The writer's wife

When Anne Griffiths left her apartment on a foggy London evening in the late 1950s, it did not cross her mind that her life was to change forever.

After all, Anne was simply doing a favour to one of her colleagues by trading cutlery for a homemade dinner.

"She was throwing this dinner party for a well-known writer, Nicholas Monsarrat, and after inviting quite a few people, realised she did not have enough cutlery. She said I could go along if I took some knives and forks with me," she says.

So the 19-year-old Anne took a cab to the London house after being warned not to speak to the main guest.

"But when he got there, he made a beeline for me and we started talking. I guess I was the only young one there," she says, staring pensively ahead.

Decades have passed, but the night is still entrenched in Anne's mind. "When dinner was over, they opened the door and we could see London wrapped in a thick fog. By then Nicholas had got completely fed up and said he was just going to get a taxi. He had barely finished the sentence when a taxi appeared, its headlamps glowing through the fog. He said: 'I'm gonna get this; anyone else coming?' Me and another two or three guests quickly got in. One of them was a reporter who had always been rather timorous and didn't like the idea of getting in the taxi very much.

"We drove past lamp-posts with their lights glowing yellow through the fog. When we got in the centre of London, Nicholas said he was getting out there and going to a nightclub. He asked me whether I would like to go with him and I said yes."

Anne still remembers the song that was being played by the band as they walked into the club, although she struggles to remember the title. "After that night, whenever we went to the same nightclub, the band would stop what they were playing and play the same song. It was extraordinary."

The following day Anne went to work - at the Daily Mail - to find a huge bouquet of flowers on her desk. "The lady who had invited me to dinner was not very pleased. She knew Nicholas well and they always had a good gossip together. I think she wanted to have her daughter marry him."

The relationship started across the Atlantic Ocean since the author, who was working on his next novel, was living in Canada at the time. "I went to visit him and he asked me to go to the Caribbean on holiday with him. My parents were really worried - we did not do things like that in those days," she says with a mischievous smile.

Within a year Anne got a marriage proposal. "Nicholas said: 'I'm too old for you, but if you don't mind having an old husband, I'd like to marry you.' I was to be his third wife."

A 30-year age gap was unusual between couples, but Anne admits she was in love and never really thought much about it.

"On my wedding day my father said that I did not have to go on with it if I didn't want to. It was unlikely that I'd have an old man as a husband, but I found him far more fascinating than anyone I'd ever met before," she says.

It was Professor Cyril Northcote Parkinson, the brains behind Parkinson's Law, who introduced the couple to Gozo. "We were all living in the Channel Islands and when we arrived on the small island, we both fell for it immediately. Nicholas was always working and Gozo was really the perfect place for him because it was so calm and quiet. We had not intended to stay in Gozo, but Nicholas immediately got the idea for the Kappillan of Malta, and by the time he had finished it we had both fallen in love with the island and did not want to move."

When her husband died almost 30 years ago, Anne decided to remain in their house in San Lawrenz. "I found that people were more outgoing and cheerful than in the UK, so I stayed."

She twirls her wedding ring as she remembers their life together. "He used this old typewriter which made quite a sound - whenever I hear the sound of a typewriter, I always remember of him. I still can't believe he's gone; it's been a long time but I still feel married."

Although life in Gozo was peaceful, a year ago Anne packed her bags and moved to Malta, where she now lives at the Prince of Wales Residence. "The idea works extremely well because you know that there will always be someone to pick up the pieces if something happens."