After ten, maybe fifteen minutes, we reached a fork in the trail; the left had steps carved into the slope, the right had a thin path on the very edge of an overhang.
‘Let’s try this,’ said Jonathan, pointing up and to our right.
‘I don’t think so,’ I replied.
He had spent his childhood in the countryside, been raised in mud and hay and knee-high grass. But I wasn’t comfortable in that world. I was mesmerised by the views and the sounds and the endless space, but I felt like an interloper, uneasy and unwelcome.
‘This looks safer,’ I said, gesturing left.
‘Come on,’ he said, and he smiled. ‘You’ll be fine.’
I hesitated. But I was tempted, encouraged by his faith in me, his certainty. I found it so difficult to deny him whatever he wanted. Truthfully? I’d have done almost anything he asked.
I unfurled my fists, stretched out my fingers and stepped one foot towards him, on to the small lip that jutted out from the rocks.
He stepped backwards – so easily, so agile – like a funambulist balancing on a tightrope.
‘There you go,’ he said. ‘You’re doing great.’
The shelf was narrow, less than a foot in width. It was impossible to stand with two feet side by side.
‘Take another step,’ he said.
I heard our future in that moment: Jonathan talking to a child, encouraging him, too. The memory of it, something that hadn’t yet happened, settled within me and made me feel bolder.
‘What are you waiting for? Keep going,’ he insisted. ‘I’ve got you.’
I lifted my back leg and slowly swung it forwards, over the sea below. Finally, my foot found purchase on the ledge and I exhaled.
‘What now?’ I asked. I had twisted, somehow facing the cliff, my chest pressed against it, the backs of my heels resting only on air. ‘How are you doing this?’
‘You can walk normally,’ he said. ‘Or just shuffle along. Try not to overthink it.’
I looked up at him just a few steps ahead. He grinned at me, the beginnings of wrinkles creasing around his eyes and dimples pressing into his cheeks. His hand was stretched out towards me reassuringly, the ring on his finger glinting in the sun. His other hand was holding on to a ridge above us, and I could see a strip of his hip where his T-shirt had lifted from his trousers.
I leant towards him. But then my back foot slipped, and I remember the feeling of dipping, my weight falling down to one side. I remember the air sucked into my lungs, my fingers skimming the rockface, the panic that steamed through me. I felt his hand slam into my back as he pushed me firmly against the rocks and my chin grazed the sharp surface of cliff.
‘You’re fine,’ he said. ‘You’re okay.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘This isn’t safe. We shouldn’t be here.’
My face was stinging and my knees aching from the impact.
‘You’re fine,’ he said. ‘I promise. You’re okay.’
I shook my head vigorously.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Okay. Don’t get upset. Just edge that way.’
I shuffled a few inches to my left, back on to the grassed pathway.
‘There you go,’ he said. ‘Okay?’
I nodded. I held my hand to my chin; I thought it was bleeding, but my fingers came away clean.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll meet you at the top.’
I nodded and he darted upwards.
I said, I know, that I’d have followed Jonathan anywhere and that was true. But there was something about his fearlessness that was so at odds with my innate fearfulness. And, try as I might and try as I did, sometimes fear won out. I opted for the safer route and our paths crossed again a few minutes later, back at the top of the cliffs.
If I had known then that we had just a few months ahead of us, I’d have found the courage to spend those few minutes with him.
There is a tragic irony that – with hindsight – has embedded itself in every fibre of my relationship with Jonathan. We met in a small corner of the city and that place became a fundamental part of how we lived and loved and existed together. Until it became the place where our relationship ended. Jonathan and I fell in love on a corner of Oxford Street and – fatefully – that is where he died.
I can tell you far more about that day then I can about the day we met. I rolled through that dark slideshow, the sequence that led to his death, non-stop for weeks. Sometimes I still do.
Jonathan was running, for the first time, in the London Marathon. We were expecting rain and sleet, insistent winds. But he was excited. He had been training since the autumn; he was used to running in the rain and so he wasn’t concerned.
He was uncontainable that morning, fidgeting and waffling on about something and nothing, his anticipation contagious. We were so ordinary. Our morning was set against a backdrop of alarm clocks and coffee and breakfast and showering and looking for the house keys and almost running late but not quite and the steady, reassuring rhythm of the everyday.
I wanted to share his victory and so I went straight to the Mall. I stood there by the metal barrier waiting for hours and barely noticed the time slipping past. The atmosphere was electric, excitement and nervousness and encouragement sweating from the crowd around me. The elite racers flashed by first – they made it look easy – followed soon after by a few men, and then some women, and then a couple dripping profusely from their faces, their bodies encased within dinosaur costumes.
Jonathan was determined to complete the race in under three hours, and I didn’t doubt that he would do just that. I watched him speed past after two hours and fifty-one minutes and he crossed the finish line just three minutes later.
I have never been destined for great success. I have always worked hard, but never excelled. I have always participated; I’ve never won. But Jonathan did; Jonathan won. He surpassed even his own bold goals.
I was therefore not at all surprised when he was announced as the millionth marathon runner to pass the finish line since the inaugural London Marathon of 1981, and was interviewed for a recorded segment due to be aired that evening on the BBC News. He had always been behind the camera at sporting events, filming for news channels or sports broadcasters, but he was so charming and modest with his answers that day. I remember wondering if he should consider a career in front of the camera rather than behind it.
After his interview, we headed to the Windsor Castle for a quick drink, just the one, to celebrate his success.
We never arrived.
As we threaded our way from the tube station at Oxford Circus towards the narrow, cobbled street, a drunk driver burst across a pedestrian crossing, mowing my husband down.
I can remember him lying there on his back on the pavement. His knee was twisted at a jaunty angle. His eyes were closed, peaceful almost, his chin resting snug against his chest. He was still wearing his black shorts and his tight yellow T-shirt. His rucksack was a metre or two away and the thin foil wrap he’d been given peeped from between the zippers. His bottle of water was rolling – so slowly it seemed, inching like tar – towards the kerb.
A crowd formed, cyclists and pedestrians, but not the driver of the taxi, who remained frozen in his seat.
Jonathan was frozen too, strangely still, too rigid and yet somehow too serene to be asleep. A puddle of blood began to form beneath his cheek, to pool beneath his body.