Almost there. Donna Culpepper looked ahead to her destination and her destiny, the top of Beachy Head, the great chalk headland that is the summit of the South Downs coast. She’d walked from where the taxi driver had left her. The stiff climb wasn’t easy on this gusty August afternoon, but her mind was made up. She was thirty-nine, with no intention of being forty. She’d made a disastrous marriage to a man who had deserted her after six weeks, robbed her of her money, her confidence, her dreams. Trying to put it all behind her, as friends kept urging, had not worked. Two years on, she was unwilling to try any longer.
Other ways of ending it, like an overdose or cutting her wrists, were not right for Donna. Beachy Head was the place. As a child she’d stayed in Eastbourne with her gran and they came here often, “for a blow on the Head” as Gran put it, crunching the tiny grey shells of the path, her grey hair tugged by the wind, while jackdaws and herring gulls swooped and soared, screaming in the clear air. From the top, five hundred feet up when you first saw the sea, you had a sudden sensation of height that made your spine tingle. There was just the rim of eroding turf and the hideous drop.
On a good day you could see the Isle of Wight, Gran had said. Donna couldn’t see anything and stepped closer to the edge and Gran grabbed her and said it was dangerous. People came here to kill themselves.
This interested Donna. Gran gave reluctant answers to her questions.
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They jump off.”
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Why?”
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I don’t know, dear.”
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Yes, you do. Tell me, Gran.”
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Some people are unhappy.”
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What makes them unhappy?”
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Lots of things.”
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What things?”
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Never mind, dear.”
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But I do mind. Tell me what made those people unhappy.”
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Grown-up things.”
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Like making babies?”
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No, no, no. Whoever put such ideas in your head?”
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What, then?”
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Sometimes they get unhappy because they lose the person they love.”
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What’s love?”
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Oh, dear. You’ve such a lot to learn. When you grow up you fall in love with someone and if you’re lucky, you marry them.”
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Is that why they jump off the cliff?”
Gran laughed. “No, you daft ha’porth, it’s the opposite, or I think it is. Let’s change the subject.”
The trouble with grownups is that they always change the subject before they get to the point. For some years after this Donna thought falling in love was a physical act involving gravity. She could see that falling off Beachy Head was dangerous and would only be attempted by desperate people. She expected it was possible to get in love by falling from more sensible heights. She tried jumping off her bed a few times, but nothing happened. The kitchen table, which she tried only once, was no use either.
She started getting sensuous dreams, though. She would leap off the cliff edge and float in the air like the skydivers she’d seen on television. If that was falling in love she could understand why there was so much talk about it.
Disillusion set in when she started school. Love turned out to be something else involving those gross, ungainly creatures, boys. After a few skirmishes with overcurious boys she decided love was not worth pursuing any longer. It didn’t come up to her dreams. This was a pity because other girls of her age expected less and got a more gradual initiation into the mysteries of sex.
At seventeen, the hormones would not be suppressed and Donna drank five vodkas and went to bed with a man of twenty-three. He said he was in love with her, but if that was love it was unsatisfactory. And in the several relationships she had in her twenties she never experienced anything to match those dreams of falling and flying. Most of her girlfriends found partners and moved in with them. Donna held off.
In her mid-to-late thirties she began to feel deprived. One day she saw the Meeting Place page in a national paper. Somewhere out there was her ideal partner. She decided to take active steps to find him. She had money. Her gran had died and left her everything, ninety thousand pounds. In the ad she described herself as independent, sensitive, and cultured.
And that was how she met Lionel Culpepper.
He was charming, good-looking, and better at sex than anyone she’d met. She told him about her gran and her walks on Beachy Head and her dreams of flying. He said he had a pilot’s licence and offered to take her up in a small plane. She asked if he owned a plane and he said he would hire one. Thinking of her legacy, she asked how much they cost and he thought he could buy a good one secondhand for ninety thousand pounds. They got married and opened a joint account. He went off one morning to look at a plane offered for sale in a magazine. That was the last she saw of her husband. When she checked the bank account it was empty. She had been married thirty-eight days.
