Bittersweet legacy of finding love later in life: It took 20 years for Fiona to fall in love with her friend, only for him to die shortly after - now she’s turned their story into a deeply poignant poetry collection

  • Fiona Moore was friends with Graham for 20 years before they became a couple
  • She told how a question from him influenced her decision to write poetry  
  • Graham died just four years after their monumental conversation  
  • Fiona is now nominated for the prestigious £25,000 T.S. Eliot Prize 

Fiona Moore was at a crossroads in life. Aged 43, she’d worked for the Foreign Office for 22 years — with postings in Poland and Greece — but she knew she didn’t want to go up the ladder and become an ambassador.

She also knew she didn’t want to go abroad again and leave her partner, Graham, behind. Although they’d been friends half their life, they’d been a couple for only two years.

That May evening, she and Graham were walking to a pub in Suffolk, moaning companionably about their jobs, when they realised they were lost between two villages. ‘We were trying to find our way along a footpath. The sunset seemed to go on for ever and it was cow parsley time.

‘When we realised we’d taken the wrong turning, we didn’t mind. It was my turn to complain about my job, and Graham asked me: “What will you regret not having done when you’re 60?” The answer came straight out: “Writing poetry”.’

Fiona Moore (pictured) revealed how finding love in later life with her friend of more than 20 years Graham, inspired her to write poetry before his heartbreaking death

Fiona Moore (pictured) revealed how finding love in later life with her friend of more than 20 years Graham, inspired her to write poetry before his heartbreaking death

‘It was a road to Damascus moment,’ Fiona, now in her late 50s, tells me. She’d studied classics and had written ‘about one poem every three years’, but she’d kept it quiet.

But now, thanks to Graham, it felt as though she’d been given permission to change her life. On the Monday she asked for a sabbatical from the Foreign Office and later took voluntary redundancy.

Fast-forward 15 years and Fiona’s first poetry collection, The Distal Point, has been nominated for the prestigious £25,000 T.S. Eliot Prize, announced next Monday and won in the past by Ted Hughes and Carol Ann Duffy. It’s an amazing achievement for a debut poet.

Today, she knows Graham’s question changed her life. But the bittersweet truth is he’s not here to share her triumph. He died 11 years ago of a brain tumour, just four years after that fateful walk.

As a result, The Distal Point, which opens with a series of heartbreaking elegies for Graham, is an incredibly poignant collection.

‘We first met at a fancy dress party in our early 20s. It was at the dilapidated house where I was living in East London with a mutual friend,’ Fiona recalls.

Over the next 20 years they both lived abroad and went out with other people. Graham was a finance and economics journalist who later set up his own company ranking City analysts.

‘When we were in our mid-30s, he came to stay with me in Greece. At that point he was interested, but I was involved in a serious long-term relationship.’

It wasn’t until they were 41 that they were both free and finally got together as a couple.

Fiona (pictured right with Graham) recalls London’s UCL hospital struggling to find the cause of a series of seizures Graham had before being diagnosed with terminal cancer

Fiona (pictured right with Graham) recalls London’s UCL hospital struggling to find the cause of a series of seizures Graham had before being diagnosed with terminal cancer

They lived independently at first. Fiona owned her house in Greenwich, but often stayed at Graham’s rented house in Boxford, Suffolk. ‘It’s the perfect arrangement in your 40s if you don’t have family reasons to keep you together,’ Fiona smiles. ‘You really appreciate each other’s company when you have it.’

After she left the FCO, they went on a month-long trip to Australia and New Zealand. But she was starting to worry about Graham. ‘He seemed really tired. I put it down to him working so hard.’

Then one afternoon, after a weekend in Suffolk, she had a call from Graham’s colleague to say he’d collapsed and that the ambulance had come and they were doing CPR on the office floor. ‘Time stopped, a crevasse opened at your feet/ and you fell headlong,’ she writes in The Distal Point.

She rushed to join him in hospital. ‘The doctors told me he’d had several more seizures in the ambulance, that he’d nearly died. But they did a CT scan and didn’t find anything.

