Laura Topham reveals how a total stranger became her new grandmother

When the photographer yelled for ‘Laura’s family’ at my wedding two years ago, nobody blinked when the slight lady in her 80s trundled across the lawn into the group picture.

Beaming out from under her specially made navy hat, Gran looked like any other proud grandparent and was fully at home among my parents, siblings and cousins.

‘The second best day of my life,’ is how she remembers it (after her own wedding).

All of which is rather surprising, given that Gran is not related to me — in fact, 11 years ago we were strangers.

We met after I wrote a newspaper article saying I wished I could find a new nana, my own having died in my teens. In a stroke of fate for which I am ever more grateful, Maureen Jympson, now 85, read the piece and wrote in. ‘Please can I be your gran?’ she asked.

In 2007 I was 26 years old, single and living and working in London for the first time. I had plenty of friends and a hectic social schedule but felt my life lacked something.

I’d loved being around my biological grandparents, who had all died years earlier, and missed that unique relationship and the company and conversation of older generations.

Spending all your time with people your own age, especially in your 20s, can be one-dimensional. My contemporaries all had outlooks and preoccupations similar to mine, and limited life experience.

I’d tried applying for ‘adopt a granny’ charity schemes but had been either sunk by bureaucracy or tasked with writing letters to pensioners abroad and sending them money. I volunteered as a hospital visitor for the elderly but wanted to forge more lasting relationships. What I had never contemplated doing — but unwittingly did — was advertise.

When Maureen’s letter arrived on my desk I was surprised and elated. It read: ‘I can’t bake cakes, my red cheeks come from a pot and I’ve dyed my grey hair blonde. So I’m not a conventional gran, but I’d love to take you for tea.’

She’d signed it ‘Your Gran’, and I knew from that line and the sense of humour behind it that we were going to get along.

Maureen attended Laura’s wedding and even helped Laura and her mother pick out a wedding dress

Maureen says: ‘I’d always read Laura’s pieces and loved her jolly way of writing, so when I saw she wanted a gran, I wrote a reply immediately. She sounded such a sweetheart. But then I thought, “No, don’t be silly, she’s only joking, she probably didn’t really mean it”.

‘I was very low at the time as my husband had died three years earlier and I carried the letter around for months. Then, one wet Sunday afternoon, I was feeling really lonely and on a whim I put it in the postbox.

‘I never expected to hear back. When Laura replied I nearly dropped to the floor with shock.’

We arranged by letter to meet a few Saturdays later at the Wolseley, a grand restaurant in Mayfair and Maureen’s choice of venue.

I was excited but nervous. Not only was there a 50-year age gap to navigate, but also lifestyle differences. I was young, naive, broke and relatively new to London. Taking cream tea at a posh restaurant was not something I normally did.

I can still picture where we first met, when a waiter led me to a table and up jumped a petite, pretty lady who looked immaculate. She wore discreet make-up, stylish wide black trousers and a black sleeveless shirt, and looked 20 years younger than her age.

‘Gran!’ I said. ‘Hello!’

‘Darling!’ cried Maureen.

We both grinned, delighted by our mischievous mutual adoption, and have exchanged the exact same greeting every time we have met since.

Laura said she wrote the article, asking for a ‘new Gran’, because she missed the company of old people

I think it was love at first sight — or maybe first speaking. Only now do I realise how lucky it was we were on the same wavelength. At the time I took it for granted.

‘I was incredibly nervous,’ recalls Maureen. ‘I thought she would take one look at me and flee, or that we wouldn’t get on. It was terrifying.

‘But then in she walked wearing this pretty summer dress and her hair down, she looked so sweet and young. I didn’t stop talking as I was so nervous, but she was lovely — so kind and unassuming. I loved her straight away.’

In some ways it wasn’t an easy first meeting, as Maureen sobbed repeatedly when talking about her husband, John. He had been a famous film editor, working on films including Zulu, Where Eagles Dare and Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy.

They had met at Ealing Studios when she was an 18-year-old secretary there, and travelled the world living on film sets. They’d had no children.

Maureen was clearly deep in grief and I thought her very charming but also very sad.

Maureen says: ‘Afterwards I berated myself, “What must she think of me? I just gave her my whole life story”. We said we’d meet again but I thought we probably wouldn’t, as I had no confidence. John gave me confidence and when he died that confidence went. I only carried on by forcing myself to act as if I was as good as anyone else.’

The journalist wrote how, despite enjoying her life in London with her friends, she felt like something was missing

Maureen invited me to her house for dinner several weeks later — a night that nearly ended our budding friendship.

By then I was working on a magazine in Soho and an office emergency meant I had to stay late. Maureen had sent a postcard with her landline and when I called the number to explain, no one answered.

I reasoned that she wasn’t home and had either forgotten our arrangement or given up and gone out. There was therefore no point in me cycling all the way to Ealing, where she lived, an hour’s hard slog from Central London.

Yet when I eventually left work, something compelled me to go anyway. Maureen answered the door looking anguished; she thought I had led her on and stood her up.

When I pulled out the postcard, it transpired that she’d written her phone number incorrectly. If I hadn’t gone over there, I don’t know whether we’d have met again. She would never have contacted me and I’d have continued to call the wrong number.

Instead, our friendship grew and grew. We enjoyed lunches and dinners, took more cream teas, went to the theatre, cinema and ballet. We shared stories of our lives and discussed our friends and problems.

Maureen has a phenomenal joie de vivre and was forever forging plans and creating fun. Whenever we go anywhere she always immediately orders champagne.

We started speaking on the phone regularly — at first to make arrangements, then just to chat, and carried on exchanging affectionate cards and gifts. Maureen signs all her letters ‘I love you’, with a drawing of a heart with an arrow through it and our initials.

