I was walking along Terminus Road in Eastbourne one day when I noticed a man heading my way. He was young and staring at me intensely. Immediately, I became a little nervous. As quick as a flash he came right up to me and grabbed me. From his movements I thought he was about to head butt me, so I prepared to defend myself. But he was on me in a flash – though not with a head butt. Just as I was recoiling from him, he placed a kiss in the middle of my forehead.

‘What was that for?’ I exclaimed, relieved yet stunned.

‘You don’t know me, but I know you,’ he replied. ‘I’ve heard about you and I know what you’ve done.’

I was intrigued to find out why he had stopped me for a kiss, so I waited to hear what he had to say for himself.

‘You saved my mum’s life up at Beachy Head,’ he continued, ‘and I’m so glad you’re here now so that I can thank you.’

Immediately, I felt elated. It’s always wonderful when someone confirms that you’ve made a difference. I asked him how his mum was, but before he answered his face became a little sad.

‘I’m afraid she died about six weeks after you saved her,’ he said. Oh my God, I thought, She went back a second time and jumped. My joy gave way to a sense of utter failure. I was lost for words for a second. Why is he thanking me? I wondered. Seconds later I received my answer.

‘Before you say anything,’ continued the lad, ‘she didn’t die at Beachy Head. She died of cancer. You’re probably wondering why I’m thanking you, since she died anyway, but what you did for us is still incredible. You gave us six extra weeks of our mother’s life. We were able to say goodbye. If she had gone over at Beachy Head, she’d have cheated us of that time and things would have been so different. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart.’

I was truly taken aback at the humanity and strength of this man. Even though he’d lost his mum, he still had room in his heart to brush aside that pain for a few moments and take the time to thank me. I remembered his mum very well now he had told me his story and after we’d exchanged a few more words we wished each other the best of luck before going our separate ways.

Like thousands of people who lose loved ones to suicide each year, I did not have the chance to say goodbye to Maggie and not having that chance made my grief for her so much harder to work through. There were so many unsaid things and so many unanswered questions; trying to live with what had happened was often pure agony. To think that I’d spared one family that pain and given them a chance to achieve closure made me feel great. I was lucky to have encountered this man – not least because I learned a new lesson that would prove invaluable in my work up at Beachy Head.

Up until now, whenever I’d confronted someone at the cliff edge who had a terminal illness, I found it virtually impossible to know what to say to them. After all, it’s no good telling someone with six months to live that they have everything to live for. What do you say to a terminally ill person, I’d often wonder. Now I had the answer on a plate. I could talk to them about their relatives, plead with them: ‘Please don’t cheat your loved ones of the chance to say goodbye to you.’ I would use that line on numerous subsequent occasions during my life on the edge and I’m pleased to say it worked.

I only have the man from whom I expected a head butt to thank for that.

Publicly, life was going well. I was saving lives, the media were ever-supportive of my campaign against the council and money was building up in my special account as I prepared for the Maggie Lane Trust to open officially. Privately, though, I was still a mess.

No matter what I did, I still couldn’t move on from Maggie and the misery her death had caused me. For a while I’d been getting by on two good days out of three, but by the time the anniversary of Maggie’s death came around, my depression was starting to destroy me again. For obvious reasons, the marker of a year gone by was a massive psychological obstacle for me to face, and the more I thought about it, the more I relived the pain of a year previously.

I was in financial trouble too. While Maggie had been ill, we had fallen behind on payments for the house and now she was gone I wasn’t able to work enough hours to meet them. Due to a loophole in her life insurance policy, I finally learned that I would not be receiving any money from that and this news was the final straw. I would have to sell our house.

I’d owned the house before I met Maggie, but when she had moved in her female touch had transformed the place. Exactly to Maggie’s specifications, we redecorated from top to bottom so that she would be comfortable. We had turned my house into our home and having to sell it was heartbreaking.

Since she’d died, I’d left everything as it was. Our bedroom was like a shrine – all of Maggie’s clothes and other belongings were exactly where she had left them, and now I was being forced to move them. But I couldn’t take them with me, as I had nowhere to move but in with a friend. It was time to move on, I guess, but as I packed all of her lovely clothes into boxes bound for the charity shop, I didn’t feel like I wanted to move on one bit. It took several trips to the charity shop and back before I’d finally got rid of everything she owned, and as I removed each box from the house I felt like I was removing one more piece of Maggie. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I felt like I was getting rid of my wife and I felt horrible about it.

There was one thing I couldn’t get rid of just yet, though: Maggie’s wedding outfit. I carefully packed her beautiful white dress, her long blue coat, her delicate white shoes and her handbag into a suitcase. It was the one piece of Maggie I would take with me. By the time I’d moved everything out of our house and made the place spotless for the new owner, the only thing that remained was one of my favourite photographs of Maggie. It stood alone in its frame on the mantelpiece.

Eventually, it was time to leave. The buyer – a woman who was planning on renting the place out – came round to collect the keys. We stood in the living room for a while and I swooned a little as I stared around at the emptiness of the house. So much had changed within a year. I handed the keys over to the woman, walked up to the picture and took it in my hands.