‘They were convinced he had epilepsy and put him on medication for that.’

The couple returned home, went for gentle walks and Graham seemed to recover. But three weeks later it happened again.

This time Graham was taken to London’s UCL hospital, but again doctors couldn’t find anything. He was given an epilepsy nurse to contact if he was worried.

‘Then, the weekend before Christmas, when we got the train home to Suffolk, he started saying out-there things. Not offensive or nasty, just weird.’

That weekend he became really unwell. ‘He was being sick and had hiccups, and the thing I was most worried about was he was throwing up the epilepsy pills after the doctors had stressed how important they were. I took him to the emergency doctor service, but they were clueless and sent him home.’

Fiona (pictured) says Graham took being told he had two years to live with such dignity 

Fiona (pictured) says Graham took being told he had two years to live with such dignity 

Graham’s next-door neighbour was a GP. ‘She knew what was wrong almost immediately. She asked some questions, shone a torch into his eyes and called an ambulance,’ Fiona says.

Graham was taken to Ipswich Hospital. When an MRI scan found a tumour on his brain, he was sent to Addenbrooke’s.

‘The brain surgeon called me into his room and said to take him home,’ Fiona recalls.

‘I said: “Are you sure it’s safe?” And he said: “Well he won’t be having another Christmas, so you’d better make the most of it.”

She pauses as I register the callousness of the statement. ‘You have those moments when you go up to the ceiling and you’re looking down on yourself,’ she acknowledges.

‘I reacted quite badly to the news,’ she says. ‘And the surgeon said: “You mustn’t tell him because he might go into a depression and never recover.”

After Christmas the surgeon’s sympathetic younger colleague gave them both the news the cancer was terminal and Graham had at most two years to live. ‘He took it with such dignity,’ Fiona says.

In January, Graham had surgery to remove as much of the tumour as possible and then radiotherapy to slow regrowth. They took a short holiday in Amsterdam. ‘I was worried — he could have had a seizure at any moment. He was a tall guy and on steroids, which made him heavier. If he fell, it was like a tree crashing down.’

When the tumour grew back, Graham was admitted to hospital in Ipswich, before being transferred to a cottage hospital.

Fiona (pictured) revealed her biggest worry is that her poetry book is seen as being exploitative of Graham's death

Fiona (pictured) revealed her biggest worry is that her poetry book is seen as being exploitative of Graham's death

It was there, while Graham was dying, that Fiona heard one of her poems would be published. It was a brief moment of respite.

‘I remember taking the acceptance letter in to Graham, Fiona says. ‘It made me think: “I’ve got this lifeline. I can’t use it now, but I need to remember it’s there, and pick it up again after this.” ’

Graham died in July 2007, just eight months after first falling ill. In the October after his death, Fiona found herself writing the poem On Dunwich Beach, after going wild swimming during a storm. Plunging into sea was almost an act of bravado to impress him. She writes: ‘I could swim on/ until my heart falters and I’m dying for you/ but I’d never find you.’

Graham’s memory endures in the poems. ‘It wasn’t perfect, obviously, nothing is, but one of the things I miss most when you’re in a relationship is that it’s like building a house — you’re always adding something to it, or maybe spotting there’s some dry rot up there that you need to sort out. There’s this constructiveness about it,’ she says.

As for being nominated for the most valuable award in British poetry, Fiona is eternally thankful. ‘I don’t know what would have happened in my life if Graham hadn’t asked that question at that particular moment.’

However, she adds: ‘My biggest worry about the book is being exploitative. The last thing I want to do is go: “Here are my poems about my dead partner, it’s so sad.” So it is a risk.

‘But,’ she smiles, ‘I think Graham would say: “Go for it!” And be amused and appreciate it.’

The Distal Point by Fiona Moore (£10, happenstance.com). The T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry winner is announced next Monday.

The comments below have been moderated in advance.

The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline.

We are no longer accepting comments on this article.