When I used to live on the Northumberland coast, there was a game I played with visiting lesbian friends. On our walks and drives around the countryside, we’d identify houses we thought would make perfect lesbian retirement homes.

“No, that’s too exposed to the weather,” one would argue. “It’s in the middle of nowhere, you’d never get the staff,” said another. “The driveway’s too steep, we’d all break our hips in the winter,” a third objected.

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But there was one thing we all agreed on. We really liked the idea of a community of lesbians growing old together more or less disgracefully. It may be a hangover from the ideas of communal living that gained a degree of traction in the 60s and 70s, often triggered by the political commitments of feminism and gay rights. But it’s one that retains a lot of appeal as we age.

Although attitudes towards sexuality have shifted radically in recent years, there are still significant levels of homophobia and transphobia around. Manchester city council, which is planning the country’s first local authority retirement community with a majority of LGBT residents, reports that elderly gay people fear hostility and discrimination from those charged with taking care of them. So they often hide their sexuality.

It seems profoundly wrong to me that after a lifetime of struggling to be accepted and to be open about who we are that we face being pushed back into the closet. Heaven knows, age comes with its indignities; this shouldn’t be one of them.

LGBT retirement homes are not about building a ghetto but rather being able to live life openly and without fear. To be surrounded by people with whom you have something in common. Often people move into such communities after a partner dies. How much healthier it must be to be able to express one’s grief freely, rather than hold back for fear of being judged.

Loneliness and isolation afflict many older people, heterosexual and homosexual alike. We all stand a better chance of continuing to form friendships and loving relationships if we live among kindred spirits. A retirement home that offers those connections means a community that is emotionally and psychologically healthier than the alternative. And that inevitably means people are physically healthier too, because they’re surrounded by people who notice changes in their behaviour and appearance.

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Our fantasy home for old dykes featured many of the things that matter to us in our lives now: good food, because being old doesn’t mean you suddenly discover a taste for institutional processed pap; accessible health provision, because the better we take care of ourselves, the better equipped we’ll be for a comfortable old age; a range of activities – bridge, walking, board games, music, excursions of all sorts – because we don’t want to ossify.

What we’d also obviously need is care workers. People who understand our histories and who don’t judge them. People who, over time, become part of our community too.

Maybe I’m making this sound a bit utopian, but I do believe communities like this can be part of our future. As the proportion of the elderly population increases, we all need to start imagining positive ways of living in later years.

I’m still at the stage where old age and retirement feel a long way off. But the prospect of being able to live among people whose lives are rich with echoes of my own make the prospect much less frightening. We all deserve a dignified and nourishing old age. The Radclyffe Hall Retirement Home for Recalcitrant Lesbians sounds like a good place to start.

• Val McDermid’s latest novel, Out of Bounds, is now available in paperback (Sphere, £7.99)