‘Come on darling, it’s time for us to go,’ I said, bursting into tears. The woman could see the hurt in me and began to cry too. I’ll never forget those final moments in our house, and I’ll never forget how strange it was to walk out and drive off knowing I would never return.

Moving out didn’t help me move on. Not at first. I was living with a friend, and the dreaded anniversary was just around the corner.

When I’d gone up to Beachy Head thinking I was going to kill myself back in 2004, I’d come down and sworn to myself I would never contemplate such a thing again. I’m sad to say, though, that by the time the day of the anniversary came around, I was doing just that. But this time, it was more than a drunken impulse. I’d been planning it for around a month. On the anniversary of Maggie’s death I was planning to bring about my own.

The day came. My family were naturally worried about how I would fare on such a painfully significant occasion, and they had asked me to stay in touch so they knew that I was OK. Well, there was no way I was going to keep in contact with anybody. I’d decided I was going to retrace Maggie’s steps from that fateful day, and then end my day in the way that she had. I was going to copy her.

First of all, I began driving to the rope company she had been working for. On the drive there, I stopped off for a bacon sandwich and a cup of tea at my brother’s kiosk on the A22. We chatted away and, knowing what I was about to do, I made an effort to be cheery in case my family called him later on. I knew I wasn’t going to respond, so I wanted him to tell them he’d seen me and that I was fine. As far as he was concerned, I was merely on my way to Maggie’s last workplace to have a bit of a chat with the people there. We said goodbye and I drove on.

‘Do you mind if I come in?’ I said to the boss when I arrived at the rope company. ‘This may seem strange but I need to relive Maggie’s last day and trace all of her movements.’

He did think it was a little odd, but graciously granted me my wish. I was introduced to someone who’d been around on Maggie’s last day, and they told me about her behaviour on that first (remember, she was just starting there) and final morning. I was told that Maggie had seemed strange from the moment she turned up – it was as if she were on a different planet. She had seemed confused, fumbled with the coffee machine and got lost looking for the toilets. True, it was her first day, and because they liked her they had wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, yet her odd behaviour was already making them wonder how useful she would be as an employee.

I saw the desk where Maggie had sat. I saw the rope-making area that she had run a few errands to. I looked at the rope. I don’t know quite where the impulse came from, but I asked the boss if I could have some.

‘How much do you need?’ he asked.

‘Oh, about 100 ft,’ I said casually.

‘Why do you want it?’

‘That’s my business.’ I answered defensively. The truth was that I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted it for. I suppose I was in a pretty deranged state (as anyone might be when planning to commit suicide). I had a vague idea that I might use the rope up at Beachy Head in some way. But, looking back, I can see that my actions and words were downright bizarre.

Since it was the anniversary of Maggie’s death, the boss was highly suspicious. Clearly, he thought I was going to hang myself. It didn’t matter what I said, the answer was a resolute ‘No way.’

I left the rope company and drove along the route I’d guessed Maggie must have taken when she left. She’d told me she was going to meet a friend, so I headed towards the friend’s house. I had a strange sense of acting out some weird scenario – as if I was pretending to be Maggie in order to try and get close to her again. I was feeling irrational and strange, but Maggie must have been in a comparable state of mind herself on the same day the previous year.

On the way I stopped off at B&Q. I had no problem buying 100 ft of rope there. Next, I pulled up outside the friend’s house and just sat in the car for a while. This was where Maggie had made her last phone call to me, I thought to myself. This was where she’d last said ‘I love you.’ This was the point from which she’d set off to Beachy Head. Now it was my turn to do the same.

Snow was falling thick and fast. As I drove it got heavier and before long I had to stop. It was as if the elements were against me. Someone doesn’t want me to be up at Beachy Head today, I thought. Little did I care. I got out of the car, took the rope, a shovel and a wreath of flowers from the boot, and began to walk.

By the time I was halfway up the hill, I was walking in a blizzard. It didn’t matter; I knew where I was going. I arrived at Maggie’s spot. The only trouble was that it was buried under 4 feet of snow! A drift had built up, so I could hardly tell where the cliff edge was. Nevertheless, I began to dig like a man possessed, creating a tunnel to get to the cross. My mind was in such disarray that for a time it didn’t occur to me that I could be digging my way towards thin air and death. I wanted to die, but not until I’d found what I was looking for. Once I had Maggie’s cross in my hand, I’d be ready to join her. Somehow, it mattered more than anything that I had the cross before I went.

After ten minutes of frantic digging, I’d created a massive tunnel. The cross was nowhere to be seen, though. Then, suddenly, I began to recognise the terrain I was digging over and knew I was getting very close. I also knew I was near the edge. If I slipped now, I would fall. It was time to use the rope. I tied it to a couple of poles nearby and wrapped it around my waist.

