Читать книгу Life on the Edge - The true story of the hero who saved the lives of twenty-nine people at Beachy Head - Keith Lane - Страница 6

The doorbell rings and I jump up. I’ve been catnapping on and off for a few hours, but the sound of the bell jolts me back into reality. My wife is missing and the police are searching for her; I’ve been told to stay at home in case she returns. I walk towards the door, my head spinning. I guess it’s the police and hope to God that it’s good news.

Before I open up, I look out of the window. Two coppers. They’re not the regular police, and their caps are in their hands. This is the moment it hits me. My wife is gone.

The world went suddenly strange. This isn’t happening, I thought to myself, immediately in denial about the reality of the situation. I was like a goldfish in a bowl – everything around me was blurry, surreal, as if I was floating. I opened the door on autopilot, showed the policemen in and offered them tea as if nothing was amiss.

‘It’s all right, Mr Lane,’ one of them said gently, ‘I’ll make us a cup of tea.’

But I wouldn’t let them. I dashed into the kitchen and dizzily tried to pick up the kettle, prepare the cups and the milk, yet I was shaking like mad and could hardly get a grip on anything. I knew what news awaited me when I went back into the lounge and I wanted to delay the moment I heard it for as long as possible. It was as if the longer I put off the inevitable, the greater the chance it wasn’t true.

But it was true. Horribly true. Sure enough, one of the policemen began to speak. I could only listen as he delivered the most devastating words a man could ever dream of hearing.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Lane,’ he said gently as he placed his arm on my shoulder, ‘but I do believe we’ve found your wife, Maggie. I’m afraid she went over the cliff at Beachy Head. We found her in a crevice.’

My head shook from side to side. ‘You don’t know that,’ I said, half-shouting, half-crying, ‘you can’t be sure it’s her. How can you know?’

They told me they were 99 per cent certain. Then they asked me what my wife had been wearing when she left the house that morning. I knew, because I had laid her clothes out, ready for her to put on after she had showered. To this day I can still picture her black trousers and black-and-white top spread out on our bed.

‘Well, this lady fits that description. She was wearing black and white,’ the copper said softly. ‘She is blonde and she’s small and…’

There was no need for him to go on; his words confirmed what I’d been trying to deny. That was enough: I broke down. Words are not enough to describe that crushing feeling. I could hardly take it in. It wasn’t like a punch to the stomach; it wasn’t like having the ground taken from beneath my feet. It wasn’t like anything on earth but… total devastation.

I’d lost the love of my life. I would never see her again. My precious, beloved Maggie was lying dead at the bottom of the cliff she had thrown herself from. In a couple of moments my entire world had collapsed. Nothing would ever be the same again and I didn’t know what on earth to do.

Nothing could have prepared me for losing my wife. Maggie Lane was the love of my life, my soul mate, and now suddenly she was gone. Nobody could have told me what an extraordinary journey my time with her would lead me on. Nor could they have told me that one day I would write a book about it.

But before I begin to tell you about that journey, I must go back and tell you about Maggie. For without her, none of this would have happened.