It was Pat’s broken elbow that first attracted Donald’s attention. He was a fourth-year medical student in Birmingham when Pat came to the fracture clinic. “Most of the patients who were coming through at that time of year were old ladies who had fallen over and broken their wrists on an icy pavement,” says Donald. “When Pat turned up with something a bit more spectacular, I thought: ‘I’ll examine that one, definitely.’”

Pat says she had been having “a pretty miserable sort of life” – not least because the PhD she was doing into the respiratory effects of a nerve-gas attack wasn’t the cheeriest subject – but forced herself to get out and about. “On a Sunday, I went up Snowdon in a blizzard, with no crampons, determined to get to the top,” she says. “I slipped over and broke my elbow. I came down and went to the pub with everyone else. After the pub I went home in agony.” A junior doctor in A&E put her arm in a sling and, she says, it “set funny”.

A few weeks later, “with an arm set at right angles, I had to go to an orthopaedic surgeon to see about sorting it out. And Donald was the first person I met.” She had an operation a few days later. About a month after that, at a house party of a mutual friend, she ran into Donald again. “He said: ‘How’s your arm?’” Pat recalls. “Within a few days he had moved his things in, including a huge beer kit.”

Donald’s parents were not happy. Pat was eight years older than him, divorced and had a daughter. “They went completely ballistic because he was only 22 and they said he had to move out of my flat,” says Pat. “And he did. I went to the Notting Hill carnival with a friend and she said: ‘You’re well rid of him – let’s go and get drunk.’ So we did. I came back on the Monday evening and he was at the station to meet me and moved straight back in again.”

What did she like about him? “I liked the fact he didn’t look like a medical student – he looked like a mountaineer because he had long hair and a beard and these big heavy climbing boots.” Donald says he liked that Pat seemed more mature. “She had already been married, had a child, done a degree and was doing research. I think that was a lot of it. And we had a lot in common – we both liked hill‑walking and things like that.”

They got married 18 months later, catering the reception themselves while a friend – a chemist – brought a litre of pure alcohol to put in the punch. “We were all very happy by the end of the evening,” says Donald. This year they celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary.

Donald worked as a GP and Pat as a teacher; they had two more children. Twelve years ago, they moved to Tuscany, where they live in an olive grove with their two dogs. They are opposites in lots of ways, says Donald, which is one reason he thinks their relationship has worked. “If something is troubling Pat I know about it straight away – there is an explosion, we’ll have a discussion or a row and it’s sorted. I’ll sit and brood about things and won’t necessarily discuss them until I resolve them. Pat is much more sociable than I am. I’m the one who does all the organising, the mundane stuff; Pat is the one who has the inspiration for new things.”

Pat says: “I think we’re a really good team. When we met, we both had a big hole in our lives. I was really lonely, very unhappy, away from family and friends and Donald just arrived and everything just changed.” She remembers, when they first got together, coming back from university to her flat. “There was a big bush and if I could see a bit of his car sticking out from behind it, I knew he’d got home and I would be so happy.”

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