I won’t fall now, I thought. And then I laughed. If I’m up here to die, I thought, why have I tied a rope around my waist? In that moment of laughter it struck me that, once again, my mind had been playing tricks on itself again. I’d been convincing myself I wanted to do something, but it turned out that I wanted to do the opposite. I didn’t want to die – I wanted to pay my respects to Maggie and live!

It amazes me how, in the space of a moment, a person can switch from being hell-bent on ending their life to realising it’s the last thing they want. But it is possible, as I’ve learned a couple of times. In my case, my mind had become so fragile from grief and depression that some of the time I simply didn’t know if I was coming or going. The intensity of emotion that Maggie’s anniversary provoked had led me to behave in an extreme way – I’d temporarily lost control and deluded myself into thinking death was the answer to my problems. It had appealed as an escape, an easy way out.

In that moment of clarity, I realised just how daft I must have looked. I was up on Beachy Head in a blizzard, shovel in hand, rope round my waist and all the while carrying a wreath! I laughed some more, and it occurred to me that Maggie’s spirit may well have made sure there was all that snow for me to get through. Having to dig for so long gave me time to realise just what I was doing.

‘You crafty cow,’ I said out loud as I laid the wreath by Maggie’s cross. ‘You didn’t want me to die up here – you know I should be saving others, not killing myself! I love you, sweetheart!’

My actions that day meant one thing: I still wasn’t well. I still missed Maggie like crazy and I was still prone to taking desperate measures to deal with my problems. Once again, I resolved to try harder to get better. However, I still didn’t know where to start. All I knew was that being close to Maggie would bring me comfort. And the only way I could be near her was through spiritual contact. Jules had become a good friend by now, however, and she felt that our friendship could interfere with her ability to make contact with Maggie. A friend recommended somebody else to me.

Jane’s house was a beautiful haven of tranquillity surrounded by well-kept lawns and peaceful ponds. As soon as she opened her front door to me, I felt at ease. We went into her room upstairs and I sat down.

Jane worked differently to Jules: her technique was to write down what the spirits told her. She told me to relax, took my hand and closed her eyes. After a short time she began to write and to my amazement she was telling me things about myself that she had no way of knowing. She talked about my family, my past actions, experiences I had been through. Then she began to talk about Maggie.

Maggie was at peace. To hear this was an indescribable relief; I could feel the emotion welling up inside me. My breathing slowed and I began to feel even calmer. She had been through so much pain, but she was going through the healing process now. There was no need for me to worry, Maggie was becoming at one with herself again.

And then Jane told me something incredible: ‘Maggie’s coming to join us,’ she said. ‘Please don’t be frightened. She’s already in the room and she’s with me at the moment. I want you to close your eyes, sit back and tell me what you feel…’ This could be it, I thought. This could be my moment with Maggie. I closed my eyes and waited.

‘All right,’ said Jane very gently. ‘She’s coming over to you now.’

Suddenly, my left hand turned freezing cold. It was absolutely icy. At the same time, an intense wave of warmth spread through the rest of my body. I could feel all my negative, anxious thoughts draining from me and within a few moments I was in such a state of peace that it was almost overwhelming.

‘Maggie’s sitting beside you to the left,’ said Jane soothingly. ‘How do you feel?’

I told her how cold my left hand was.

‘Relax,’ she replied. ‘Maggie’s just giving you some healing.’

Just as suddenly as my hand had turned cold, it became boiling hot. I was warm all over and more at peace than I’d been in a very long time. The sense of release was staggering.

Slowly, beautifully, the warmth began to fade.

‘You can open your eyes,’ said Jane. ‘There are other spirits around but Maggie has left the room for now.’

I opened my eyes. It was like waking from a wonderful sleep. This was the first time I had felt Maggie’s spirit touching me, and it was profoundly moving. I’d been in her presence, I knew it and I was as high as a kite. My elation was such that I could have jumped for joy, but looking at my watch I realised there was no time to jump for anything. In only 15 minutes I had to be up on Beachy Head for a TV interview and I was 10 miles away!

I thanked Jane profusely and dashed out to my car, explaining why I had to rush off. As I got into the car I was overcome by a very powerful smell – Maggie’s perfume. The scent filled the car and I took a deep breath. I was calm again for a few moments.

‘You’re here, aren’t you Maggie?’ I said to the passenger seat. ‘Now, get me to Beachy Head!’

As I drove through Eastbourne, I could hardly believe what was happening. Every light was green, every roundabout was clear and every junction was empty of other cars. Before I knew it I was pulling into Beachy Head car park, and I even had a minute to spare before my interview. I’d driven 10 miles through a built-up area in only 14 minutes.

‘Thank you, sweetheart,’ I exclaimed and turned the engine off. The smell of Maggie’s perfume had been with me all the way, but now it vanished. Maggie had gone. I didn’t feel sad – simply grateful for everything I’d experienced that morning.

Maggie had made contact and she’d helped me get to Beachy Head in time. She’d also helped me to feel a little more alive again.

Looking back, I think Maggie was preparing me to move on. Little did I know that my life was about to begin again, and that my new beginning was just around the corner.