Ref. 29486-14 INSET: Carole with husband EdwardCAROLE Gait's life was shattered the day her husband was crushed to death in a bizarre accident while they were enjoying a foreign holiday.

For 13 years Carole battled for compensation for the negligence which led to her husband's death in 1989 and her own serious injuries, which still cause her pain today.

Happiness had been wiped from her life until the day she met widower Ron McGiffie.

Now they are to marry, having been brought together, in Carole's own words, by the hand of God.

They met at St John's Church, in Haydon Wick, where they will be married on July 3.

Carole, now 64, was a member of the church's pastoral care team. Ron was grieving the sudden loss of his wife, who had died unexpectedly after an operation went wrong.

Ron proposed to Carole in February by e-mail from New Zealand, where he had gone for seven weeks.

"Before he went he asked me to marry him, but I wasn't sure," said Carole, at her home in Haydon Wick.

"I'd made a nice nest for myself as a single woman again and I was hesitant about facing yet another big upheaval to my life. So I put Ron on hold."

While Ron was away, they kept in daily touch by e-mail.

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder," he reminded her.

"Absence makes the heart forget," she countered. Ron felt rebuffed but he refused to give up and, when Carole apologised for distressing him, he immediately e-mailed back: "OK, so now will you marry me?"

Within seconds, Carole was tapping out her answer: "Yes, please!"

Carole said: "I didn't know Ron while his wife was alive but after her death I helped him through the mourning process.

"We discovered we shared an interest in gardening and music. We started going to garden centres and shows."

It was on December 9, 1989 that Carole and her husband, Eric, a 53-year-old Lloyds bank clerk, went for a meal at the Don Quixote Caf, in Los Cristianos, in Tenerife.

As they sat at a table on the terrace, the roof collapsed. Eric was buried under the rubble and died. Carole suffered from broken ribs and injuries to her leg and foot.

After years of fighting for justice, Carole was offered £30,000 for the death of her husband and £8,000 for her injuries in 1999.

Fed up with the legal wrangling, she reluctantly decided to accept only to be told that the restaurant owner was appealing against the award. In the end she got a £25,000 settlement .

"I lost part of one foot," she said. "In terms of finance and stress the financial claim was a disaster, especially as legal aid wasn't available. But I had to go through with it because it was morally right the culprits should pay."

Shortly after the accident it was revealed the roof had been built without planning permission.

Carole's two daughters and her grandson are thrilled with the wedding plans.

Ron, 71, a retired pay-phone engineer, who has two grandchildren and a great-grandchild, said: "We both know this will be a marriage blessed in heaven."

Michael Litchfield