For a long time she worried about Lionel, thinking he’d had an accident. She reported him missing. Then a letter arrived from a solicitor. Cruelly formal in its wording, it stated that her husband, Lionel Culpepper, wanted a divorce. She was devastated. She hated him then and knew him for what he was. He would not get his divorce that easily.
That was two years ago. Here she was, taking the route of so many who have sought to end their troubles by suicide. Some odd sense of completion, she supposed, was making her take those last steps to the highest point. Any part of the cliff edge would do.
She saw a phone box ahead. Oddly situated, you would think, on a cliff top. The Samaritans had arranged for the phone to be here just in case any tormented soul decided to call them and talk. Donna walked past. A short way beyond was a well-placed wooden bench and she was grateful for that. She needed a moment to compose herself.
She sat. It was just the usual seat you found in parks and along riverbanks all over the country. Not comfortable for long with its slatted seat and upright back, but welcome at the end of the stiff climb. And it did face the sea.
In a moment she would launch herself. She wasn’t too scared. A small part of her still wanted the thrill of falling. For a few precious seconds she would be like those skydivers appearing to fly. This was the way to go.
Revived and resolute, Donna stood and checked to make sure no one was about. Perfect. She had the whole headland to herself.
Well, then.
What it was that drew her attention back to the bench she couldn’t say. At the edge of her vision she became aware of a small brass plaque screwed to the top rail. She read the inscription.
In memory of my beloved wife Donna Maria Culpepper
1967-2006
who loved to walk here and enjoy this view.
A surreal moment. Donna swayed and had to reach out and clutch the bench. She sat again, rubbed her eyes, took a deep breath, and looked a second time, because she half wondered if her heightened state of mind had made her hallucinate.
The words were just as she’d first read them. Her name in full. She’d never met anyone with the same name. It would be extraordinary if some other Donna Maria Culpepper had walked here and loved this view. The year of birth was right as well.
Two things were definitely not Donna. She hadn’t died in 2006 and the way her rat of a husband had treated her made the word “beloved” a sick joke.
Was it possible, she asked herself now, still staring at the weird plaque, that Lionel had paid for the bench and put it here? Could he have heard from some mistaken source that she had died? Had he done this in a fit of conscience?
No chance. Freed of that foolish infatuation she’d experienced when she met the man and married him, she knew him for what he was. Conscience didn’t trouble Lionel. He’d had the gall to ask for a divorce—through a solicitor and after weeks of silence. He was cowardly and callous.
How could this bench be anything to do with Lionel, or with her?
It was a mystery.
Cold logic suggested there had been another Donna Maria Culpepper born in the same year who had died in 2006 and had this touching memorial placed here by her widowed husband, who was obviously more devoted and considerate than Lionel. And yet it required a series of coincidences for this to have happened: the same first names, surname, date of birth.
She took another look. In the bottom right corner of the plaque was a detail she hadn’t noticed—the letters “L. C.”—Lionel’s initials. This, surely, clinched it. The odds against were huge.
She no longer felt suicidal. Anger had taken over. She was outraged by Lionel’s conduct. He shouldn’t have done this. She had come here in a wholly negative frame of mind. Now a new challenge galvanized her. She would get to the truth. She was recharged, determined to find an explanation.
First she had to find him. After their breakup she’d had minimal contact, and that was through solicitors’ letters. She had no idea where he lived now.
She walked down the path towards the town.
The Parks and Recreation Department at Eastbourne Council said that about forty seats had been donated as memorials by members of the public. A helpful young woman showed her the records. The bench had been presented last spring. A man had come in with the plaque already inscribed. He’d particularly asked for a teak seat to be positioned at the top of Beachy Head. He’d paid in cash and left no name, though it was obvious he had to be a Mr. Culpepper.