'We met for the first time after 68 YEARS!'

Patsy had always hoped to meet her lifelong pen pal

- MISHAAL KHAN AND KATIE PEARSON

Ever since Steph Calam can remember, her mother Patsy would receive a special blue envelope in the post every few months. 'It was exciting whenever I spotted one come through the letter box and plop onto the mat,' says the 58-year-old from Hoghton, Lancashire. 'I was around six years old when I began to understand who all those letters were from, and it only made me more curious.'

Then, Patsy, now 80, told her daughter all about the friend she had more than 3,000 miles away in New York. 'Mum explained she had a pen pal called Carol Ann, and that they had been writing letters to each other since they were 12 years old!' Steph remembers. 'They'd both been Girl Guides and it was part of the programme. Mum had a couple more pen pals too, but communication had eventually fizzled out.'

That wasn't the case with Patsy and Carol Ann, though, as the pair only a month apart in age - bonded, sharing stories and news about their lives over the years - from their teens, to adulthood, meeting their future husbands and having children. 'Carol Ann had three kids, just like Mum, and a couple of times a year, she'd send family photos,' Steph recalls. 'I used to be so intrigued seeing pictures of her three children, all similar in age to me and my brothers, Duncan and Nick, and wondered what their lives were like all the way in the US.'