It was the last thing Virginia DeLuca expected when she sent her husband, Perry, her usual 5pm text to discuss what they were having for dinner. 

Usually the couple, both 61, would discuss recipes or shopping lists as Virginia headed home from her work as a therapist.

But that night her husband wrote back: 'I won't be there when you get home. Had a bad day. Need time alone.'

Immediately, Virginia knew something odd was going on. She tried to call Perry and texted to ask if she could help. But she didn't hear from him for another five hours.

At around 10pm, Perry emailed to say he'd had a few drinks after finishing his teaching work at college. He had decided to stay in a motel in Dover, New Hampshire, so as not to risk the 20-minute drive home to Durham where they lived.

Alarm bells rang. Concerned and willing to pick him up herself, Virginia tried to contact him. But her calls clicked straight through to voicemail.

That night she slept fitfully on their living room couch.

Shortly before dawn, she woke and checked her cellphone. There were no texts, but Perry had sent three emails during the night. Each was one sentence long. 

Virginia, pictured with her husband Perry on their wedding day, says he told her from the get-go that he didn't want children as he'd be too much of an 'anxious father'

The first was complimentary. Perry wrote about 'the sweetness and intimacy of sharing life' with her.

But the second was more ominous: 'I don't think it's enough for me to be happy and fulfilled.'

It was in his third message that he dropped the bombshell: 'I find myself wanting to make a family of my own, even at this advanced age.'

Virginia felt winded with shock. 'Fear - immediate and physical - landed in my solar plexus, making it difficult to breathe,' she tells me now.

They'd been together for 14 years, married for nine, and Perry had said from the get-go that he didn't want children as he'd be too much of an 'anxious father'. 

What's more, the couple had recently discussed downsizing for their retirement and moving closer to Virginia's children from her first marriage. Perry was a brilliant stepdad to her three sons - Orion, then 39, Isaac, 36 and 33-year-old Joshua.

So what made him change his mind? 

Eleven years on from those messages, Virginia has tried to answer that very question by writing a memoir. Called If You Must Go, I Wish You Triplets, the title echoes the angry words she called to him when he walked out on their marriage.

'It was meant to be snarky,' she admits. 'After all, it felt ridiculous to think of a 60-year-old man changing diapers. I couldn't imagine him coping with one baby and thought, "if he has three at once, it will be chaos".'

Now she hopes the book will inspire a discussion about men, like Perry, who change their mind about starting a family later in life. Late-life broodiness among men isn't widely acknowledged but, of course, many men can still have children at an advanced age.

'Perhaps they want to have a legacy, or think it will make them feel youthful again,' Virginia says. 'Maybe they hope the next generation will care for them in their dotage. There must be a variety of reasons.'

Virginia, pictured above with Perry on a trip to London, has detailed the breakdown of their 14-year relationship in her memoir

Certainly when Virginia met Perry in Boston in 2000, he was child-free and apparently happy to be so. 

It had taken Virginia a long time to start looking for love again after her 18-year marriage to her first husband, Daniel, ended in 1995.

She'd been busy raising her three boys and was responsible for her two nephews and niece - Shaun, 22, and twins Todd and Kirsten, both 19 - after the death of their father, her brother John, from AIDS in 1987.

'I had a lot on my plate and men didn't come knocking on the door,' Virginia recalls. However, by the age of 47, she was ready: 'I became pretty focused on meeting someone.'

This was before the dawn of dating apps and so Virginia placed, and answered, several personal ads. 

After a few dates, however, she because disillusioned. 'I was good at first dates and second dates, but things rarely went further,' she says. 'They take a lot of time; you have to dress up and shave your legs and I needed to take a break.'

But there was something about Perry's personal ad, which he placed in The Boston Globe newspaper, that appealed to her. 

On the afternoon of their date, she almost canceled. She didn't have his phone number and considered standing him up, but one of her girlfriends said that would be rude. Reluctantly, she went ahead, meeting him at a bookstore before they walked to an Indian restaurant.

'Perry [had a] tan from playing tennis,' Virginia writes in her book. 'Dark forearms and neck. He had pale blue eyes with deep laugh lines and gray was just beginning to tinge his brown hair.'

At that point, he was working at a high school teaching English to kids who only spoke other languages. And, as he spoke about his job, she says 'sparks flew'.

'It was easy conversation,' she recalls. 'We chit-chatted and laughed together.'

They saw each other again, and Virginia quickly became smitten. Perry didn't seem to be put off by the fact she was a mother of three - in fact, he welcomed the thought of being a stepfather to her grown-up children.

Late-life broodiness among men isn't widely acknowledged, but of course, unlike women, many men can still have children at an advanced age.

Perry had married soon after college, got divorced and had had a string of relationships, the most serious of which was with a woman who had died of breast cancer. 

But he quickly made it obvious that he had never been interested in being a father himself. 

'The subject of children did come up as we got more serious,' Virginia recalls. 'I told him, "If you're looking to have kids, then I'm not the right person for you".

‘He said he wasn’t interested because it would cause too much anxiety.' 

