I first met Davedax when I was just seventeen, he was forty two and a taxi driver, I was living with my sister having split from my husband of just three days!

In England people can marry at sixteen, which in retrospect is ridiculous, however, he picked me and my sister up after doing our weekly shopping and I was immediately attracted to his eyes, they seemed to be smiling all the time, (Irish eyes as I found out later)

It was only a short journey to my sister’s house and when we arrived Dave helped us to take the bags into the house,

I asked him in for a coffee, but he laughed and said that he was knocking off work and going for a drink,

My sister, Linda was as taken with him as I was and being older than me, asked him which pub he used,

He told us and grinned saying,

“Now why would you be wanting to know that?”

His Ulster accent made me shiver, not to mention the twinkle in his eyes, between us me and Linda wormed it out of him and he admitted that he lived in a small flat two streets away.

We promised to meet him in half an hour at the pub, but when we went, he wasn’t there, we waited for an hour and then went home.

The following morning, I rang the company he sub-contracted for and asked for his phone number, they refused to give it to me, so I went in person and saw the manager. I told him that I had accidentally picked up something belonging to Dave and wanted to give it back to him in person.

The manager was nobody’s fool but he went on the radio and told Dave to call in at the office as soon as he could. It took almost an hour before he came in and when he saw me he laughed, (If there’s one thing I’ll remember about him, it has to be how readily he laughed)

I’m going to try and cut this story short because to tell you all about Dave, I’d need to write a book that would be thicker than War and Peace!

He made a joke out of being single, saying that all he needed to make his life complete was a Hoover! But there was a sadness in him that I couldn’t fathom and I was determined that this man WAS NOT going to get away from me, I thought he was beautiful, old and grizzly, sometimes very bad tempered, but his attitude to life amazed me, he was the first and only man I’ve ever met who really didn’t give a shit about anything!

We became lovers after our third date, he was a wonderful lover, kind and considerate and far more interested in me having an orgasm than actually having one of his own and I knew that I was falling in love with him.

After about two weeks of seeing him three or four times, I went round to his flat and the door was opened by a very pretty teenage girl who asked me what I wanted, my first instinct was to flatten her, but just then another slightly younger teenager joined her and asked me if I was Jackie.

I replied that I was and she said with a smile that that was all too familiar,

“Dad’s in the bath, you’ve got to come in and have a drink”

I could have cried with relief, but why didn’t the bastard tell me about them?”

I sat on the couch making small talk with his girls, (he always called them his girls, there were three of them and he’d reared them himself, but that’s another story)

In his living room, there were tights, (pantyhose) knickers, bras, all sorts of girly things draped over the radiators to dry, I learned later that they went to their dad’s place every week to do their washing, but somehow I felt as if I was intruding.

I was uncomfortable in their company, but with only the sort of charm that a true Irishmen can come out with, he gave his girls some cash for a taxi home and told them to bugger off!

I cried more that night than I’d ever cried when he told me his story, he was what was known as a full time reservist in the Royal Ulster Constabulary and was likely to be recalled to Northern Ireland at little or no notice in the event of what he called, a wee spot of bother!

It was several months later when I went with him to Ireland to meet his son and his uncles and aunts that I learned he’d been shot and left for dead ten years before I met him, he introduced me to a Catholic priest called Shamus, a lovely little man who’d put his own life on the line by threatening his parishioners with hell and damnation if they interfered whilst he gave this badly injured policeman the last rites!

He spent almost eighteen months in hospital after that, but it did nothing to diminish his love for the people of the land of his birth, neither will it ever deter me from visiting Belfast again, which I consider to be the most brilliant, vibrant and friendliest place on earth!

We were married one August on his birthday and I will never forget how his mother warned me about marrying him, “He’s a lovely man Jackie” she said, “But he’s untamable”

Well I wouldn’t like to say that I tamed him, but I would like to say that being married to him was a mixture, a brilliant mixture of love, tears and laughter, we had rows and arguments like everyone else, but he always refused to go to bed or leave me for work until we’d kissed and made up.

Two of his girls were friendly towards me, but the third would never accept me and he showed how much he felt for me by telling her that she was wrong,

“I reared the three of you” he said, “And now it’s my turn, I’m marrying Jackie whether you like it or not”

He was fifty eight when he was killed, but he often used to say that above the neck, he was seventeen, he loved speed and in the end it was speed that killed him.

He left a legacy though, apart from the many e.mails I’ve received from the site, I think the nicest thing I can say about Dave is that whenever I think of him, I smile!

I don’t think anyone could ask for more!

Thanks for reading this.

Jackie