TODAY, Valentine’s Day, divorcée Richard Fleet will propose to divorcée Gina, just as he has every day for the last six months. He’ll arrive from work a say: ‘Hullo love, marry me.’ If she says no and starts arguing, he’ll call and propose later. Sometimes he proposes on one knee, often he begs her, and other times tears of supplication splash down his cheeks.

Some men might hesitate to marry a woman who divorced just 18 months ago. A woman on the rebound from an acrimonious break-up. One that was horrific for Gina, who cried incessantly and was really nervous and ill. But Richard knows the score… because Gina divorced him. They were married for 25 years and have three grown-up children.

After one row, early in the marriage, Gina went to stay with her mother. Gina remembers the day, 9 February 1969. She was pregnant and was driven through the night and thick snow by her Uncle Jo in his Consul. Suddenly she gave birth in the car to Kim, her second daughter, delivered by Nigel, a friendly policeman outside the Co-op in Rye Lane, Peckham.

Gina, 44, was born on Friday the 13th, which ‘explains everything’. Richard, 46, believes God put him on earth to see how much Man could handle: big ears, nohair and putting up with Gina, he says, for starters. We’re sitting in the marital home in south London, a compact semi which they share with a giant poodle clipped like a topiary bush. Gina, who looks timid, wears leggings and baggy shirt. Richard, a scaffolder, is in jeans and ear stud.

They met first when Gina was 13 years old, in the block of Peckham flats where she lived. He used to hang around there with his friends. Was it love at first sight? ‘I fancied her from the off, but didn’t think I had much chance. I wasn’t the best looking of people,’ says Richard. He dated other girls and they didn’t see each other again until she was 16. Then he asked her repeatedly to go out with him. Finally they went to see Dr Zhivago and held hands. Did they kiss? ‘No, she was prudish and my hands were sweating.’ That night Gina asked her mother: ‘How will I know when I’ve met the right person?’ Her mother said: ‘You’ll know.’ And Gina replied: ‘I’ve met the right person.’

In fact, Richard proposed to her after Dr Zhivago. On their very first date. Did he kneel? ‘Nah,’ he replies. ‘I was a bit embarrassed. I just said, ‘Can we get married? I love you and all that.” Gina said she was too young but he asked her (‘loads of times’) over the following months. ‘She kept knocking me back. I don’t think she fancied me.’ ‘No, not at first,’ she agrees.

Gina was a virgin when she met Richard and had only ever dated one other boy. ‘Richard was different,’ she says, firmly. ‘He could drive.’ Six months after Dr Zhivago, she accepted his proposal. They became engaged on her birthday.

They married in 1966 at St John’s, Peckham. Did they believe in the vows? ‘Oh yes,’ says Richard.

‘Come on,’ remonstrates Gina.

‘Well, I believe in the vows but when you go through a sticky bit you think,‘Oh well, it’s only a bit of paper.”

They didn’t have a honeymoon because they were broke. They spent their wedding night at Gina’s mother’s.

‘That night I went to bed and mother told Richard he couldn’t. She told him when he was allowed to go. It all went wrong from the beginning,’ says Gina.

They then lived in a house furnished with only one chair. Thereafter they argued frequently and sometimes Gina didn’t talk to him for weeks. ‘She used to tell the kids, ‘Tell him his dinner’s here.”

Was the sex good? ‘No, because I married too young and had been too sheltered. I’d missed out,’ says Gina.

‘She’s not experimental,’ adds Richard. ‘She’s very prudish and even refuses to undress in front of me. That bugs me rotten. But our sex life was good.

‘Well you said it wasn’t and I didn’t know any different.’

EIGHTEEN years after they married, Richard started an affair. ‘She was a mistress,’ hisses Gina. It took a while before Gina became suspicious. Her friends disagreed, saying Richard was too nice.

One evening, Richard didn’t come home and Gina discovered his car outside the Other Woman’s flat. ‘I stood outside in the pouring rain. He was my world.’ Later, Gina went to the pub where Richard’s mistress worked. ‘I was so naive I asked the Other Woman, ‘Do you have sex with my hsband?’ and she said, ‘Well of course I do. Hasn’t he told you?” Another time Gina went to the pub and hit her rival. Richard adds that the relationship was based on nothing more than sex. ‘He thinks he’s a conservative,’ says Gina.

Gina filed for divorce on legal aid and cited the Other Woman (who admitted adultery) as co-respondent. Gina lost two stone, sobbed incessantly, went to marriage guidance counselling (‘rubbish,’ she says) and lost confidence. Was the divorce painful for Richard? ‘No, because I never even read what I signed.’

‘Twice since, I’ve caught him trying to burn the paper.’

Gina dealt with divorce by finding a job in a canteen on a building site of 300 men. She started an affair with a 27-year-old bricklayer. When Richard found out, he thought: ‘I’m not having that.’ He looks at his hands. ‘She was my Gina, my little virgin waiting for me to come home every day.’ So he knocked at her door with his suitcase in hand and said he was back. They’d been apart nearly a year. ‘I lost a stone when I found out he was younger than me,’ explains Richard.