"It was my friend who noticed it and said 'There's something wrong with Audrey. She's never missed a number before,'" says her husband of 47 years, Brian, who never realised it was the start of dementia and the heartbreak of his life.

"Dementia. I had never heard of it. It's a terrible illness and you don't realise how many people have it until it happens to you and it's getting worse," says Brian, 71, of Stranton Terrace, Roker.

Today, Audrey doesn't know Brian is her husband. She is now 70 and in a care home at Southwick where he goes every day to see the love of his life.

He said: "She doesn't know our two sons or the granddaughters. She's a different person. My wife died four years ago. She is the woman I married but not the same person.

"She's a shadow of herself. She cries now and gets really upset. I think it's the emotion that builds up in her. I have cried bucketfuls. The worst was when she got sectioned on her 65th birthday.

"She doesn't know she's married or anything like that or had children now.

"She'll say, 'where's my mam?'"

For six years, Brian struggled to care for his wife at home.

His lifeline was the Sunderland Alzheimer's Society and its Princess of Wales Centre where Audrey went three days a week.

Brian, a former labourer, recalls the early onset of Audrey's vascular dementia caused by two mini strokes.

He said: "She would say 'there's nothing wrong with me'. It was frightening and frustrating not knowing what was the matter with her.
But during the first two or three years it went faster and faster."

It was terrifying to see Audrey go from being a smart, houseproud woman and a good cook to a confused, wandering soul.

Brian says: "She always made great corned beef pies and then it was just pastry with lumps of corned beef.

"I'd come in from work and the house wouldn't be done and there'd be no tea ready and she'd say 'I didn't know what time you were coming in'.

"She was wandering off and was a danger to herself. She wasn't safe to be left, so I packed in work at 64.

"She used to put her clothes on inside out, her trousers back to front and her slippers on the wrong feet. She didn't know. I wouldn't have dared leave her. She wouldn't have been there when I got back. I had to lock the doors and people would bring her back.

"She would just wander up and down the street and she'd say 'I'm not going in there'. I was really frightened the kids would start making fun of her but they looked after her and they still ask for her."

The toll of caring for Audrey was making Brian ill. He thought one day he was having a heart attack when she went berserk because he wouldn't let her out.

He says: "She was crying and screaming for help and pulled the curtains down. I took ill and had to have an ECG with all the tension. Her mind had gone."

It was then Brian realised he couldn't go on caring for his adored Audrey.

With tears in his eyes, he shows me a photograph of her as she is today, with black eyes and a suspected broken nose after falling down.

He says: "When I saw her like that I got the shock of my life.

"She used to be the supervisor of the cleaners at Vaux, She had some beautiful clothes and to see her like that now it's terrible."

Read more in today's Echo