Car woes help jump start romance from teen years

“Um, hi. You still a mechanic? Could you fix my car?” she replied.

Well, perhaps these are not the exact words which were exchanged that day but that’s more or less the way it happened — how Billy and Lucy clicked for the second time.

They rekindled a relationship which started in the early 1990s and that has just been sealed in the Las Vegas sunshine.

Lucy Borland, 38, was just 12 when she met St Mary’s lad Billy Dyer 37, at Rockwell Secondary School in 1991. They became pals and, a couple of years later, boyfriend and girlfriend. They worked well together, and when Lucy was 16, they got engaged.

“Then, when I was 19 and he was 18, we split up,” said Lucy. “We sort of drifted apart. We were going in different directions, had different friends and different priorities, I suppose.”

Despite these differences, their separate lives went on to have some things in common — children. Lucy became a mum with the arrival of Mya, who’s now 13, and Lewis, 10, while Billy became a dad when Amy, Keir and Aaron came on the scene.

And that was that — their paths were not to cross again for nearly 15 years.

“Then, in April three years ago, I got a message on Facebook and it was him,” said Lucy.

“We got chatting and I remembered he was a motor mechanic and I had a

“I can’t believe it’s you! How have you been?” he said.