I’ve been looking through a lot of my old notebooks, my old files on my external hard-drive that survived the great laptop crash of 2009. Sometimes I’m surprised to see what I have written – I’ve plum forgot so much, it seems.

Anyway, this is something I found in one of these files.

She’s older and greying now, but still beautiful.

When she was young and foolish the gap didn’t matter. Now it does.

Now it does.

It’s a day they’ve known was going to come, the moment old age really slithered around them both. But while the curse is only starting to touch her, she’s been married to an old man for a long time.

And the day has come. Today she has woken from sleep; he has not.

He’s cold and still lying next to her in their bed. The only warmth about him are the tears falling onto his cheek.