Don't go breaking my heart by Martin Goodson

‘You must understand; I never wanted to come back to Filey, but you see Maggie and me we met here back in ’76.

‘I was staying at Butlins with three pals, one of whom was getting married. It was his stag weekend. I was engaged at the time to someone from my home town of Barnsley. ‘Anyway, Maggie was staying at a bed and breakfast on Belle Vue Street. It was that really hot summer; the sand was blistering but the sea managed to stay cold.

‘I met her in Baker’s bar on the Coble Landing; we were all pretty red, burnt and parched most of the time. I remember it was Elton John and Kiki Dee on the radio – ‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart’ – do you know it?

‘If we had a song then that must be it because she was singing to the radio with some of her girlfriends when I first clapped eyes on her.

‘“I bet you could,” I said to her, and she looked at me, as she always did when she liked you, from the corner of her eyes and with a half smile. I see her now full, red lips and thick, auburn hair.

‘You must understand, I was still engaged and although I said it as just a bit of flirting, I felt it was more than that right from the start. Up until that time I thought love meant sex, but when I met Maggie I realised something different.

‘I suppose you could call it the classic holiday romance. She had just broken off a long engagement with a fella she went to school with in Wakefield and was here to get away from all that.

‘Was I a result of the rebound?  I did ask her once and she told me if I was then it was a good catch.

‘If you ask me I really do think it was… destiny.  I know it sounds a bit airy fairy, but I really do believe it. I don’t know if anyone else would have done for her what I did in the end.

‘It’s funny, I feel I want to talk and talk and say everything.

‘Well, that’s just what it was like with Maggie, too. She was like no other. Up until her, I never realised you could call a pretty girl, and Maggie were that, a friend, but that’s what we were above all else to each other.

‘When the holiday was over, we kept in touch and I quickly decided to end my engagement.  That put a few noses out of joint but she found someone else quite quickly and mum and dad understood.

‘It’s true what they say, the course of true love rarely runs smooth, and there was a problem getting her parents to agree to the marriage. Dad was a miner and her parents were well heeled. However, I had trained as an engineer and in the end Maggie made it quite clear what she wanted. You must understand women’s lib was just starting in them days. So finally the date for the wedding was set, which was just as well as she was carrying when we went up the aisle.

‘Our boy Sam, he’s working in the paper industry out in Germany. He was the only one we had. We did try for another, but Maggie lost it and we didn’t try again.

‘Then Maggie began forgetting things. It all started a couple of years back, but she knew it were not normal. It took a while to get to see the specialist and then she were given the Alzheimer’s diagnosis.

‘You must understand that Maggie was always the optimist and I was the worrier. But the sun went out of her face. You see her own mother had had the condition and Maggie, her sister and father nursed her through to the end, so she had seen what it does.

I felt so useless, I were her husband, in sickness and in health, and I meant it and yet could do nothing, say nothing. They say men like to do things rather than express how we feel and it’s true, at least for me.

‘We carried on, barely talking about it; it was like walking on egg shells. I didn’t want to appear upset in front of her and she knew I wasn’t coping with it. We were a part of each other and something of us was disappearing, cruelly, bit by bit. When you’ve made something precious, to watch it fall apart… I just need a moment.

‘One day I came home from work early and she was on the internet looking up stuff on that organisation Dignitas in Switzerland. I was shocked at the idea but for the first time we sat down and talked about it.

‘She was adamant that she did not want to go the same way as her mother, “the ghost leaving the machine before it’s wound down”, that’s how she put it. But neither did she want to go to Switzerland, she wanted her final moments to be somewhere familiar.

‘I told her to wait; the truth was I didn’t know what the right thing was. But in the end I think she were too scared that the disease would take her mind before she had time to act and did not want me to bear the burden of making the arrangements. So that’s why we came back.

‘It’s funny, ever since, I see her more clearly, smell her sometimes and feel her with me, even now in this room. You must understand it really is our destiny to be together.’

The officer reached across and pressed the record button. ‘I think we’re ready to take a statement,’ he said quietly.