I’ve been sitting here for hours waiting for Margot. Not that I want to see her, but I can’t help but feel that I owe her at least this: to wait, to meet her and to offer an explanation. I promised her so much and I failed to deliver in the end. From the moment I first took her hand, felt the tenderness of her flesh and the wild vibrations of her pulse beneath it, I knew I would do anything for her. Anything, I told her, anything at all. I said it so many times I thought I meant it.

As the line of sunlight creeps back towards the wall, I stare at the window. Outside I can see only a steep bank of dry grass rising to the garden above. That’s why I chose this apartment, a basement flat in a respectable area of town, below ground. Margot would have called it a tomb. She hated to feel enclosed. That was why buying the penthouse in that swanky new tower block so appealed to her.

“You can see the whole city, Richard! We’re on top of the world!” She loved to lean over the balcony and stretch out her arms like wings. The up-draught of wind from below fanned her hair about her face and it seemed to my love-dazzled eyes that she transformed to an angel. I told her one night, after too much wine, that she was my angel and she smiled. “No, not me. But I might be one day.”

So we led our lives on top of the world, far above the city and Margot, who gradually stopped going out, spent more and more time on the balcony, watching the birds.

One night I came home from work late. Every door and window in the place was open and the wind was tearing through our apartment, a gale which whirled the papers around like demented butterflies. Margot ran from the balcony, her face pale and sheened with tears, her eyes too wide. “I thought you’d gone!” she screamed like a harpy, but she clung to me.

And I, having never entertained a single thought of leaving her, began to have the first flickers of doubt deep in my stomach. I calmed her, made her tea and sat outside with her until the tears stopped.

“Don’t ever leave me, Richard,” she whispered.

“Of course I won’t. I’ll always be with you.”

“Always?”

“Didn’t I promise to do anything for you?” I ruffled her hair. She pouted. She hated that, said it made her feel like a three year old. She snuggled into my chest.

“Promise me you’ll come with me if I go away.”

I laughed. This from a woman who hadn’t left the apartment in three weeks. “And where do you plan to go?” She didn’t answer my question.

“Just promise me.” And like a lovesick fool, I did. She smiled contentedly. “I would cross eternity for you, if I had to.”

I put it down to the ravings of hysteria and began to make enquiries about engaging a psychiatrist. I didn’t get very far. There wasn’t time.

Another late night in the office brought with it a similar scene but I managed once more to calm her. The third time it happened–oh God, the third time…

My car was in the shop with brake trouble, so Ben from Accounts gave me a lift home. He came up with me to grab a coffee and to finish some paperwork. When I opened the door and saw the devastation inside, I heard him gasp, but I left him standing there. Margot was out on the balcony, poised on the edge, waiting for me. Her arms were stretched open wide. She smiled when she saw me running towards her, her beautiful, joyous smile, and threw herself backwards.

I wasn’t fast enough. My hand brushed hers and her fingers flexed to grasp mine, but mine did not respond. Our skin brushed for a final time and her smile distended to a scream. Ben grabbed me, a rugby tackle which ripped me away from her and sent me crashing to the floor. Margot fell, screaming all the way down.

Ben called the cops, told them the whole story while all I could do was sit at the edge of the balcony listening to the wind whisper, “You promised,” over and over again.

I won’t say things went downhill from there, because really there is nowhere lower than that dark despair following her suicide.

It happened the first night I returned home, but I had drunk enough to dismiss it as a dream. I know I woke myself crying the second night and on the third I was screaming. But on the fourth…

“You promised,” cried the wind as it rumbled against the glass windows out onto the balcony. “Promised, promised, promised.” With no excuse, no alcohol or sleeping pills to blame, I sat in my bed shaking, the blankets pulled up around me and prayed, garbled words which only made her laugh all the more.

Each night I could hear her calling me from the balcony. I only stayed about a week and then moved in with my sister Debbie, putting the penthouse up for sale. But her house is on the top of a hill and I had the attic room. The wind rattled around the windows and I heard Margot calling me there as well. My niece and nephew are too young to see their uncle ranting as he ran from room to room, slamming the windows shut. Margot laughed and laughed, while I sobbed her name until finally I could stay there no longer. Debbie tried to suggest a psychiatrist–oh, she called him a grief therapist, but I knew what he was. Ironically, I was given the same name and number while looking for someone to help Margot. I packed my bags the same morning and the wind moved the leaves in the avenue of trees with the sound of sly giggling.

I must have tried six or seven places, but Margot followed me everywhere.

Finally I came here. There are no airy heights to this place. And as the sun sets, the wind is rising. I promised her I would do anything for her, and I failed her. I just could not leap after her. I could say Ben stopped me, but that’s just an excuse. I wasn’t going to throw myself off the building, not even for Margot. And she knew it too. I could see it in her eyes, the accusation and the betrayal.

But I discovered that here, away from the open sky and the lure of the wind, I could form the words I needed to say, make my prayers coherent again, and that has finally given me the strength I need.

So tonight, here in the ground, I’m going to open the window to her and tell her.

Listen, can’t you hear the wind? Can’t you hear a voice?