THE SECRETS OF A LONG AND HAPPY LIFE

A short story by Lucy Dillon

- Lucy Dillon

'So what was the first thing you noticed about the love of your life?

Jenny glanced up from the list of prompts the project leader had handed them. "I bet it was his eyes, wasn't it? Dad had lovely eyes."

It was hard, thought Pat, to look at Jenny and not see Brian. She had his long nose, his impatience, even his habit of peering over his glasses, that "hurry up, Pat" expression.

What had been the first thing she'd noticed? It was hard to rewind a tape 63 years.

Maybe it was his eyes. His blue eyes that wandered around the other girls, but stopped when he saw her. Brian Simpson was a bad boy in those days, a catch. And she'd caught him, with her white patent boots.

"His eyes. Kind eyes," she added quickly because that was what Jenny wanted to hear.

To her, Brian had been a beacon of reliability, the dad who'd always collect her in the small hours, the husband who dealt with every mousetrap.

"And you met at that Valentine's dance?"

Pat had told the story so often over the years that Jenny could have filled in the box herself. But she said, "Yes, at the village hall." Brian had sauntered in with his best friend, Tim Stokes, who would have been the catch under normal circumstances, since his family owned a chocolate factory. But Brian had hips like Tom Jones, and so while Brian and Tim arrived in Tim's MG, Brian and Pat had left on the last bus.

"Your father asked me to dance and it was love at first sight," she added, for the benefit of her granddaughter Amelia, who'd only heard these stories a few hundred times.

"And that was it for the next 60 years," finished Jenny, like someone reciting a favourite poem.

"Yes," agreed Pat. "That was it." Well. More or less. Amelia stroked her shoulder. "I love hearing your stories, Gran."

Every resident, in every room, was having the same conversation that afternoon: the Memory Bank Project, they called it.