大象传媒

When she was nine, Irene was sent to a new children’s home – already the third in her short lifetime. “I was in because my mother died when she was very young,” Irene explains.

Rennie Road in Sunderland, where Alan and Irene first met.

Alan, then seven, saw her arriving from the window of the home. “Irene stepped out of the car and it just triggered something,” he recounts. “I went to the front door with the ladies who were in charge and immediately volunteered to show her round.”

Irene can recall it clearly: “There was a boy waiting at the door – I’ll always remember – just standing staring at me, and I just looked at this boy and the friendship actually started there. And after that we were together all the time.”

“We used to go up on to Bunny Hill and play together.”

The pair bonded over having lost their mums, and being separated from their siblings. “We just had this big connection,” says Irene. At the time it meant “everything, just everything”.

Boys and girls in the home weren’t meant to play together, but Irene and Alan never left each other’s side. “We used to hide and we used to go back to the home separately, not looking at each other,” says Irene. “It was really hard, but that was the thing we had to do.”

Being in the home was like being a prisoner, says Alan. The moments with Irene were a stark contrast: “When we were together it was just sort of free and open. We could talk to each other about anything.”

One day, up on Bunny Hill, Alan proposed to Irene.

“I remember I gave her a bluebell and said, ‘When we get older, I want to marry you, will you marry me?’ And she looked at me and said, ‘Yes, but you’ll have to wait a bit.’”

Every summer, the children were taken on a trip to Whitby. On this excursion, Alan and Irene decided to throw caution to the wind, running “wild” together. But they were caught having a tickle fight by one of the aunties from the home.

Their secret was out. And the aunties were angry.

“I knew we were in real trouble,” admits Alan, “but we had no idea what the consequences were going to be.”

They were more severe than either of them could have imagined. The following morning, when Irene went to school, Alan was “whisked off”. When she asked where he’d gone, she was told he’d been adopted in Whitby.

But it was a lie.

“I was just bundled into this car and whisked across the other side of the city to another children’s home,” Alan recounts. “It was a pretty traumatic experience… Suddenly I was in a strange place all over again with new people and nobody to connect to.”

He remembers feeling guilt. How would Irene feel? Would she worry she’d done something wrong? He started breaking out of the new home and trying to find his way back to his friend.

He had no idea how to get there but somehow, eventually, he made it to Bunny Hill. In the middle of winter, he waited in an air raid shelter overnight. But when he went to meet Irene at the bus stop the next morning he was picked up by the police and carried away. He felt an “absolute need to see Irene” but every time he escaped, he was hauled back to the home.

Years later, Alan’s girlfriend at the time mentioned someone at her gym called Irene, who said she’d been at the children’s home. “I got all these bristles all over us,” Alan recalls, “and I thought, can it be?” He drove his partner to the gym, poked his head inside – and there was Irene.

Revisiting the camp in Staithes where they were caught playing together in 1959.

“It was the best and worst moment possible,” says Alan.

They were both in relationships, unable to express how they truly felt to be reunited. But at the same time felt “desperate” to connect. “I just wanted to run out the door with him and just leave my job, leave everything, and just run away, but I couldn’t,” says Irene.

“It was very, very difficult,” says Alan, but they just knew the moment wasn’t right. “We had to be together a hundred percent and didn’t want anything in the way.”

And so, they parted – for the second time.

Alan went to Scotland with work. Irene believed she’d never see him again. But then a couple of years after that meeting at the gym, she spotted him. “I was driving my car round the roundabout in town and I saw Alan,” says Irene. “That was the exciting bit, because I knew he was back. And I was going to look for him.”

For three months they searched for each other. Alan would go to the shops every day, and spend an hour or two just wandering and looking for Irene. –

“All the years behind vanished and we were back as two kids on the hill.”

On the 10th May, at one o’clock, 2004 – almost 45 years since they first separated – Irene spotted Alan in the street.

“I just screamed his name. And he just looked at us and ran to us, picked us up in the air and starts shouting, ‘I’ve loved this lady all my life!’ And it was like he was never, ever going to let go of us again.”

“That moment was just a flood of emotion,” says Alan. “All the years behind vanished and we were back as two kids on the hill.” He was shouting, “I’m free! I’m not with anybody, we can be together!” They span around, screaming with happiness as a crowd of people watched on in amazement.

“It was just as if the whole world had changed at that moment. Just everything that we’d been through just vanished and was meaningless. We were together again,” says Alan.

“Forever,” chips in Irene. “For good this time.”