‘You’re old enough to know what you’re doing,’ my daughter told me.
‘And you’re old enough to know what you’re doing too,’ Val’s kids told her.
‘But are you sure?’ they all asked.
We were sure all right. We picked a day in March 2005, and began planning. We hired a wonderful function room at the The Pier Hotel in Eastbourne, and off we went. It was fabulous. Everything fell into place beautifully. We had a band, all of our friends and family were there and there was a feeling of magic in the air.
We planned it so that as she walked down the aisle, Val would sing the first verse of ‘When You Tell Me That You Love Me’ by Diana Ross and I would sing the second. Then, once she arrived at my side, we would sing the third verse together. When we held hands and sang to each other and there wasn’t a dry eye in the place.
Afterwards, we danced until 2 am before heading off to our honeymoon suite. We hadn’t asked for presents, as we had planned a trip around the world. Instead, our mates had clubbed together and handed over great wads of cash for us to use on our honeymoon. Two newlyweds counting out hundreds of fives, tens and twenties on the bed must have been quite a sight. We were throwing it around and laughing together as usual. We were about to take off on a dream trip and we couldn’t have done it without our wonderful friends.
Val and I jetted off for six weeks, taking in Los Angeles, New Zealand and Australia before flying to Hong Kong and home. To use a cliché, it was the trip of a lifetime. We drove through the Australian outback, we swam with dolphins in the wild, we sped around on hover jets and, more than anything, we fell even more deeply in love.
Everything had happened so fast that at times it felt quite surreal. I’d be in the middle of something and have to pause for a few seconds to take stock of things and reflect on how lucky I was. Part of me worried that it would all be snatched away from me at any moment, that this bliss was all a dream. But the longer it went on, the more I had to accept that it was all wonderfully true – that Val’s love was wonderfully real. That’s life I suppose – one minute you’re down in the shit, the next you’re up in the clouds.
I believe in fate. It may sound odd, but I believe that part of the reason Maggie left this world was to help me. By this, I mean that her passing freed me up to get on with my work of saving people at Beachy Head. And after all the pain of losing her began to subside a little, I was able to get on with my life without having to deal with the trauma she had been putting me through. I believe that, despite everything Maggie and I went through together, she felt dreadfully guilty about her behaviour. I think it tore her up that she was causing me such distress, just as I’m sure she felt bad about the damage she was doing to herself. The problem was, she didn’t feel able to change it, alone or with my help, and needed to escape the pain. It still makes me feel sad to say it, but I believe that in some way Maggie was destined to go, and I was destined to fall in love with someone who would be able to look after me as much as I look after them.
Maggie’s death changed me as a man. It changed my personality completely. I have been forced to consider life and death in such a horribly raw way, and in the long run I have gained a fresh perspective on life as a whole. I’m wiser than I was before and the little things annoy me less. I have a lot to thank Maggie for, even to this day. In some ways, I even thank her for her death – I wouldn’t have gone on to save the lives of so many people if it hadn’t happened. Ultimately, though it may sound a strange thing to say, Maggie saved a lot of lives by dying.
I would never have wished Maggie’s life to be over. While she was alive, she was my world and there is still a huge place in my heart for her. But my life is with Val now. I can only be grateful for the way things have turned out and thankful that Maggie gave me the opportunity to help others as I have. It’s the only way of looking at such a tragedy. If I didn’t think of it as something that was almost ‘meant to be’, then I would never be able to move on.
One of my reasons for writing this book is that I want to give hope to people who have lost loved ones to suicide. When Maggie died I thought my life was over too. I thought it was the end and I carried on thinking like that for a long time. But gradually I began to think differently – and then Val came along and saved me. I’m not here to say that I turned my life around and that others can do the same. It’s not that simple. I didn’t turn my life around – circumstances did. Call it fate, call it chance, but without it I might not have got through. Sure, I tried to help myself and succeeded to a certain extent. But it was chance that pulled me up and gave me my life back. I truly believe that if you hang on in there, circumstances will conspire to help you. Some people don’t have to wait as long as I did; others have to be patient for longer. The point is, a positive can always be made out of a negative; suicide is one massive negative to turn around, but it can be done.
If it happened to me – just an ordinary bloke – there’s no reason why it shouldn’t happen to anyone else who is grief-stricken.
* * *
In 2006, it was official. After nearly two years of planning, the Maggie Lane Trust was up and running as a charity. We’d already raised a lot of money from my media work; members of the public had given us money left, right and centre. We began sending out newsletters and giving money to the chaplains. We were also delighted to have the funds to buy searchlights for them. In time, however, it became clear that although we shared the same goal, we had different ways of approaching it.
* * *
I could see she was a determined lady. A ‘Category One’. She was in her early forties, standing in a long, dark raincoat with the toes of her flat, black shoes jutting right over the edge of the cliff. It was a terrifying sight.
I approached her very, very cautiously. As I got nearer, I could see tears streaming down her face. She didn’t move a muscle, but simply stared fixedly out to sea with a frightening look of resolve about her.
No matter what I said, I received no response. She wouldn’t look at me, she wouldn’t nod or give any acknowledgment of my presence. I knew she might go at any moment and there was nothing I could do if she decided to. Moreover, she was way too close to the edge for me to try and grab her – any quick movement could have made her lose balance and fall, or simply panic and jump. With Val in my life, I still desperately wanted to talk people down, but I’d become a little more cautious about going so close to the edge.