Their own relationship moved quickly. The couple soon began spending all their time together - until Perry took a new job at a college in Dover, a 90-minute drive from Boston.

'There was a lot of back and forth at the weekends before I moved up to be with him permanently,' Virginia says.

They enjoyed their life together for the following five years - until Perry began to experience chest issues. 'Doctors were concerned about his heart and, because we weren't married, I was not his next of kin in terms of being involved with the hospital,' Virginia says. 'We thought we should maybe get married to solve the problem.' 

And so they did, tying the knot in the backyard of a friend's house in July 2005.

In her memoir, she writes that their union at a mature age - they were both 52 - was both 'phenomenal and frightening'.

'In your 50s, the relationship comes with an end-date built in,' she continued.

But their families were delighted they'd found each other.

'My kids and nephews and nieces really enjoyed Perry,' Virginia says. 'They were a little boisterous, while his family tended to be quieter.

'There were only little tensions around family - such as the level of noise in the house when they came to visit.'

But, in the main, she describes their marriage as 'thriving'. They would frequently go for walks along the ocean and, as both were keen on art, they would sit on the rocks and sketch the scenery.

They also travelled together, visiting the UK, Hawaii and eventually Italy to celebrate their ninth wedding anniversary in 2013.

But, that same year, their relationship began to unravel. That December, Perry said he was going to Vietnam to help a student at his college who was teaching English there.

While Virginia decided to stay at home to finish writing a novel, she says she was genuinely excited for him because he was fulfilling an ambition.

'Ever since we'd got married, he'd talked about wanting to teach children abroad,' says Virginia. 

Indeed, when Perry returned from the trip ten days later, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. He went back to work and the couple continued with their lives as normal.

Then five months later, on May 14, 2014, Perry sent his bombshell texts.

When he finally came home the following morning, his demeanor was cold.

'I want to have a divorce,' he told her. 'I'm not attracted to you, and I want children of my own.'

Virginia was dumbfounded. 'He didn't say, "Oh, I'm unhappy,"' she recalls. 'He didn't say, "Let's talk about this or have couples' counseling".'

Her immediate thought was that he'd got someone pregnant, which he quickly denied.

But when Virginia pressed him on if he had a 'mother in mind' for the children he suddenly wanted to have, he replied: 'I want to be free to pursue someone.'

He mentioned a former guidance counselor at his school who he'd been 'drawn' to, but insisted nothing had happened between them.

Virginia couldn't get his cruel words about not being attracted to her out of her head. 'I feel every one of my years,' she writes in her memoir. 'My hips widen, my breasts sag, my wrinkles deepen.

'Every internalized belief and wisdom of what it means to be an old, unwanted, irrelevant woman becomes who I am.'

Virginia, pictured, said she felt 'every one of my years' when Perry announced he wanted a divorce in 2014

As the weeks went by, she wondered if Perry was having a mental breakdown. 'I thought, "What is he? An idiot?" Then I thought that he was one of the nicest people I'd ever met. Perhaps he was demented.'

Virginia's friends were skeptical. They thought Perry must have already had an affair and, what's more, that his lover must now be pregnant.

He vehemently denied being unfaithful. But, as time wore on and they discussed the divorce, Virginia demanded the truth.

'I kept asking Perry over and over, "what's the real story here?"' she says. 'I wanted him to lay out very clearly what had happened.'

Perry's default mode was deny, deny, deny.

However, he eventually admitted that he had met a younger woman at the airport during his trip to Vietnam whom he had kissed.

But he kept changing his story. At one point he said the mysterious woman lived in the US. Then he claimed that, even if it didn't work out with her, he had 'potential' with other Asian women.

Virginia tried to to make light of the situation with her family and friends. 'I'd crack bad jokes,' she writes. 'I'd say things like, "At least I won't be obliged to take care of him when he's a drooling old man"!'

But in reality, she cried for weeks and blamed herself for not seeing the signs. 'As a therapist, I'm supposed to understand people,' she says. 'Was I not paying attention?'

The divorce came through quickly and was finalized in April 2015.

Less than six months later, she heard that Perry had married a woman called Bahn, who was 26 years his junior. Virginia never found out whether she was the person he'd met at the airport in Vietnam.

While Perry moved to New York City with his new wife, Virginia returned to Boston where she was 'surrounded by lot of love' and slowly managed to 'heal'.

And that might have been that - until she received a phone call out of the blue four years later.

It was Perry. 'Remember how you said when I left that you wished triplets on me?' he said. 'Well, Bahn is expecting twins!'

Did she feel any resentment?  'It had obviously taken a while for them to start a family,' recalls Virginia. 'I was happy for them. I congratulated Perry on fulfilling his desire to become a father.'

She later heard that his twin boys were born that summer. Perry had finally fulfilled his dream of becoming a father - it had only taken him 66 years.

If You Must Go I Wish You Triplets by Virginia DeLuca ($32.99, Apprentice House) is out now.

Do you have a powerful story to share about a relationship? Please email Jane Ridley, real-life correspondent at The Daily Mail US, at jane.ridley@mailonline.com