‘I’ve loved this lady all my life’

A WEDDING photograph stands on the sideboard in Alan and Irene Brogan’s living room. It is ordinary enough – the bride wears a white, strapless gown, the groom a suit – and to anyone who didn’t know, this could be any late-in-life marriage. The smiling faces and intertwined hands, however, belie a story of heartache and, ultimately, of two people’s struggle against all odds to find the happiness they lost as children.

Alan and Irene were seven and nine respectively when they first met at Rennie Road children’s home, in Sunderland. Having both lost their mothers, they’d been taken into care – Alan, because a single father was, in those days, deemed incapable of caring for his children, and Irene, because her father was so devastated by his wife’s death that he struggled to cope.

In their book, Not Without You, Irene recalls that initial encounter. “The door was opened by a plump, friendly-looking lady who said, ‘You must be Irene’. Beside her stood a boy with piercing blue eyes and blond hair. He was smiling at me, and looking at him I felt warm inside. Somehow I knew this smiling boy would be my friend.”

Speaking at the couple’s home in Sunderland, Alan has an almost identical memory.

“When I looked at Irene, I felt that I recognised her. There was something there – chemistry, magnetism, whatever you want to call it. Certainly, when I saw her I felt that we were close.”

The children’s friendship blossomed and they became soulmates. Knowing that relationships between boys and girls were frowned upon, they played together secretly, hiding behind the curtains in the playroom or roaming the bluebell woods at nearby Bunny Hill. It was a magical time, which left an indelible impression on both and when, one day, Alan earnestly proposed, Irene accepted. To other children, this would have been a game, something to be forgotten in the next instant, but to the vulnerable pair, it was deadly serious.

“It really did mean something – we’ve sat and talked about it many times,” says Alan, now 56.

“It’s funny because that day I got this picture in my mind and I really felt that we were going to be together. It felt that strong. I think because of the situation we were in our experiences were probably far more intense than other children’s.”

The youngsters’ happiness was short-lived.

On a trip to Whitby, where the home’s normally- rigid rules were slightly relaxed, they forgot themselves and had a tickle fight in view of one of the “aunties”, the ironic name for their carers. The mistake proved catastrophic, with Alan swiftly being moved to another home. He writes of feeling a pain akin to bereavement.

“That night I lay in my new bed and thought about Irene. That’s when the pain came. It felt as if something deep inside me was broken, and there was an ache that went deep down. I sobbed into my pillow for a long time, but the pain didn’t feel any better. I had found a special person in the world, a friend like no other, and they had taken me from her.”

Without Alan, Irene continued in the dull drudgery of life at Rennie Road, where affection was never shown and emotion discouraged, and from which her only escape was school. Alan, on the other hand, found his situation intolerable, and began a crusade to find his way back to Irene. The tragedy was, he was doomed to failure, with the authorities soon becoming wise to where he was going and always thwarting his attempts. For Irene, now 58, perhaps the most painful thing of all was being lied to.

“I would say the thing that really hurt me was when they told me he’d been adopted in Whitby,” she says. “From that time until this day I still have the same feeling – he’s got a proper home now, a mam and dad and he’s happy. When Alan told me the truth, I felt so deceived.”

In fact, for most of his childhood, Alan was in homes a matter of minutes away from Irene, in Sunderland. Already volatile, the separation made him angry, and he was constantly in trouble. After running away to find Irene several times and spending time at a borstal, he ended up at a children’s home in Stanhope.

The regime was so strict that, one day, he snapped, retaliating with his fists when the headmaster, who had previously caused permanent damage to his back during a beating, attacked him again. In hindsight, he can see he had been brutalised.

“The only method of bringing children up was to use corporal punishment as guidance,”

reflects Alan. “We never saw anyone who was independent of the system, who would come in and ask us how we felt. I ended up in a situation where it was impossible for me to think outside this box and regime.”

AFTER spending time in prison, Alan reached a turning point: it was now or never if he was to turn his life around and find Irene. He still foundered, marrying someone else. It was not until their 40s that he and Irene were reunited. They met by chance, at the gym where Irene worked, but while she was single, having had two children and been divorced, he was in a relationship. Their reunion proper was in a Sunderland street.

“I was busy chatting to a friend as we walked through town and only by chance turned my head to see Alan across the street,” writes Irene. “My heart lurched, and before I could even think about it I shouted out his name. We flung our arms around each other. I was laughing and close to tears, telling him, ‘I’ve been looking for you. I’m not with anyone’. As he told me the same things I felt all the broken pieces of my heart rush back together. He kept tight hold of me as he turned to my friend and said, ‘I’ve loved this lady all my life’.”

After so many years apart, and so much sorrow, Alan and Irene got married in 2007. They are blissfully happy and are making the most of every day. As Alan says, it’s a dream come true. “Coming together now is probably a wonderful gift because all we have to give each other is the best that we’ve got. These are certainly the best and happiest years of our lives.”

■ Not Without You by Alan and Irene Brogan (Hodder & Stoughton, £12.99)