The police must have been called. They turned up but hung back after they recognised me. This was not a situation where rushing in was going to achieve anything – and could easily end in tragedy.
I carried on talking. I tried every rhetorical trick I knew. Up until now I’d always managed to get people to engage in some sort of conversation, even if they were only telling me to fuck off! This woman’s lips were sealed for a very long time.
I couldn’t grab her, so I had to keep talking. Eventually, she spoke five words. ‘I just want to die,’ she said, with a quiet force that chilled me to the bone. It was obvious she meant it. I carried on trying to persuade her that this might not be the only way for her. But each time she responded, she repeated the same line.
I began to consider my options. Talking was achieving nothing, and as each moment passed I became more convinced that she was going to go over the edge. I had no choice but to try and get hold of her somehow.
Very slowly, I began to edge closer to her. She didn’t seem to notice at first, so I kept on moving – as slowly as possible. I hoped that her focus on the horizon would make her oblivious to my movements. It was too much to hope for. When I was about 4 feet from her, she noticed me in the corner of her eye and in that moment she lifted her leg and began to step forward into thin air.
I lunged towards her, hitting her from the right. I clasped my hand over her face and knocked her sideways and backwards. As we fell to the ground, I felt my right leg slide over the edge.
My heart leaped as I scrambled desperately to pull my body to safety while the police grabbed the woman. I got up, brushed myself down and breathed in and out. It had been a close one – almost too close for comfort.
The woman didn’t struggle, so there was no need to handcuff her. Once the police helped her to her feet, she simply stood there silently.
‘Thanks a lot. You did a good job,’ said one of the officers.
I imagined that the woman would be angry with me and expected her to start shouting in the way that others had before. Nothing. Her face was expressionless.
‘Well, we’re going back to the station now,’ said one of the officers. As they turned to go, one of the officers looked at me and said something that still touches me now. ‘We do appreciate what you do up here, Keith.’
He didn’t need to say any more. To hear those words from a police officer meant the world to me, especially after some of the unsavoury encounters I’d experienced of late. In fact, I was slightly shocked.
I remained near the edge as they walked away, and only once they’d left did it begin to hit me how close I’d come to death. Before this incident, people had often asked me whether I would take a lunge in order to try and save somebody – if it were a matter of life and death. My reply was always, ‘I don’t know until it happens.’
I didn’t know until that woman went to take a step, but then I had my answer. It seemed that, yes, I was prepared to put myself in the way of someone.
It had happened in a split second. My adrenaline was already pumping like crazy because I was so convinced she was going to jump, so when it came to it I think the level of adrenaline and stress made me act on autopilot. I wasn’t thinking of anything other than the woman and I certainly didn’t decide to take such a risk – it felt as if my body did the work for me in a fraction of a second. Before I knew it, I was scrambling to safety after having come so close to falling.
Now the adrenaline had worn off and I was thinking logically about what had just happened, I began to shake quite severely. Knowing that I could have died was a very strange sensation indeed – not a feeling I’d want to have too often!
There was only one thing for it. I took myself over to the Beachy Head pub and bought a large whisky. I sat there for as long as it took me to calm down, finished my drink and left. I looked up the hill towards the cliff edge, scanned it with my binoculars and began walking back up.
* * * * *
We all have rights. The question of whether or not a person has the right to kill him-or herself is a difficult one to answer. I believe that, ultimately, it’s everyone’s right to do what they want to do. If someone wants to die, who am I to say, ‘You can’t kill yourself’?
People often ask me if I think that Maggie was acting selfishly when she died. I always say ‘no’, because I think she had mental health problems that made her act irrationally – if you’re in a state of mind where you can’t perceive the consequences of what you’re doing, if you can’t see that you’re going to hurt others, then surely you can’t be accused of being selfish? To many people who are in a logical, healthy frame of mind, it can seem like a selfish act. After all, suicide hurts so many of the people left behind.
But there are lots of things in life that hurt other people and we have the right to do them. People leave their wives and husbands, have affairs, say terrible things. I say that people do have the right to commit suicide, but I also believe strongly that anyone in such a frame of mind is not thinking logically and has gone beyond the point where they can really grasp the dire consequences of such an act.
So if I think that people have the right to die, then why did I spend so much time trying to stop them? The answer is simple. Just as people have the right to attempt suicide, I have the right to try and stop them. I believe that everybody deserves a second chance in life. Often I talked people down, but in some cases, such as the woman whom I’ve just mentioned, I physically stopped them from jumping. She may have gone away, reflected on things and decided she was glad to be alive. She may have decided she still wanted to die and ended her life later on. Maybe my presence was her lucky day; maybe not.
Either way, I’ve dealt with suicide on so many levels – my wife killed herself, I thought about killing myself (and thanked my lucky stars that I didn’t) – and I have experienced the grief of losing someone. Armed with that knowledge, I always felt that I was doing a potentially good thing by making the decision to stop someone dying. I was giving them a chance to reconsider. After all, if someone dies, they don’t get to regret it. If they have a chance to think again, they may regret having considered it in the first place. If they end up happy to be alive, then that’s justification enough for me having brought them away from that edge.