She was shocked when Maureen replied to her initially, 11 years ago, but they have gone on to become very close

While at first the idea of gran and granddaughter was fun and novel, soon those terms accurately encapsulated our feelings. Our meeting opened up a new space in our lives for love to be given and received.

Maureen says: ‘I don’t think we’d have met if John hadn’t died — there was a gap in my life and Laura came along and filled that gap. I was in such despair after his death, I didn’t want to live. I feel like John sent Laura to me.

‘A real closeness and trust developed between us and it’s added another dimension to my life and so much pleasure.’

But while, to us, our relationship made perfect sense, many others just didn’t get it. When I told my friends they were either enthralled or baffled.

Eager for them to meet her, I invited Gran to my Christmas party. The other guests were in their 20s but she fitted in and was a huge hit. She even gave a karaoke performance.

‘I loved being invited to Laura’s parties and meeting her friends,’ says Maureen. ‘I’m old enough to be gran to all of them, but not for a minute did they make me feel past it or excluded. At her birthday dinner, her then-boyfriend came up to me and said “She is taking this seriously, you know.” I said, “So am I.” ’

Maureen has been star guest at parties ever since, though people don’t usually realise we’re not biologically related, as I only ever call her Gran. Saying ‘Maureen’ would be like calling a parent by their first name.

Friends, my husband and even my mum all refer to her as Gran. At my 30th birthday party my brother caused confusion when he told people Maureen wasn’t his grandma, too.

Maureen now goes to several parties as Laura’s special guest and most people just assume that she is Laura’s actual grandmother

Most friends treat her as a contemporary, as I do, though there was a horrifying introduction when we bumped into an acquaintance on Oxford Street and she spoke to Maureen very loudly and very slowly.

It was perhaps harder for Maureen’s circle of friends in their 70s and 80s to understand our relationship.

Older people can be vulnerable to exploitation, so they were understandably wary. Forseeing that, I was more anxious about meeting them than I had been about meeting Maureen. I was intimidated and worried they wouldn’t want me around.

Thankfully, when Maureen arranged a lunch with her best friends, they were welcoming and extremely nice. Only once did I encounter some mistrust, when at Maureen’s birthday gathering I said to one lady, ‘So how do you know Maureen?’ and she replied curtly, ‘I’ve known Maureen for 35 years. We all have.’

Maureen says: ‘Some friends were sceptical at first. One warned, “be careful”. They worried I was being gullible and would get hurt, that Laura would be unreliable or untrustworthy.

‘But I didn’t care. I told them to mind their own business. It didn’t bother me what other people thought. Now they know Laura and I talk about her often.’

Like a real grandparent, Maureen is someone I can always rely on, and navigating difficult times has strengthened our relationship. When I had a tonsillectomy she kept calling to monitor my recovery and sent flowers; even when I have flu she is genuinely concerned. She phoned often after my dad died last September, and since my mother fell seriously ill has sent cards not just to me but to her.

‘We have come through so much over the years,’ says Maureen. ‘Heartbreak, illness, hospitals. I’ll never forget how Laura cycled to Ealing in the rain with a rucksack full of groceries when I had shingles. She left them on the doorstep, as I didn’t want anyone to see me.

‘Best of all was one birthday when she made me a vivid green and pink cake that looked like something out of Disneyland and delivered it to my house in snow. The Tube was out, so she walked much of the way carrying it.’

Perhaps because of her age and experience, Gran is quite strident with her advice. She told me repeatedly that one boyfriend was ‘not right’ and when I met my now-husband she insisted we mustn’t move in together.

She feared it would stop him proposing — a foreign idea to me, as I wouldn’t marry someone without first living with them.

When Maureen courted in the Fifties, finding a husband was paramount and cohabiting disgraceful. I ignored her advice, and when I called after we got engaged, she cried: ‘Thank God you didn’t listen to me!’

Such generational differences can be profound, but I find them endearing. I enjoy hearing a different outlook and how historical events she has lived through inform her views.

Some differences I relish, such as how often she calls. People my own age prefer to text, but talking makes a relationship stronger and happier.

I like the fact that Maureen has never used a mobile phone or a computer. All plans must be made via landline, and stuck to. That makes them more reliable.

When people say ‘how would anyone cope without mobile phones and computers?’ I think, Maureen does and she has a brilliant social life.

People fear getting old, but knowing Maureen, I don’t, as she has such fun and torpedoes the elderly stereotype — she is sharp, witty, fashionable, takes no medication and exercises every day.

The downside of our age difference is that she will not be in my life for as long as I’d like; in loving Maureen I am bringing my future self grief.

The biggest milestone we’ve shared was my wedding two years ago. Maureen even came dress shopping with my mother and me — the first time they’d met. They both sat on the changing-room chairs giving their verdicts, and afterwards we went for tea and cake.

‘I loved choosing the wedding dress,’ says Maureen. ‘It was the sort of thing you only do with a daughter or granddaughter. I was so pleased to be invited, and that Laura’s mum was generous enough to let me come.’

Maureen’s excitement about the wedding — she spent months choosing her outfit and commissioned a hat at Harvey Nichols — added another layer of joy. I loved the pleasure it brought her.

‘It was a magical day,’ says Maureen. ‘I felt very close to Laura and very proud. When we sang All You Need is Love, it was as if John was there too, as he worked on the first Beatles film with that song.’

Nowadays Maureen is happier and cries less. We laugh a lot and are very tactile — we even held hands walking around Richmond last month.

Now I’m 37 I appreciate our relationship more than ever, as I know how rare it is to form new close bonds. Facing the loss of both my parents, I feel deeply grateful to have an extra family member.

Our story also reassures me that there are many different forms of family and that — if we look for it — we can find love in the unlikeliest of ways.