have fallen off,’ she said to Juliette, aware that he was watching her as they ascended higher and higher.

When the ride was over and she stepped onto the soft grass, he handed back her cardigan and asked if he could buy her a drink. Not here, he said. Somewhere they could talk.

The next Saturday, they’d spent the evening talking: about their families, their dreams, their hopes and fears. They’d talked until the moon was sparkling on the sea beside them, a night diamond. They’d held hands as he walked her home.

‘Can I see you again?’ he’d asked, his face lit by the glow of porch light, and she’d said ‘yes’ before she’d even heard the question.

Their love started then, fifty years ago, and it has lasted all this time.