PERFECT CATCH

Sharon*, 63

Sitting on the sofa with a cuppa, I was ready to settle in for the evening. Just then, my mobile phone pinged.

Hey beautiful, how are you? the message read.

Despite being in my 60s, those words sent butterflies through my stomach.

It was back in September 2016, and I’d been chatting online to someone called Kevin Churchill for a few weeks.

When my marriage broke down back in 2001, I’d moved to the UK from my home in South Africa, taking my two kids, Sarah*, now 34, and Peter*, now 32, with me.

But moving to a new country meant I was really lonely.

The only people I knew were my kids and the people I worked with, and the older I got, the more difficult I found it to meet anyone.

I’d resigned myself to being single for the rest of my life.

‘Why don’t you try online dating?’ one of my colleagues suggested one day.

I’d never considered it before – at my age, online dating was such an alien idea.

But I thought, what’s the harm?

So, I signed up to a site called Older Dating Online.

And now, just a few days after signing up, I was